Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel that ignited a devastating war in the Gaza Strip, was killed by Israeli forces in southern Gaza, Israel said Thursday.

The dramatic announcement opened the prospect of a turning point in the one-year conflict that has expanded northward into Lebanon.

As of Thursday evening, Hamas had neither confirmed nor denied the killing. Hamas officials could not be reached for comment.

Shock swept across Gaza Thursday afternoon as news spread of the possible death of Mr. Sinwar, who plunged the besieged strip into a war that has killed more than 40,000 people, including thousands of children, and displaced the vast majority of the territory’s 2.2 million residents.

Israel had labeled Mr. Sinwar a “dead man walking” after the Oct. 7 attack that slaughtered 1,200 people in Israel and took 253 others hostage.

Mr. Sinwar’s posthumous legacy among Palestinians loomed large and sparked contention. Some saw in him a resistance fighter who fought to his last breath and brought the Palestinian cause back to the forefront of international attention; others regarded him as a bringer of destruction who failed to end the war he had started.

Graphic images allegedly taken by Israeli soldiers of a deceased man resembling Mr. Sinwar in a military vest, his face caked in cement dust, spread across Palestinian social media as Israeli media reported that officials were investigating.

Amid the rumors, some passersby in the market in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, were silent, unwilling to badmouth the dead. Others merely muttered, “Allah yarhamu” – “May God have mercy on him.”

Mr. Sinwar’s movement has faced growing unpopularity in Gaza in recent months due to its inability or refusal to secure a cease-fire with Israel.

In the latest opinion poll by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, conducted in September, 39% of Gazans surveyed said they were satisfied with Hamas, and only 29% said they were satisfied with Mr. Sinwar’s leadership. Nearly two-thirds, 65%, of Gazans surveyed expressed dissatisfaction with his selection as overall leader of Hamas in August.

Yet even critics on Thursday said they respected the fact that Mr. Sinwar was killed standing above ground in what many described as an act of “defiance,” rather than hiding in Hamas’ tunnel network, where analysts believe he spent much of the war.

“If the report of Yahya Sinwar’s assassination in Rafah is accurate, it would confirm he was leading the battle there, just as he led from Khan Yunis during the initial invasion,” says Baha Noor, a resident of Ramallah, in the West Bank.

An uncompromising approach

Mr. Sinwar, who spent 22 years in an Israeli prison before being released as part of a deal to secure the return of an Israeli soldier in 2011, was a Gaza-based hard-liner dedicated to Israel’s destruction who was at times at odds with the more moderate political branch of Hamas abroad.

As Mr. Sinwar rose through its ranks, becoming the local leader of Hamas in Gaza in 2017, he imposed an uncompromising approach on the movement, sources say.

In the view of many officials and analysts, it was this stance, matched by a similarly uncompromising approach from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that contributed to the failure of months of cease-fire-for-hostages negotiations.

In a statement last night declaring “the beginning of the day after Hamas,” Mr. Netanyahu made an offer to Hamas fighters in Gaza. “Whoever lays down his weapon and returns our hostages – we will allow him to leave and live.”

Israel’s July assassination in Iran of Ismael Hamiyeh, Hamas’ lead negotiator, head of its politburo, and potential Palestinian presidential candidate, had left Mr. Sinwar in full control of Hamas.

It remains unclear if there are any senior Hamas leaders left alive in Gaza.

The movement’s politburo abroad, based mainly in Doha, Qatar, is expected to elect a successor in the coming weeks, according to a source close to the movement.

But Mr. Sinwar’s killing deepened a fear among Gazans, who openly wondered how a cease-fire can be agreed with Israel if there are no senior Hamas leaders left to reach such an agreement. Others in Gaza took to the streets in Khan Yunis to celebrate in small crowds, believing Israel’s killing of the Hamas leader would usher in an immediate end to the war.

“Things will certainly shift, but it depends on the future leadership of Hamas and who the group appoints next,” says Mansour Alfaris, a Gaza civil servant. “The strategy of decapitation won’t dismantle the organization or extinguish the notion of resistance.”

Ariel Schalit/AP

A demonstrator calls for a cease-fire deal and the immediate release of Israeli hostages, following the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

Israeli hostage families left waiting

The news out of Gaza stoked strong emotions in Israel, where the families of hostages saw the Hamas leader’s death as a military accomplishment, but not one that brought their loved ones home.

There was a charged, almost upbeat vibe in Israeli TV news studios that broke into regular programming to share the dramatic news.

“It could be a turning point, both for negotiating a hostage deal and even the eventual end of the organization’s dominance in Gaza,” Shalom Ben-Hanan, a former official in the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, said on Israel’s Channel 12.

The news reverberated also in the United States, where, according to Israeli reports, President Joe Biden was kept abreast of what Israeli leaders had learned.

“This is a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world,” he said after Mr. Sinwar’s death was confirmed, adding that “much work remains before us.”

“This moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza,” Vice President Kamala Harris said outside a campaign event in Wisconsin. “And it must end such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to freedom, security, dignity, and self-determination. It is time for the day-after to begin without Hamas in power.”

The Tel Aviv-based Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement on Thursday that it “welcomes the elimination of Yahya Sinwar, one of the major obstacles to a [cease-fire] deal.”

But it added, “The hostages’ families express serious concern about the fate of 101 hostages still held in Hamas captivity in Gaza and demand that the military accomplishment be leveraged to immediately reach a deal.

“We call on the Israeli government, world leaders, and mediating countries to leverage the military achievement into a diplomatic one,” the movement said.

Einav Zangauker, whose son is held by Hamas, called on Mr. Netanyahu to seal a deal for the hostages’ return.

“We have settled the score with the arch-murderer Sinwar,” Ms. Zangauker said in a statement. “Especially today, when the country is breathing a sigh of relief, it is important to remember that the public wants the hostages home and their return is one of the objectives of the war. There will be no real closure, no total victory if we don’t save their lives and bring them all back.”

A correspondent contributed to this report from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip.

With less than three weeks until the election, mail-in voting is underway. But election officials from around the country have raised concerns about the U.S. Postal Service’s ability to handle election mail and deliver absentee and mail-in ballots in time to be counted.

In some places, election officials earlier this year flagged primary ballots that were postmarked on time, but received by election offices after the deadline to be counted. In other jurisdictions, election mail returned as undeliverable can automatically get voters placed on the inactive list – even if they properly addressed their ballots.

Election officials sounded the alarm in a letter last month, and local Postal Service workers point to a recent consolidation plan as the source of many problems.

“Over the course of the last year, election officials across the country have raised serious questions about ... the Postal Service’s ability to deliver election mail in a timely and accurate manner,” reads a Sept. 11 letter to Postmaster General Lewis DeJoy from the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors.

“We have not seen improvement or concerted efforts to remediate our concerns,” the election officials wrote, citing concerns over processing facilities, lost or delayed election mail, and staff training. The issues remained unresolved after an Oct. 1 meeting with Mr. DeJoy, according to the National Association of Secretaries of State.

Nationwide, mail delays have grown even as access to voting by mail has increased. Nearly 97% of voters around the country will have at least one option to vote before election day, whether by in-person early voting or by mail, according to the Center for Election Innovation & Research.

Nationally, 36 states allow all voters to vote by mail; others allow mail-in voting with varying levels of restriction. Voting by mail spiked during the 2020 presidential election, held during the COVID-19 pandemic, and receded during the 2022 midterms.

Former President Donald Trump continues, without evidence, to criticize mail-in voting as widely fraudulent, although he and his campaign have also urged voters to make use of the method. A large partisan gap exists over voting by mail: 82% of Democrats support no-excuse mail-in voting, while 39% of Republicans feel the same way, according to Pew Research Center.

Mariam Zuhaib/AP

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testifies during a congressional oversight hearing on the U.S. Postal Service's role in federal election integrity, Sept. 26, 2024, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

“There’s a lot more interest and scrutiny when it comes to a presidential election year, and there’s a growing popularity of voting absentee by mail. We just want to make sure we have a partner in the USPS,” says Steve Simon, Minnesota’s secretary of state.

Cutting services and delaying delivery

Around the country, mail carriers are already in the midst of a busy season, and in some places, are adapting to recent cost cutting measures. The Delivering for America Plan, initiated by the Postal Service leadership in 2021, worries many postal workers who say the changes will slow mail delivery, particularly in rural areas.

The consolidation plan is part of Mr. DeJoy’s 10-year strategy to reverse financial losses and begin making a profit, in part by cutting truck routes and reducing the number of packaging and distribution centers, instead using regional processing centers. That often means mail travels from suburban or rural areas into a city center and back again, adding delivery time.

In Oregon, part of the first phase of the rollout, postal workers say the delays are noticeable. “People are losing faith in the vote by mail, in the Postal Service here in Oregon,” says Jeremy Schilling, president of the Southern Oregon area local American Postal Workers Union. “Faith in the Postal Service is being diminished because this consolidation plan doesn’t make any sense.”

For decades, Medford, Oregon had a mail processing center for all the area post offices, says Mr. Shilling. Under the consolidation plan, mail is routed several hundred miles and a five-hour drive to Portland. If it’s local mail, as ballots are, it’s sent back to Medford after processing in Portland.

Steve Karnowski/AP

Molly Woon, elections director with the Oregon Secretary of State's Office, and Steven Carter, manager of election and government programs for the U.S. Postal Service, participate in a panel discussion on mail-in voting on July 23, 2024, in Minneapolis, at a National Association of State Election Directors conference.

Critically, mail now isn’t guaranteed to be postmarked until it gets to Portland – which could be after midnight. For any ballot mailed on election day, that delay could make it invalid.

“Postal leadership’s solution seems to be more training,” says Porter McConnell, co-founder of the Save the Post Office Coalition. “To me, that misses the enormous upheaval at the management and sorting and delivery level.”

Delivery times in some areas are slower now than before the pilot began, even though the Postal Service is “grading themselves on a curve” after lowering benchmarks, like guaranteed delivery times, says Ms. McConnell.

In places where the changes have been implemented, such as parts of Wisconsin, on-time delivery dropped from above 90% to 70.5% for two-day first class mail.

According to the Office of the Inspector General, the Postal Service’s national on-time delivery average is 85.6%, nearly eight points below the target. In a breakdown of states, Wisconsin and Georgia, two key swing states, rank among the bottom 10 performers.

The Postal Service declined an interview request.

“Extraordinary measures”

As it has in years past, the Postal Service is implementing “extraordinary measures” for Election Day, including expedited handling, extra deliveries, and special pickups for election mail. The steps must begin by Oct. 21, the agency says, and in some cases will extend past the election.

“We have determined that implementing extraordinary measures two weeks before the election provides ample time,” wrote Mr. DeJoy in response to the letter from state officials. The officials had requested that the measures extend further in advance of Nov. 5.

These extraordinary measures – already in effect in some places – seem to be working so far, say postal workers in Iowa and Oregon. But they worry about what happens when the extra support lapses.

Jenny Kane/AP/File

Workers sort through vote-by-mail ballots for the presidential primary election on March 12, 2024, at the Clark County Elections Office in Vancouver, Washington.

Many officials say that voting by mail is still safe and secure, but voters should mail in their ballots as far as possible in advance of the Nov. 5 election to avoid delays.

Generally, anyone voting by mail should do it at least a week in advance and track their ballot online, or return it by hand where possible, says Mr. Simons.

Local partnerships

Election and post office officials at both the local and national level need to communicate better about how to prioritize election mail, says Mr. Simons, who is also president of the National Association of Secretaries of State.

“We want to identify, and not conceal, to the public some of our concerns. On the other hand, we want to assure people who are voting by mail that their ballot will be transmitted,” says Mr. Simons. “We don’t want to needlessly alarm the public. Voting by mail is still safe and secure and a viable option.”

At this point in the 2024 election cycle, election officials are limited in what they can do to ease concerns about election mail, says Amy Cohen, executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors. But they can still explain the process to voters and urge them, if voting by mail, to do so as early as possible.

“It’s not a set-it-and-forget-it model of voting the way a lot of people think it is,” says Ms. Cohen. “You need to put a little more effort into tracking your ballot and being proactive.”

Colette Davidson

David Benchetrit tests out a frond of lulav, or palm branch, before selling it to customers ahead of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

Yael has lived in her Paris apartment for 30 years. She had always felt safe in her residential area with a large Jewish community. But last year, she and her husband decided to remove the mezuzah from their front doorway.

The rectangular piece of parchment, inscribed with verses from the Torah, protected her household from harm. But it was also a signal to the outside world that a Jewish family lived here.

“You can still see the trace of it next to the door,” says Yael, placing a tray of almond biscuits left over from Yom Kippur on her coffee table. “I need to paint over it.”

Tears sting Yael’s eyes as she talks about one of her sons, who lives in Israel. She’s worried sick about him. But she is also scared for her two other sons who live in Paris. She tells them not to go out wearing a kippah, a religious head covering, and is cautious about opening the door to delivery workers. Someone recently tagged their car with “dirty Jew.”

“Since Oct. 7, life has completely changed,” says Yael, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. To protect her safety, she asked to be identified only by her first name. “I’m afraid. I hear the smallest noise and I jump.”

A July 2024 study by the European Union’s Agency for Fundamental Rights says European Jews feel more unsafe than ever. And nowhere more so than in France.

The country is home to the second-largest Jewish community outside Israel, after the United States – comprising around 500,000 people. It is also the European country that has seen the sharpest rise in antisemitic acts since Hamas militants killed some 1,200 people and took 253 hostages a year ago, according to the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions.

Colette Davidson

A sukkah, or temporary house, is set up next to a synagogue in the east of Paris to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

“Whether it’s within civil society, on social media, or politics, we see the conflation of the conflict in the Middle East with regular Jewish citizens,” says Robert Ejnès, the council’s executive director.

“Every time there’s an escalation of the conflict, we see a new wave of antisemitic acts in France. We need more sanctions to punish these acts, but also more education if we want to improve things in the future,” he says.

As feelings of insecurity rise, more and more French Jews are talking about leaving – for Israel or the U.S. Still, the vast majority stays. They have found ways to overcome their fears or to live with them – many defiantly. It’s the small daily acts, they say, that help them feel safe.

Stella Rosen, a Parisian doctor, recently gave the post office a fake, “more French-sounding” name for deliveries. She has also stopped taking Ubers after several uncomfortable conversations with male drivers who supported the Palestinian cause, made clear they understood she was Jewish, and knew her home address.

“I need to protect myself, but also my kids,” says Dr. Rosen, who has two young sons. “It’s just not worth the risk.”

A recent turning point

Jews have lived in France for over 2,000 years, making them one of the oldest Jewish populations in Western Europe. France was the first European country to emancipate the Jewish people, during the French Revolution, and Jewish street names and quarters can be found across the country.

But in recent years, attitudes toward Jews have appeared to harden in some French minds. “Everything changed with the second intifada,” says Philippe Boukara, a French historian of contemporary Judaism.

The uprising of Palestinians against Israeli occupation, lasting from 2000 to 2005, brought in its wake an unprecedented number of antisemitic acts in France: 970 in 2004.

Benoit Tessier/Reuters

People hold Israeli flags as they attend a protest in support of the hostages kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, ahead of the first anniversary of the attack.

That record was surpassed last year, after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. In 2023, France recorded 1,676 antisemitic incidents, compared with 436 in 2022, according to data from the French Interior Ministry and the Service for the Protection of the Jewish Community. Around 75% of them occurred in the three months following the attack.

That has prompted more French Jews to apply for Israeli nationality and residence rights; in the last three months of 2023, some 1,200 began applications to emigrate to Israel, or to “make aliyah,” a 430% increase over the same period in 2022.

Still, the number of Jews who actually leave has been falling each year for nearly a decade. Most simply do not want to leave their homes in France, and certainly not when Israel is engaged in active conflict. Instead, they’re adapting to the current situation by changing their everyday behavior.

Anna, a Parisian architect, has taken to covering herself and her two young daughters with kaffiyehs – the black-and-white checkered scarves that have become symbols of Palestinian nationalism – when she visits her grandmother in a Paris suburb with a large Muslim population.

There is no evidence that antisemitic acts are committed more frequently by French Muslims than by extreme far-left or far-right antisemites. But because French Muslims generally support the Palestinian cause, many French Jews – with or without reason – are afraid they might be harassed.

“I’m responsible for my daughters’ safety,” says Anna, who asked to be identified only by a pseudonym. “It’s not the time to be a hero.”

Safety in numbers

People like Christine Taieb see this sort of attitude as evidence that more education is needed if Jews and Muslims are to feel safe in France.

Colette Davidson

Young men sell etrog, a citrus fruit used during this week's Sukkot holiday, in an Orthodox Jewish community in the east of Paris.

Ms. Taieb leads the Paris branch of Judeo-Muslim Friendship in France, a group that seeks to encourage interfaith dialogue and understanding between the two communities.

“We teach people to respect and listen to others, and learn from their experiences,” says Ms. Taieb. “The goal is to extend a hand to the person on the other side.”

Ms. Taieb says she has never personally been subjected to antisemitic remarks and refuses to be afraid. That’s a recurrent theme among Jews living in a heavily Orthodox community in the northeast of Paris.

On a sunny weekday afternoon, young men proudly wear their kippahs at stands selling etrog – a citrus fruit used to observe this week’s Sukkot holiday. The soldiers often stationed in front of a nearby school have left, stood down after an Oct. 7 anniversary alert. Hundreds of schoolchildren filter out into waiting buses and cars.

“I was educated from a young age that we should all be able to live together, that there are good people and bad. Why should I be scared?” says David Benchetrit, an etrog seller, holding out a fruit to a prospective client. “But there’s definitely a feeling of safety in numbers.”

There is a sense of defiance among many in the Jewish community here – not to give up and let fear win. Rebecca, who stops for a sandwich at a local kosher bakery, says she’s not a scared person by nature and won’t become one now.

“People tell me to be careful, to change my daily habits,” says Rebecca, who asked to be identified by her first name only to protect her family. “But I refuse to enter into that fear. The day I do that, I’ll leave.”

Still, Rebecca says she has taken down her mezuzah and changed her last name for home deliveries. Last year, she went ahead and completed her application to make aliyah – just in case.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Latin American migrants who had crossed into California from Mexico are detained by the Border Patrol before being transported to a processing point.

The ticking sound in capitals around the world is a demographic time bomb – of a sort unimaginable only a couple of generations ago.

The 20th century concern, dramatized in the title of a bestselling book in 1968, was a “population bomb.” The fear? That accelerating birth rates, especially in the developing world, were outstripping the Earth’s resources and hurtling the planet toward widespread famine.

Now, however, we’re facing the opposite: a depopulation bomb.

Birth rates are plummeting around the globe.

And one effect – perhaps just as unthinkable at the moment – could well be to turn inside out the most incendiary political issue in the developed world.

Immigration.

U.S. Republican Party candidate Donald Trump and other nationalist-populist politicians across the developed world have built their support by denouncing immigration as a dire threat.

But as the depopulation bomb explodes, nations that embrace immigration as a vital necessity will likely be the ones best able to navigate its economic, social, and political fallout.

The sheer scale of the changes underway was laid out last week in a powerful essay by political economist Nicholas Eberstadt in the journal Foreign Affairs.

Not since the 1300s, when the plague was ravaging Europe and Asia, has the world’s population shrunk. And in the centuries after the black death, there was a spectacular rebound.

Now, for the first time in history, we’re headed for a period of sustained reduction in the number of people on Earth. Women worldwide have been opting to have far fewer children.

Martin Meissner/AP

As European birth rates drop, fewer and fewer young people like this little girl at a farm in Castrop-Rauxel, Germany, will join the workforce. To keep their economies humming, governments will likely turn to immigrants.

Births everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa have fallen below what demographic experts call the “replacement level” necessary to sustain populations at current levels.

The political implications are stark. More deaths than births mean that an ever smaller workforce will have to ensure continued economic productivity. It will also need to sustain a far larger number of older people, born in the era of population growth and living longer.

Thus the reason why immigrants might be valuable.

And while Mr. Eberstadt maintains that “few yet see [depopulation] coming,” there are growing signs that politicians in a number of countries are already looking for ways to respond to it.

China acted on its 20th century fear of overpopulation by mandating a “one-child policy” in the 1980s. Now, the ruling Communist Party is alarmed by depopulation. It shelved the one-child policy nearly a decade ago, announcing first a “two-child policy” and then a “three-child policy,” but they have had little impact on birth rates.

Some advanced democracies recognize the importance of immigration in sustaining and growing their economies – and ensuring support for their graying populations.

Canada and Australia have been seeking to attract immigrants through a system designed to match their skills with areas of economic need. Competing with them is the 27-nation European Union – a region already in demographic decline – which has launched similar incentives.

Still, in EU countries and the United States, the politics of immigration seem headed in a very different direction.

The issue is embroiled in angry debate over what to do with the large number of refugees arriving from areas of conflict, poverty, or environmental blight in search of a new life.

Mr. Trump and far-right politicians in Europe have played on grassroots fears of what the newcomers might mean for their communities. This strategy has been so successful that even centrist and left-of-center governments have begun prioritizing policies to curb the tide of refugees rather than making a positive case for immigration.

Still, the economic repercussions of the “depopulation bomb” could force politicians of all stripes eventually to find common ground on accepting immigrants.

In the U.S., the birth rate has been declining, although less steeply than in other advanced democracies. Its population, at current rates, will peak only decades from now.

But that’s thanks in substantial part to its large number of immigrants.

And while Mr. Trump has vowed to begin mass deportations if elected, there are signs that key allies, including running mate JD Vance, recognize the difficulty of charting a successful future without immigrants.

Mr. Vance, like leading anti-immigrant politicians in Europe, has been strongly critical of women who choose not to bear children. In the absence of immigrants, the only way to prevent depopulation is to have more babies.

But there are no signs of any reversal of the worldwide trend among women to have fewer children, for a range of economic, social, and personal reasons.

Far more likely, as the demographic effects take hold, is emerging worldwide competition to attract and integrate immigrants who can keep national economies growing.

That’s where immigrants have given America an edge – boosting growth and helping to fuel the innovation and entrepreneurship that underpin the country’s global advantage.

That’s an argument no major U.S. politician – including the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris – seems ready to make in the current political climate.

But as I noted in an earlier Patterns column, it was a point that Republican President Ronald Reagan made eloquently in his final remarks in office.

America’s strength rested on welcoming newcomers from “every corner of the world,” he said. “If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

AP

Supporters of Jammu and Kashmir National Conference party celebrate early leads in the Oct. 8 election for a local government in India-controlled Kashmir, Srinagar.

A survey of 24 democracies last year found 1 in 3 people would support a less liberal alternative to democracy. Yet that finding by Pew Research Center came with a caveat: Fewer than 1% of respondents advocated replacing their current system of government with a more authoritarian one. Most people wanted democracy to function better.

That desire helps explain the outcome of recent elections in what is called one of the most militarized places in the world. In the Himalayan region of Jammu and Kashmir – claimed by both India and Pakistan since those nations’ independence from Britain in 1947 – the mainly Muslim voters were given a chance to cast ballots for the first time in a decade in a contest for the region’s legislative assembly.

Turnout reached 63%. And voters stood in lines for hours despite the overwhelming presence of soldiers reminding them of an increasingly repressive control by India. Since the late 1980s, pro-independence groups disrupted past elections with boycotts. Yet this time, even some militants chose ballots over bullets. Ten even ran as candidates. Local commentators saw in that a strong affirmation of local aspirations to achieve self-rule through peaceful, democratic means.

The region was stripped of its constitutional status as semiautonomous five years ago by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Since then, residents have faced arbitrary arrests, new restrictions on free speech and public assembly, and interruptions of cellphone service and internet access.

Earlier this year, voters across India dealt Mr. Modi a humbling verdict when they cut the size of his majority in Parliament. That vote marked an unexpected rejection of his Hindu-based nationalist agenda. In Jammu and Kashmir, the election followed a ruling last December by the Supreme Court requiring the government to allow elections there after repeated delays.

More democratic openings followed. The campaign in Jammu and Kashmir marked a respite from repression. Local politicians campaigned freely. Residents held open rallies and spirited public debates for the first time in years.

Mr. Modi congratulated the local opponent of his party for securing a majority coalition in the newly restored legislature. In response, Omar Abdullah, who was sworn in Thursday as the region’s new chief minister, posted on the social platform X, “We look forward to a constructive relationship [of] continued development and good governance.”

Although a majority still seeks full independence, the people of Jammu and Kashmir have set a new course for resolving their grievances through peaceful means. They have shown that when fear and intimidation yield to respect and grace, trust in democracy gains ground.