The killing of Yahya Sinwar — the chief architect of the Oct. 7 attack — is the most tangible victory that Israel has yet been able to claim in its more than yearlong war against Hamas. Almost as soon as the Oct. 7 attack happened, Israeli leaders vowed to hold Sinwar accountable. So long as he was still directing Hamas’s operations from the tunnels of Gaza, Israel could not credibly claim to have achieved its goals.

Now Sinwar is dead, killed Wednesday in a firefight with Israeli troops who unexpectedly encountered him in southern Gaza. The troops, backed by drones, came upon a small group of Hamas fighters and brought down part of a building where they had taken cover. The Israeli troops found Sinwar’s body in the rubble.

But the larger significance of Sinwar’s death — for Israel, Hamas, Gaza and the Middle East — remains unclear. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain both why his death could be a turning point and why it might not be. I will also walk you through The Times’s extensive coverage.

Reasons for a deal

In a span of three months, Israel has killed three top leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, two Iran-backed militant groups that have been fighting Israel for decades. In July, a bomb placed in a government guesthouse in Tehran killed Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader. Three weeks ago, Israeli planes bombed a Hezbollah office in Beirut, killing its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah. “The optics is that of an edifice collapsing,” Hassan Hassan of New Lines Magazine wrote yesterday, referring to Iran’s network of groups known as the axis of resistance.

That apparent collapse offers Israel a chance to declare victory, especially against Hamas in Gaza, and negotiate peace terms. Many political leaders in other countries, including President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, hope for this outcome. “Now, after Mr. Sinwar’s killing, a route toward some kind of truce in Gaza seems slightly more navigable,” Patrick Kingsley, The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, wrote.