According to those in contact with him, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is not sorry about the attacks that took place on October 7, 2011, even though they resulted in an Israeli invasion that killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, destroyed his home region of Gaza, and severely damaged Hezbollah, an ally.
According to two Middle Eastern government sources and four Palestinian officials, Sinwar, 62, is the mastermind behind the Hamas cross-border raids that resulted in the deadliest day in Israeli history. He believes that armed struggle is still the only effective means of imposing the establishment of a Palestinian nation.
billboard with a picture of newly appointed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is displayed on a building in a street in Tehran, Iran, August 12, 2024. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency).
According to Israeli tallies, the Oct. 7 attacks resulted in 1,200 deaths, mostly civilians, and the capture of 250 hostages, making it the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.In response, Israel launched a massive offensive that resulted in the deaths of 41,600 people and the displacement of 1.9 million, according to U.N. and Palestinian health authorities.
The war has now extended to Lebanon, where Israel has severely damaged and killed the majority of the leadership of Hezbollah, a militant organisation supported by Iran. Tehran is in danger of joining Israel in an open conflict as a Hamas backer.
According to Hassan Hassan, an author and researcher on Islamic groups, Sinwar has brought Iran and its entire “Axis of Resistance” into conflict with Israel. This includes Hezbollah, the Houthis of Yemen, and Iraqi militias.”The repercussions of October 7 are now being felt. Hassan stated, implying that the Axis of Resistance might never fully recover, “Sinwar’s gamble did not work.””Israel’s two-week assault on Hezbollah is nearly equivalent to a full year of Hamas devastation in Gaza. Hassan Nasrallah, a key figure in Hezbollah, was assassinated, disrupting three tiers of the organization’s leadership, as well as its military command.”
Though there are some indications of dissatisfaction among Gazans, Sinwar’s hold over Hamas is unbreakable.Following the death of his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, in July from what was believed to be an Israeli strike while he was in Tehran, he was selected as the general leader of the Islamist movement. Israel has not acknowledged taking part in the attack.According to two Israeli sources, Sinwar and his brother, who is also a top commander, are operating from the shadows of a maze-like network of tunnels beneath Gaza. According to these sources, Israeli airstrikes have allegedly killed senior leaders and his deputy, Mohammed Deif. However, Sinwar and his brother appear to have survived thus far.
Dubbed “The Face of Evil” by Israel, three Hamas officials and one regional official claim that Sinwar operates in secret, moves frequently, and uses reliable messengers for non-digital communication. Since October 7, he has not been sighted in public.According to three Hamas sources, Sinwar made all of the decisions during months of fruitless cease-fire negotiations that were centred on exchanging detainees for hostages and were spearheaded by Qatar and Egypt. Days would pass while negotiators awaited answers from a covert network of intermediaries.
Requests for comment were not answered by Israel or Hamas.When Sinwar helped arrange the 2011 exchange of 1,027 prisoners—including himself—for one kidnapped Israeli soldier held in Gaza, it was clear that he had a high threshold for suffering—both for himself and for the Palestinian people—in the service of a cause. Thousands of Palestinians were killed in an Israeli attack on the coastal enclave following Hamas’ kidnapping.A half-dozen people close to Sinwar told Reuters that his rough upbringing in the refugee camps of Gaza and his horrific 22-year detention by the Israelis—which included a stint in Ashkelon, the town his parents had lived in before leaving after the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict—had moulded his unwavering resolve.All the sources, who asked to remain anonymous so that they could talk openly about delicate subjects, claimed that Sinwar has a very personal connection to the issue of hostages and prisoner swaps. He has promised to release every Palestinian detainee housed in Israel.Soon after Hamas was founded in the 1980s, Sinwar joined the organisation and embraced its radical Islamist ideology, which rejects Israel and calls for the establishment of an Islamic state in historic Palestine.The ideology sees Israel as an occupying force on Muslim territory in addition to a political rival. According to specialists on Islamic movements, when considered in this context, adversity and suffering are frequently understood by him and his adherents as a component of a greater Islamic doctrine of sacrifice.”His tenacity is based on his ideology and goal tenacity.” He is pious and content with little,” a senior Hamas official said, requesting to remain anonymous.
GOING FROM SACKCLOTH TO LEADER
According to Gaza resident Wissam Ibrahim, who has met Sinwar, he occasionally spoke before the war about his early years in Gaza during the decades of Israeli occupation. He once claimed that his mother made clothes out of empty U.N. food-aid sacks.Before Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Sinwar wrote a semi-autobiographical novel in which she described scenes of troops bulldozing Palestinian houses, “like a monster crushing its prey’s bones.”Initially assigned to punish Palestinians suspected of leaking information to Israel, Sinwar was a brutal enforcer. He later gained notoriety as a jail chief after becoming a street hero after serving a 22-year Israeli sentence for organising the kidnapping and killing of four Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers. Then he shot to the top of the Hamas hierarchy.Despite his intimidating reputation and volatile temper, four journalists and three Hamas officials said that his comprehension of the harsh realities and daily struggles in Gaza was well-received by the people there and helped to put people at ease.Arab and Palestinian officials view Sinwar as the creator of Hamas’ tactics and armed forces, which are reinforced by his close relationship with Iran, which he visited in 2012.Sinwar had made no secret of his intention to deal a severe blow to his enemy prior to planning the raids on October 7.He had hinted at a war that would either bring the world together to create a Palestinian state on land Israel had seized in 1967 or isolate the Jewish state on the international scene when he had pledged to send a deluge of fighters and rockets to Israel in a speech the previous year.Sinwar and Deif had already devised covert plans for the attack by the time of the speech. They were even simulating such an attack in public training drills.His objectives remain unfulfilled. The possibility of a Palestinian state remains as remote as ever, even though the matter is once again at the top of the international agenda. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has vehemently rejected a post-war plan for Gaza that called for the precise timing of the creation of a Palestinian state.
HEAD HARDER THAN A ROCK’
After being detained in 1988 and given four life sentences, Sinwar was convicted of planning the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers as well as four alleged Palestinian informants.The leader of Hamas, according to Nabih Awadah, a former militant of the Lebanese Communist Party who was imprisoned with Sinwar in Ashkelon from 1991 to 1995, saw the Oslo peace accords of 1993 as “disastrous” and a ruse by Israel, which he claimed would only give up Palestinian land “by force, not by negotiations.”Awadah referred to him as “wilful and dogmatic,” saying that whenever he learnt of an Israeli attack by Hamas or Lebanon’s Hezbollah organisation, Sinwar would burst into tears. He believed that the only way “to liberate Palestine” from Israeli occupation was through armed conflict.”Influential model to all prisoners, even those who were not Islamists or religious,” according to Awadah, Sinwar was.After spending 180 hours in jail questioning Sinwar, Michael Koubi, a former employee of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, stated that Sinwar’s capacity for intimidation and command stood out.Once, when the militant was 28 or 29 years old, Koubi asked him why he was not married already. “He informed me that Hamas is both my spouse and my child. All that matters to me is Hamas. Following his 2011 release from prison, Sinwar got married and went on to have three kids.According to Awadah, he persisted in pursuing Palestinian spies while incarcerated, corroborated by information obtained from Shin Bet interrogators.According to Awadah, he was able to recognise and expose Shin Bet informants who had infiltrated the prison thanks to his keen intuition and caution.He said that in 1992, when over a thousand prisoners went on a hunger strike and were forced to survive only on water and salt, Sinwar’s leadership was crucial. Sinwar bargained with the jail administration and would not accept half-hearted offers.Throughout his incarceration, he also studied Hebrew fluently.According to Awadah, Sinwar would often remember that his family’s initial settlement was Ashkelon, the prison where they both sat.During table tennis matches in the courtyard of the Ashkelon jail in modern-day Israel, Sinwar would frequently play without shoes, claiming he desired for his feet to make contact with Palestine.”It is not that I am in prison; I am on my land,” Sinwar used to tell us. Here, in my nation, I am at liberty.”