After the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, President Biden said that we have to end the war in Gaza, “once and for all.” Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris said, “Hamas is decimated, and its leadership is eliminated....This moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza.”

There is an understandable impulse to end the war immediately, presumably in exchange for release of the hostages. But the opportunity that Sinwar's death affords Israel and the U.S. will be squandered if we lack the strategic patience to act wisely.

A more nuanced perspective is that of Matti Friedman, who wrote for the Free Press, “Sinwar’s death will hasten the end of the war....Will Israel seize this moment? It now has a chance to begin to orchestrate the end of the Gaza operation after a year of bloodshed.” His emphasis is not on the immediate, but on the beginning of a new opportunity to move towards a sustainable ceasefire without Hamas as the governing authority in Gaza.

Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz, a Netanyahu opponent, gave an even more realistic assessment that the U.S. administration chooses to ignore.

“We will have to continue operating in Gaza for years,” he said, but he added that this "moment must be seized and leveraged to bring the hostages home and topple the Hamas regime.”

Hamas still has thousands of fighters in miles of undiscovered tunnels. And Hamas, along with its patron Iran, will still........

© The Hill