It’s been an article of faith in the Middle East that no player involved in the current standoff over Gaza has an interest in stoking a wider war. The appointment of Hamas military commander Yahya Sinwar to the organization’s top job should serve as a reminder that this was never quite true.
Sinwar fills a post that opened with the July 31 killing of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s politburo chairman, while on a visit to Tehran. The apparent assassination was one of two in quick succession that broke the rules of engagement in Israel’s perpetual hybrid conflict with Iran and its proxies. Both the Islamic Republic of ...