The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, said on Thursday that the death in an Israeli operation of the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, is a “turning point” of the war, which should lead to the release of all hostages and the end of the conflict.

“This day is a turning point in addition to a military success for Israel. This opportunity must be taken so that all hostages are released and to finally stop this war,” he said at a press conference after the summit of EU heads of state and government.

Macron thus defended “ending military activities” and called for “accepting a ceasefire in Gaza” and “opening a political perspective for Israelis and Palestinians.”

Israel’s guarantees for the security of Palestine

The French president also stressed that “after the end of the war in Gaza, Israel will have to be given guarantees for its security” and also defended the need to “reform the Palestinian Authority” and “move towards the two-state solution.”

“An immediate ceasefire is necessary, urgently multiplying humanitarian operations, which are still at their lowest point, and moving forward to stop the violence perpetrated by settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank,” he added.

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Born in a refugee camp in Jan Yunis, a city in southern Gaza, Sinwar was elected leader of Hamas in Gaza in 2017 after arbilling a reputation as a bitter enemy of Israel and on August 6 – after the murder in Tehran of the then head of the political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh – he was chosen to occupy the highest position in the organization chart of the Islamist group.

He represented the hardest and most belligerent line of the group and is considered by Israel the mastermind of the attacks of October 7 against Israeli territory in which some 1,200 people died and another 250 were taken hostage, which made him the most wanted man by Israel.

Borrell: Sinwar was “an obstacle” to the ceasefire

For his part, the high representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, said on Thursday that the leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, who was killed on Wednesday in an Israeli operation, was “an obstacle” on the way to the “urgently needed ceasefire and the release of all hostages.”

“He was a terrorist on the European Union list responsible for the horrible attack of October 7 (2023). Violence must be stopped, hostages must be released and the suffering of Palestinians must be stopped,” Borrell said in a message in X.

In the same vein, the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, said that after the death of the leader of Hamas “a new phase has to begin.”

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“It is time for all hostages to be released, for the ceasefire to be proclaimed immediately and for the reconstruction of Gaza to begin,” the president said,” the Italian leader continued.

Regarding Sinwar’s death, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the attack of October 7 last year “was horrible and inhuman” and that “someone who is militarily responsible for Hamas’ activity, of horrible crimes, has lost his life.”

Von der Leyen says that this coup weakens Hamas

In the opinion of the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, the death of the top leader of Hamas “significantly weakens” the organization.

“Sinwar was the leader of a terrorist organization, the terrorist organization of Hamas and was basically the brain behind (the attack) of October 7 with the deaths, massacres, rapes and kidnappings. His death certainly weakens Hamas significantly,” Von der Leyen said at the press conference after the European summit held today in Brussels.

The acting Belgian Prime Minister, Alexander De Croo, said that “it is very difficult to understand what Israel’s goal is” in the war. “We see that they are able to eliminate targets in an almost surgical way, but not every time, because there are already 42,000 dead in Gaza” and he said he was “perplexed.”

After more than a year of war in Gaza, Israel killed Sinwar yesterday in a military operation in the Rafah area, in the southern Strip, the country’s authorities confirmed today.

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Apart from the death of the Hamas leader, European leaders approved some conclusions in which they were “deeply alarmed by the dramatic military escalation in the Middle East” and called for an “immediate ceasefire,” both in Gaza and in Lebanon.

European leaders call for an end to the war

They also condemned Israel’s attacks on the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNFIN) in Lebanon and noted that “all actors have an obligation to take the necessary measures to ensure the safety of United Nations personnel.”

At the same time, the EU insisted that Israel “has the right to defend itself,” but that “international law must be respected.”
They also condemned “in the most energetic terms” Iran’s attacks on Israel on October 1 and its actions to “destabilize the East through the Middle East, through terrorist and armed groups, including the Houthi, Hezbulah and Hamas rebels.”

European leaders insisted on their call for the release of living Israeli hostages, as well as the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and Lebanon.

Although not included in the conclusions, Spain and Ireland insisted on the need for the EU to verify whether Israel is fulfilling its humanitarian obligations under the partnership agreement.

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The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, sent this Thursday to the National Assembly (Parliament) the constitutional reform project to open the door to the re-establishment of foreign military bases in Ecuador, prohibited by the Constitution promulgated during the term of former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017), which forced the United States to leave the Manta base in 2009.

Noboa had already announced last September its intention to promote this constitutional reform to allow the installation of foreign permanent military bases in the country again, as part of its actions in the “internal armed conflict” that it declared at the beginning of the year against organized crime.

The National Assembly must process the constitutional reform project, which if approved must be endorsed in a referendum whose celebration could coincide with one of the voting dates of the general elections scheduled for early 2025.

The reason for the re-establishment of foreign bases in Ecuador

The Presidency of Ecuador assured in a statement that it has the favorable resolution of the Constitutional Court so that this change in the magna carta is processed as a partial reform, considering the court that it does not restrict constitutional rights and guarantees, but refers only to security in Ecuador.”

“Now the process will pass into the hands of the Legislature, who must decide which side of history it will be on regarding the proposal that will strengthen international cooperation in the fight against terrorism and crime,” said the Secretariat of Communication of the Presidency.

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Following the announcement of this approach made by Noboa, the United States Embassy in Ecuador clarified in September that its Government does not plan to request authorization to establish a permanent military base in the Andean country.

Agreements between Ecuador and the United States

Ecuador and the United States currently maintain maritime cooperation agreements for the capture of vessels that transport large amounts of cocaine from the Ecuadorian coast to North America.

Some of these prohibitions have been made in recent days by the United States Coast Guard in international waters, to later hand over the detainees and narcotics to the Ecuadorian authorities within their jurisdictional waters, as the Ecuadorian Navy pointed out in a recent statement.

Likewise, both countries also recently signed a commitment act for the delivery to Ecuador of two 33.5-meter-long patrol boats of the United States Coast Guard, on the condition that Ecuador takes charge of their reconditioning and transport.

Noboa’s strategy

Since the beginning of the year, Noboa raised the fight against organized crime to the category of “internal armed conflict”, with which he went on to catalog these gangs as terrorist groups and non-state belligerent actors, while decreeing a state of emergency with which, among other actions, he militarized the prisons controlled by these organizations, which he also points out for being related to drug trafficking.

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Surrounded by Colombia and Peru, the world’s two largest producers of cocaine, with several ports on its coasts, such as Guayaquil, and a dollarized economy, Ecuador has become in recent years an important step for the trafficking of that drug that is mainly directed to Europe and North America.

Ecuador is listed as the third country in the world that confiscates the most drugs – only behind Colombia and the United States – with about 200 tons of narcotics per year that have been seized in each of the last three years, while in 2024 it has already exceeded that figure.

At the same time, Ecuador was positioned in 2023 as the country with the most homicides per capita in Latin America, with a rate of 47.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, while in 2024 the authorities claim to have reduced homicides by 18%.

North Korea confirmed some details about its recent constitutional amendment, where it has defined the South as a “hostile state”, in the first modification of its magna carta that eliminates references to a possible reunification.

“This is an inevitable and legitimate measure, in which South Korea is clearly defined as a hostile state, and it is due to the serious security circumstances that lead to the brink of war by the political and military provocations of hostile forces,” the North Korean state agency KCNA published today.

Changes in North Korea

Last week, North Korea concluded an important parliamentary session in which it was planned to amend its Constitution, but did not reveal any details about the changes then, although it did say that the vote had been held unanimously.

It was already expected that in this amendment references to reunification with the South would be removed and national borders would be redefined, as the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, had ordered.

Kim urged to reflect that the South – with which relations have been non-existent in the last five years – is the main national enemy, to eliminate clauses related to reunification and to clarify what the territorial limits of the country are, including the disputed western maritime border.

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Zero dialogues with the South

Experts believe that Kim’s desire to discard dialogue, formalize the existence of two clearly differentiated states in the peninsula and unilaterally define the northern borders can further worsen the terrible atmosphere that is breathed in the region.

Pyongyang’s constitutional amendment comes in a context of renewed resurgence of tensions with Seoul, after the latter’s Army fired shots south of the border with the North on Tuesday in response to the detonations used by the latter to destroy sections of roads in its territory that connect both countries.

The detonations occurred in northern sections of the Gyeongui and Donghae corridors and after Pyongyang announced last week that it was going to cut all transport routes to the neighboring country.