After a year-long hunt, Israel last week killed Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader believed to have masterminded the October 7, 2023, attack in which more than 1,100 people died in Israel. Since that attack, Israel had made it clear that Mr Sinwar was a man with a target on his back even as it laid down the decimation of Hamas as a key war goal. Yet, despite the death of Mr Sinwar and the assassination of all other top Hamas leaders in recent months, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said that he is not ready to end the war in Gaza in which more than 42,000 people, most of them women and children, have been killed. Some of Mr Netanyahu's staunchest backers, including the United States of America and the United Kingdom, have called on him to use Mr Sinwar's killing as a declaration of victory and to urgently press forward with a ceasefire. Mr Netanyahu, however, has ramped up attacks in northern Gaza instead. His army has declared new goals in Lebanon too, where Israel is bombing large parts of the country. More than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon and over a million have been displaced. Now Israel claims that it is targeting financial institutions in Lebanon that support the Hezbollah whose top leadership has also been killed by Israel.

This ever-shifting set of goals to justify the wars in Gaza and Lebanon has horrific consequences but is not surprising. While families of hostages taken by Hamas and its allies from Israel to Gaza on October 7 have been putting pressure on Mr Netanyahu to prioritise the diplomacy needed to secure their release, the Israeli leader has doubled down on military assaults. But as many analysts have pointed out, Hamas and the Hezbollah have a long history of surviving the assassinations of its leaders by Israel. Despite taking body blows, they are unlikely to disappear. Leaked secret documents in the US suggest that Israel is looking to launch a major attack on Iran soon. Mr Netanyahu may have calculated that an expanding and continuing war serves his political interests. What must not be forgotten is that he has been enabled in this by the ceaseless supply of weapons and diplomatic cover by the US. If the US president, Joe Biden, is serious about ending the war, he must use the leverage he has over Israel to stop the conflict. If he does not, history will neither forgive not forget his role in the horrors forced upon Gaza and Lebanon.