Time after time, Sha’ban al-Dalou, a 19-year-old software engineering student living in Gaza, nearly escaped death. He began studying at Gaza’s al-Azhar University two months before it was destroyed in November by a US-made bomb dropped by Israeli forces.

Sha’ban posted videos to social media, describing how his family – which he took care of, as the eldest of five – was displaced five times by the assaults and asking for financial support to flee to Egypt.

On 6 October, another US-supplied bomb blew up a mosque, killing 20 people and burying Sha’ban beneath rubble. Against all odds, he was dug out and saved, and went to seek treatment at the al-Aqsa hospital for his many injuries. There he built his family a tent to shelter together.

Then, on Monday morning, Israeli forces dropped another US-supplied bomb just outside the hospital, and 30 tents, including Sha’ban’s, were set ablaze. People held back his 16-year-old brother as he watched Sha’ban, still attached to an IV, and his mother, aged 38, burn alive. It was all caught on video.

Hours later, 500 Jews and friends shut down the New York Stock Exchange, the epicenter of global capital, demanding the US stop arming Israel and stop profiting from genocide. In horror and agony over the US-funded slaughter of Palestinians, and this most recent news of Sha’ban’s murder, we chanted “stop arming Israel, let Gaza live,” as cops arrested over 200 of us, dragging elders and descendants of Holocaust survivors out by our arms and legs.

Day after day over the past year we have witnessed the Israeli military commit heinous crimes, bombing hospitals and mosques, slaughtering more children than any other war in recent years and forbidding the entry of humanitarian aid. The commissioner for the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) has called it “a war on children”.

Although the world is crying out for the horrors to stop, Joe Biden and the US Congress continue to send weapons and money, totaling more than a staggering $18bn since last October.

Everyone has the same question: why is the US – and a Democratic administration at that, which is trying to win an election – still arming Israel when it’s carrying out what the international court of justice (ICJ) has deemed plausible genocide, while violating the US’s own laws?

The Biden administration wants you to believe that the reason they are funding the Israeli military is out of a commitment to Jewish safety. This is the moral cover they use, a cloak for their collaboration in heinous war crimes.

As Jews, we reject this myth with every fiber of our beings. Together, with tens of thousands of American Jews who have spent the last year protesting for an end to the slaughter, we refuse to let our histories, identities and traditions be used as the justification to massacre Palestinians.

The true interest of the US government? Control of the region and is its own financial gain.

Over the past year of Israel’s relentless bombing that has killed at least 46,000 Palestinians, including at least 16,500 children, with the true death toll probably much higher, the stock prices of leading US weapons manufacturers have been soaring.

Their bottom line is boosted by the fact that the only condition placed by the US government on its $18bn slush fund for the Israeli military, is not on how those bombs may be used, but instead on how they must be bought.

Israel is stipulated to purchase from US weapons manufacturers. In turn, two such leading corporations, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, have posted staggering record-breaking returns.

Meanwhile, at least 50 members of Congress or their spouses are owners of their stock. While they should be voting based on the will of their constituents, they have profits to gain from voting to send billions of dollars in military funding to Israel while it carries out a genocide.

The reason I am alive today is because the day that my entire family was massacred in their shtetl in Lithuania, in another genocide – the Holocaust – my grandmother just happened to be away.

I grew up aware that I am not supposed to be here. I also grew up agonizing over these questions. Where were the neighbors? Why did they just stand by? Why didn’t they hurl their bodies between the killers and my family?

As the NYPD dragged me by my arms and legs out of the New York Stock Exchange, I felt all of my Jewish ancestors at my back, the one who survived and all those who didn’t. We say now, with more conviction than ever before: we refuse to be neighbors who just stand by.

Sha’ban should have celebrated his 20th birthday today. In one of the most urgent tasks of our lifetimes – stopping our government from continuing to arm Israel – we all have a role to play.

• Elena Stein is director of organizing strategy for Jewish Voice for Peace, the largest anti-Zionist Jewish organization in the world and currently the fastest-growing Jewish organization in the country.

Labour is using its first animal welfare policy since entering government to dilute standards by legalising the harmful practice of carrying chickens by their legs, charities have said.

European transport regulation 1/2005, which still applies in the UK, prohibits lifting chickens by their legs on farms and during loading and unloading, but the government is going to change the law to permit the widespread but illegal method, according to the Animal Law Foundation.

This comes despite the animal welfare committee of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) having previously said that it caused distress and injuries such as fractures and dislocations.

Edie Bowles, the executive director at the Animal Law Foundation, said: “It is shocking that the Labour government has chosen a dilution of welfare protections as its first animal welfare policy. It is especially surprising given it is the first dilution of an EU animal welfare protection since Brexit.

“The British people do not want this. They want animal welfare standards high and enforced. The decision to legalise the inhumane handling of chickens in the UK is a stark reminder of the lack of care for animal welfare at the highest level.”

During and after the Brexit campaign, leaving the European Union was repeatedly framed as an opportunity to strengthen the UK’s animal welfare standards. During the general election campaign, the environment secretary (then shadow), Steve Reed, said: “The Conservatives are on the side of animal cruelty. Labour will end it.”

Despite the EU regulations, the government had until recently argued that it was not illegal to handle chickens by the legs and Defra’s codes of practice explicitly permitted “leg-catching”.

However, the Animal Law Foundation threatened Defra with legal action, prompting the government to concede that carrying chickens by their legs was currently prohibited. At the same time it informed the charity that it would be changing the law so that it was no longer forbidden.

Kipster, a Dutch poultry farm that produces carbon-neutral eggs, has calculated that the additional cost of handling chickens upright is €0.0004 (£0.0003) per egg.

Sean Gifford, the executive director of the Humane League, said: “Chickens are thinking, feeling animals. Some are shy, some are playful, and they all want to live their lives free from harm. Grabbing them by their legs, which are often already sensitive and painful due to being bred to grow so quickly to maximise profit, then carrying them upside down, causes intense suffering.

“This outrageous decision by the government will ensure that millions of animals continue to needlessly suffer and is completely at odds with Labour’s pledge to introduce the biggest boost in animal welfare for a generation.”

The Humane League will be at the court of appeal on Tuesday to challenge the government for allowing fast-growing broiler chickens, known as “Frankenchickens”, which suffer a wide range of health problems. The high court rejected the initial challenge last year.

Defra declined to comment.

Some of the most common types of PFAS may cause sleep disorders in young adults, new research finds, and the study’s authors for the first time identified how the chemicals probably impact the brain to cause disruptions.

The peer-reviewed University of Southern California (USC) study looked at PFAS levels in the blood of adults between 19 and 24 years old, and found those in the highest one-third slept an average of about 80 fewer minutes nightly than those in the lowest third.

For PFOS, a common compound, high blood concentrations were linked strongest to problems falling asleep, staying asleep, waking up or feeling tired during waking hours.

“Because the body needs sleep every day, if PFAS might be interfering with your sleep, that may affect you more immediately than other chronic health issues,” said Shiwen Li, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at USC.

PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals typically used to make products that resist water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and they accumulate in humans and the environment. The chemicals are linked to cancer, kidney disease, liver problems, immune disorders, birth defects and other serious health problems.

PFAS are also increasingly linked to neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s, anxiety disorders and ADHD, though the study’s authors say epidemiological studies are needed to provide a clearer picture of brain impacts.

However, the study found very strong evidence of why the chemicals could affect sleep quality. Its authors checked a panel of proteins – the products of the blueprints inscribed in genes – from participants’ blood samples, and found seven genes that are probably activated by PFAS that seem to influence sleep.

Among those are a gene that converts cortisol to cortisone, a stress response hormone that also regulates sleep cycles.

“There’s a very strong biological pathway that we’re seeing – it’s not just observational,” Li said.

The chemicals also probably affect sleep, and potentially cognitive function and memory, because they target the cathepsin B gene. High levels of the resulting enzyme have been linked to cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s, which is also thought to stem from sleep disorders.

While the study found PFOS, one of the most common and toxic PFAS compounds, had the strongest links to sleep disruption, high levels of mixtures were also found to cause problems.

Previous research has found PFAS can probably cross the blood-brain barrier and disrupt the levels of neurotransmitters, like dopamine, glutamate and serotonin, and calcium homeostasis, which are all important for sleep health.

Meanwhile, a recent Chinese study of more than 4,100 pregnant women and their infants found the chemicals seemed to cause sleep disturbance, lower sleep efficiency, and shorter sleep duration across three trimesters for mothers and, after birth, for their children.

There is little that those with higher levels of PFAS in their blood can do beyond to avoid potential exposures via common routes like drinking water, food or household consumer products.

Some PFAS have a half-life – or the amount of time it takes to remove half the chemicals from a person’s blood – of several years, meaning it can take decades for the body to expel the highest levels. The research highlights the need for stronger regulations, the paper states.

“The problem is PFAS is a group of thousands of compounds so there should be discussions about regulating them as a chemical class,” Li said.

Donald Trump laid into Kamala Harris and other Democrats on Thursday in a pointed and at times bitter speech as he headlined the annual Al Smith charity dinner in New York. The Republican nominee repeatedly criticised his Democratic campaign rival over her decision to skip the event – a break with presidential electoral tradition, as she prioritised campaigning in the swing state of Wisconsin, rather than New York, a safe Democratic state. Harris recorded a video that was played instead.

Trump questioned the mental fitness of Harris and the president, Joe Biden, commented on second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s extramarital affair during his previous marriage, and made jokes about transgender people. The dinner was emceed by the comedian Jim Gaffigan, who portrays the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz, on Saturday Night Live.

Harris, in her pre-recorded remarks – which featured the comedian and actor Molly Shannon, who reprised her long-running Saturday Night Live character Mary Katherine Gallagher, an awkward Catholic school pupil – mocked Trump for lying, a sin, about the results of the 2020 election, and comments he made in Michigan, saying that mocking Catholics in the video would be “like criticising Detroit in Detroit”.

Here’s what else happened on Thursday:

Kamala Harris election news

• A poll has revealed that Harris continues to lead Trump among Black likely voters in battleground states. The poll, conducted by Howard University’s Initiative on Public Opinion from 2 October to 8 October, surveyed 981 Black likely voters in the states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The results show that 84% of respondents said they planned to vote for the vice-president, while only 8% said they would support Trump for president in November, and another 8% remained undecided.

• With three weeks left, Harris is spending most of her days trying to shore up support in the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin as she tries to avoid a repeat of Hillary Clinton’s collapse there eight years ago. Her schedule reflects the Democratic nominee’s focus on her most likely path to victory over Trump. Harris visited Milwaukee on Thursday seeking support from college-age voters. She dropped by a business class at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and held a student rally at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, closing out the day with a rally in Green Bay.

• The Democratic governors of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin this week embarked on a swiftly organised bus tour, rolling through the autumn landscape to press the urgency of the case for Harris in must-win states where some Democrats worry she is struggling. Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro and Tony Evers descended on Flint on Thursday afternoon, joined by the chairman of the national Democratic party, Jaime Harrison.

• Harris and Walz will attend church on Sunday in the battleground states of Georgia and Michigan. Harris will also sit down for an interview with the Rev Al Sharpton that will air on Sunday night on his MSNBC programme, according to a Harris campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss schedule details not yet officially announced.

Donald Trump election news

• Donald Trump’s transition team is reportedly preparing a blacklist of potential officials to be banned from a future administration, with special emphasis placed on those with links to the radical Project 2025 plan to overhaul the US government. The former president’s eldest son, Donald Jr, is spearheading the drive to compile the list of barred staffers, according to Politico, citing a former official in the first Trump administration.

• Trump was joined at the Al Smith event by his wife, Melania, who has been an infrequent presence on the campaign trail. The white-tie dinner raises millions of dollars for Catholic charities and has traditionally offered candidates from both parties the chance to trade lighthearted barbs, poke fun at themselves, and show that they can get along – or at least pretend to – for one night in the election’s final stretch.

• Gaffigan referenced allegations that the Trump Organization in the 1970s discriminated against Black renters in its buildings. “If vice-president Harris wins this election, not only would she be the first female president, a Black woman would occupy the White House, a former Trump residence,” Gaffigan said. “Obviously you wouldn’t be renting to her. I mean, that would never happen anyway. Maybe if Doug did the signing.”

• Elsewhere on the campaign trail, a Nevada man who was arrested with guns at a security checkpoint outside a Trump rally in the southern California desert has filed a lawsuit accusing the sheriff of falsely characterising his arrest as a thwarted assassination attempt, for the sheriff’s own personal gain.

• The Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, falsely told a reporter on Wednesday that there were “serious problems” in the 2020 election and suggested that the then president, Donald Trump, did not actually lose the race. “Did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use,” Vance said in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. “But look, I really couldn’t care less if you agree with me or disagree with me on this issue.”

Other election news:

• The Nevada Democratic US Senator Jacky Rosen and Republican challenger Sam Brown painted each other as extremists on Thursday night in the presidential battleground state where the election could determine control of both the White House and the Senate. The election pits Rosen, a first-term senator seen as a political consensus-builder, against Brown, a retired army captain who bears scars from battlefield injuries and is endorsed by Trump.

• Senior Democrats in US cities are preparing to defend their communities in the event of Donald Trump’s return to the White House after the former president repeated threats that he would use presidential powers to seize control of major urban centres. Trump has proposed deploying the military inside major cities largely run by Democrats to deal with protesters or to crush criminal gangs. He has threatened to dispatch large numbers of federal immigration agents to carry out mass deportations of undocumented people.

Read more about the 2024 US election:

The Israeli military has released drone footage it says shows Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s final moments: alone in a ruined Gaza apartment with the walls blown out from shelling, sat hunched in a chair covered by dust, with his head and face obscured by a scarf.

With his right arm appearing severely wounded, the video shows Sinwar flinging a stick over his head in the direction of the approaching drone. The Guardian has not independently verified the footage.

When the footage was taken, Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said Sinwar was only identified as a fighter. The military then fired an additional shell at the building, causing it to collapse and kill him, Hagari said. He said Sinwar was found with a bulletproof vest, grenades, and 40,000 shekels ($10,707).

According to the Jerusalem Post, Hagari told reporters: “Sinwar fled alone into one of the buildings. Our forces used a drone to scan the area, which you can see here in the footage I’m presenting.”

“Sinwar, who was injured in his hand by gunfire, can be seen here with his face covered, in his final moments, throwing a wooden plank at the drone,” he said.

“He tried to escape and our forces eliminated him.”.

Hamas has not commented on the killing of Sinwar.

Photos circulating online showed the body of a man resembling Sinwar with a gaping head wound, dressed in a military-style vest, half buried in the rubble of a destroyed building.

Israeli officials said Sinwar was found by infantry soldiers searching an area in the Tal El Sultan area of southern Gaza on Wednesday, where they believed senior members of Hamas were located.

The troops saw three suspected militants moving between buildings and opened fire, leading to a gunfight during which Sinwar escaped into a ruined building.

In the last months of his life, Sinwar, the main architect of the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel that set off the war in Gaza, appears to have stopped using telephones and other communication equipment that would have allowed Israel’s powerful intelligence services to track him down.

Israeli officials said they believed he was hiding in one of the vast network of tunnels that Hamas dug beneath Gaza over the past two decades, but as more and more have been uncovered by Israeli troops, even the tunnels were no guarantee of escaping capture.

Intelligence services had been searching for Sinwar for months and had been gradually restricting the area where he could operate, the military said. Dental records, fingerprints and DNA testing provided final confirmation of Sinwar’s death.

The overwhelming majority of young Americans worry about the climate crisis, and more than half say their concerns about the environment will affect where they decide to live and whether to have children, new research finds.

The study comes just weeks after back-to-back hurricanes, Helene and Milton, pummeled the south-eastern US. Flooding from Helene caused more than 600 miles of destruction, from Florida’s west coast to the mountains of North Carolina, while Milton raked across the Florida peninsula less than two weeks later.

“One of the most striking findings of the survey was that this was across the political spectrum,” said the lead author, Eric Lewandowski, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. “There was no state sample where the endorsement of climate anxiety came in less than 75%.”

The study was published in the Lancet Planetary Health, and follows a 2021 study covering 10 countries. Both the previous and current study were paid for by Avaaz, an advocacy group.

The new study was conducted by researchers from NYU School of Medicine, Stanford University, Utah State University, the University of Washington and George Washington University, among others.

In an online survey, researchers asked young people aged 16-25 from all 50 US states to rate their concerns, thoughts and emotions regarding the climate crisis; about their political affiliation and about who has responsibility for causing climate change. Researchers conducted the survey online from July to November 2023.

An overwhelming majority of young people said they were worried about the climate crisis – 85% said they were at least moderately worried, and more than half (57%) said they were “very or extremely” worried. Nearly two-thirds endorsed the statement: “Humanity is doomed,” and more than half of the sample (52%) endorsed: “I’m hesitant to have children.”

“I often hear adults say that our generation, gen Z, will fix what they have broken. What they may not understand is the pressure this puts on all of us,” said Zion Walker, a student and member of the Climate Mental Health Network’s Gen Z Advisory Board, in a statement. “Yes, we are taking steps and fighting for the future, but many of us are overwhelmed by the daily reality of climate disasters – waking up to news of wildfires engulfing homes and hurricanes taking lives.”

Large majorities of both main political parties – 92% of Democrats and 73% of Republicans – said they worried about the climate. Respondents also said they had negative thoughts about the climate and had planned action to respond to their concerns, including voting for political candidates who would pledge to support “aggressive” action.

Using a statistical technique called a regression model, researchers also found that young people who reported more exposure to more climate-related disasters were more likely to want a plan for action.

“One of the findings we talk about in the text was the proportion of people who want this to be talked about,” said Lewandowski. He added that more than 70% of young people want the climate to be a subject of discussion, “and for older generations to try to understand how they feel.”

The new research represents an emerging topic in mental health stressors. The relationship between mental health impacts and natural disasters – such as Helene, Milton and even Covid-19 – is well established. Researchers have even found a dose-response relationship, with more reported depression symptoms associated with greater exposure to disaster. Climate anxiety, such as worry about the future of the planet, is an area of emerging research.

“Stressors like divorce, unemployment, having your kids do poorly in school, having a hard time looking after your ageing parents are all associated with worse mental health,” said Dr Sandro Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, who was not involved in the research.

Although less studied, Galea said, “having stressors around climate, worsening of the planet, fear of things like conflict – those are all very plausibly associated with poor mental health.”

In the end, after a year-long, multi-agency manhunt involving the latest technology, Israel’s best special forces and American assistance, Yahya Sinwar appears to have been killed by regular soldiers who had stumbled into him and had no idea whom they had killed.

According to the initial reports, they were not there on an assassination operation and had no prior intelligence that they could be in the vicinity of the elusive Hamas leader, architect of the 7 October attacks, the man Israel most wanted to kill. It was only after they took a closer look at his face and found identity documents on him that the troops realised they had got Sinwar.

Along the way, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have smashed much of Gaza and are estimated to have killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, driving two million from their homes, a humanitarian disaster Sinwar set in motion with the sheer brutality of the initial surprise assault a year ago, killing 1,200 Israelis and taking 250 hostage.

Sinwar’s last reported sighting had been just a few days after the 7 October attack, when he appeared out of the subterranean gloom in a Gaza tunnel when a group of hostages were been held.

In fluent Hebrew, perfected over more than 22 years in an Israeli prison, Sinwar reassured them that they were safe and would soon be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners. One of the hostages, Yocheved Lifshitz, an 85-year-old veteran peace campaigner from the Nir Oz kibbutz, had no time for his show of concern for their welfare and challenged the Hamas leader to his face.

“I asked him how he wasn’t ashamed to do something like this to people who had supported peace all these years?” Lifshitz told the Davar newspaper after her release following 16 days in captivity. “He didn’t answer. He was quiet.”

A video recorded on Hamas security cameras at about the same time, on 10 October, and found by the Israeli military some months later, shows Sinwar following his wife and three children through a narrow tunnel and disappearing into the murk.

The ferocious manhunt that ensued involved a mix of advanced technology and brute force, as his pursuers have shown themselves prepared to go to any lengths, including causing extremely high civilian casualties, to kill the Hamas leader and destroy the tight circle around him.

The hunters were a taskforce of intelligence officers, special operation units from the IDF, military engineers and surveillance experts under the umbrella of the Israeli Security Agency, more widely known by its Hebrew initials, or by the acronyms Shabak or Shin Bet.

Personally and institutionally, this team was seeking redemption for the security failures that allowed the 7 October assault to happen. But despite their motivation, they faced more than a year of frustration.

“If you’d told me when the war began he would still be alive [a year later], I would have found it amazing,” said Michael Milshtein, a former head of the Palestinian affairs section in Israeli Military Intelligence (Aman). “But remember, Sinwar prepared for a decade for this offensive and IDF intelligence was very surprised by the size and length of the tunnels under Gaza and how sophisticated they were.”

Some in the Israeli defence establishment believed that Sinwar would be surrounded by hostages as human shields, though others maintained that would slow him down and make his entourage a bigger target. Certainly the risk of killing hostages did not stop the IDF dropping 2,000lb bombs on suspected Hamas leadership targets. In the end, the Israelis reported finding no sign of hostages in the vicinity of Sinwar when he was killed, who seems to have been in the company of just two other men.

There was no shortage of expertise among Sinwar’s pursuers. Targeted killings have been a core tactic of Israel’s military since the founding of the state. Since the second world war, Israel has assassinated more people than any other country in the western world.

Yahalom, a special section within the Combat Engineering Corps, has more experience in tunnel warfare than any of its counterparts in western armies, and has access to state-of-the-art US-made ground-penetrating radar. The clandestine signals intelligence unit 8200 is a global leader in electronic warfare and has been eavesdropping on Hamas communications for decades.

The Shin Bet lost many of its sources in Gaza after Israel pulled out of the territory in 2005, but worked hard to rebuild its network of informants after Israel launched its ground invasion last October, recruiting from among the desperate flows of Palestinians fleeing the onslaught.

Despite the capabilities of this formidable taskforce, it came close to catching Sinwar just once before Thursday’s fatal encounter, in a bunker beneath his home town of Khan Younis in late January. The fugitive warlord had left behind clothing and more than 1m shekels (over £200,000) in wads of banknotes. This was seen by some as a sign of panic, though the Hamas leader was ultimately estimated to have left a few days before Israeli forces raided the bunker.

The assumption made by Sinwar’s trackers was that he had abandoned using electronic communication, well aware of the skills and technology possessed by his hunters. It was not only Hebrew that Sinwar studied in Israeli jail but also the habits and culture of his enemy.

“He really understands the basic instincts and the deepest feelings of Israeli society,” said Milshtein, now at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. “I’m quite sure every move he makes is based on his understanding of Israel.”

Throughout his year in hiding, Sinwar continued to communicate with the outside world, albeit with apparent difficulty. The long, fruitless negotiations over a ceasefire in Cairo and Doha were frequently paused while messages were sent to and from the subterranean commander. The dominant theory was that Sinwar uses couriers to remain in command, drawn from a small and shrinking coterie of aides he trusts, starting with his brother Mohammed, a senior military commander in Gaza.

The team hunting Sinwar hoped that his need for contact with couriers, to issue orders and control the hostage negotiations, would ultimately prove his undoing, just as a courier led American trackers over several years to Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

It is believed that it was a courier who led the Israeli hunters to their biggest scalp of the war before Sinwar. At 10.30am on 13 July, Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s veteran commander who had topped Israel’s most wanted list since 1995, emerged from a hiding place near a camp for displaced people at al-Mawasi to take in some air with a close lieutenant, Rafa’a Salameh. Within an instant, both men were killed by bombs dropped by Israeli jet fighters – at least, according to IDF accounts – along with scores of Palestinians. Hamas insists that Deif is still alive but he has not been seen since.

Many in the Israeli security establishment rued what they saw as a missed historic opportunity in September 2003 when they had planes ready to bomb a house where the entire Hamas leadership was holding a meeting. After furious argument in the military chain of command, the air force used a precision missile fired into the presumed meeting room rather than flattening the whole building with a hail of bombs, out of concern for civilian casualties. They picked the wrong room and the Hamas leaders survived.

By July this year, the likelihood of killing large numbers of civilians was no longer an obstacle. In targeting Deif, the air force used 2,000lb bombs, the very weapons the Biden administration had stopped sending in May because of their indiscriminate destructive force. Israel reportedly dropped eight of them on 13 July. Ninety Palestinians in the vicinity were killed and nearly 300 injured.

Yossi Melman, a co-author of Spies Against Armageddon and author of other books on Israeli intelligence, said Deif may have made a mistake that Sinwar had avoided.

“Deif was maybe more arrogant or maybe he told himself they tried to kill me so many times, and I lost an eye and an arm but I still survived, so maybe God is with me,” Melman said. “The Shabak and the army were waiting just for this opportunity. All these targeted killings are about waiting for the one minor mistake by the other side.”

There was some talk over the negotiating tables in Cairo and Doha of the past year of cutting a deal in which Sinwar went into exile, and some suggested that he could have crossed the border, hiding in a tunnel on the Egyptian side of the town Rafah. Such theories underestimated the ideological zeal of a man who rose through Hamas ranks as the executioner of suspected informers.

Milshtein, whose job in the Aman military intelligence service was to study Sinwar and other Hamas leaders, predicted months before his eventual death: “It is in his basic DNA to stay in Gaza and to fight until death. He will prefer to die in his bunker.”

In that case, Sinwar got his wish. His death was perhaps preordained by the sheer determination of both sides. He would never leave or surrender, and if the hi-tech intelligence-led hunt for him failed, Israel preferred to flatten Gaza until he was finally killed.

Whether his death will stop the war is another question.

Ram Ben-Barak, a former deputy director of the Mossad, had predicted that after Sinwar’s fall “someone else will come”.

“It is an ideological war, not a war about Sinwar,” Ben-Barak said.

Milshtein said: “After almost 50 years of assassinations, we understand this is a basic part of the game. Sometimes it is necessary to assassinate a very prominent leader. But when you start to think it will be a gamechanger and that an ideological organisation will collapse because you kill one of its leaders, that is a total mistake.

“You cannot create a fantasy. It will not end the war.”

The death of Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas and mastermind of the 7 October attacks, has huge implications for the conflict in Gaza, for Israel’s other campaigns in Lebanon and the occupied West Bank, and for Israel’s domestic politics.

There will be the war – or wars – before the killing of the 62-year-old veteran militant and the war(s) after it.

One of the biggest immediate impacts will obviously be on Hamas, which has now lost much of its top leadership. Already the head of its military wing in Gaza, Sinwar took charge of the organisation after Ismail Haniyeh, his predecessor, died in a bomb explosion in a government guesthouse in Tehran in July that was blamed on Israel. Other senior officials were killed in Beirut and in Gaza, where Israeli airstrikes successfully targeted military Hamas commanders such as Marwan Issa and Mohammed Deif.

Hamas will portray Sinwar as a martyr and look to frame his death in a way that will inspire new volunteers. That he appears to have died fighting on a frontline, with a weapon in his hand, will help this. But whatever the propaganda, the elimination of such a respected leader is unlikely to boost recruitment, and Hamas sorely needs new manpower in Gaza where it has taken heavy casualties.

Command in Gaza is likely to pass to Sinwar’s younger brother, Mohammed, 49, who will probably continue the strategy of low-level insurgent resistance to Israel, with a focus on retaining some kind of shadow administrative control in the territory and exploiting international outrage over civilian casualties to put pressure on Israel.

But more broadly Hamas will be thrown into disarray. It will now have to find a new overall leader. Sinwar, despite all the authority he had gathered over decades, was a controversial choice and though the succession of his brother would send a powerful message, Mohammed Sinwar would struggle to unify and rally the organisation. Major strategic choices postponed by the appointment of Yahya Sinwar will now have to be made, under great pressure and in the full knowledge that the Israeli security services are capable of tracking and killing even the most senior officials.

In Israel, where Benjamin Netanyahu is still blamed by many for the security failures that led to the death of 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and the abduction of 250 in the 7 October attacks, Sinwar’s killing will greatly reinforce the prime minister’s political position and rally his hardline rightwing support base. Netanyahu’s poll ratings were already improving after a series of tactical successes in Lebanon, including the assassination of Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, and quickly there were reports of celebrations in Jerusalem on Thursday.

The death of Sinwar will undoubtedly be seen by some Israelis, including many in senior posts in the military, intelligence services and government, as a moment to declare victory in Gaza and end what is widely seen as a draining, if necessary, campaign. But how much real difference this could make on the ground is unclear.

One possibility is that ceasefire negotiations will receive a boost now that one of the two individuals who have been accused of blocking any deal is gone. But the attitude of any successor to Sinwar to talks may not be that different, and Netanyahu has always insisted that military pressure is what will bring back the 100 or so hostages in Gaza, of whom only half are thought to still be alive. The chances of Netanyahu now agreeing to release thousands of Palestinian prisoners, including many who have killed Israelis, and make other painful concessions must be slim.

There is a possibility that the US could now press Israel to declare an end to its offensive in Gaza – something that would come as a huge relief to Democratic party campaign strategists. Washington has ramped up pressure on Israel in recent days over increasing access to humanitarian aid for the 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza, most of them displaced many times, who are facing a winter without adequate food, shelter and medication. A recent surge in airstrikes has pushed the total death toll since October last year to more than 42,500.

But even if Israel did decide to declare victory in Gaza with the death of Sinwar – something that analysts have long predicted – it may not mean the dawning of the “day after”. Israeli officials have made clear their military control and operations will continue in Gaza for as long as they deem them necessary, and no one has yet come up with a new political set-up in Gaza that might be acceptable to all parties.

On Thursday, Benny Ganz, an opposition parliamentarian, praised Sinwar’s death as an “important achievement” but insisted that Israel’s military “will continue to operate in the Gaza Strip for years to come”.

Israel has already switched its focus to the battle against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and more broadly against Iran across the region. Netanyahu has so far rejected any ceasefire in the north, in the probably justified belief that Israel has the upper hand, and is yet to order retaliation for the barrage of 180 missiles launched at Israel by Iran earlier this month. This riposte will undoubtedly come.

The killing of Sinwar will further boost the confidence of Israeli military, intelligence and political officials who have already been greatly encouraged by their recent successes. Much of Israel’s strategic thinking is dominated by the need to restore what it sees as deterrence necessary to its survival, and to permanently weaken Iran.

Sinwar’s elimination will be emotionally satisfying for many Israelis, politically useful for Netanyahu and his supporters and a major blow for Hamas, but it is unlikely to bring the multiple conflicts under way in the Middle East to a sudden end.