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Yahya Sinwar (b. October 29, 1962, Khan Younis refugee camp, Gaza Strip — d. October 16, 2024, Rafah, Gaza Strip) was the de facto leader of Hamas from 2017 to 2024 and the de jure leader as head of its political bureau from August 2024 to October 2024. Sinwar was an early architect of Hamas’s armed wing, and he was considered one of the masterminds behind the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, the deadliest day for Israel since its independence. As Israel launched the Israel-Hamas War in response to the attack, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) referred to Sinwar as “a dead man walking.” Israeli forces killed him a year later on October 16, 2024, in a firefight in the southern Gaza Strip.
Sinwar was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp to parents who had been displaced from Ashkelon in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The camp was densely packed with impoverished families, who lived in poor conditions and relied on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for basic services. In the early 1980s, he enrolled at the Islamic University of Gaza, where his study of the Arabic language helped shape his charismatic self-presentation. He entered the university at a time when many young Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were looking toward Islamism to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after decades of pan-Arabism had failed to do so, and student organizations that combined Islamic thought with Palestinian nationalism were quickly growing. In 1982, Sinwar was detained for his participation in such organizations, although there were no formal charges.
In 1985, prior to the formation of Hamas, Sinwar helped organize al-Majd (Arabic: “Glory”; an acronym for Munaẓẓamat al-Jihād wa al-Daʿwah, “Organization for Jihad and Daʿwah [promotion of Islamic ideals]”). Al-Majd was a network of Islamist youths who tasked themselves with exposing the growing number of Palestinian informants who had been recruited by Israel in recent years. When Hamas was formed in 1987, al-Majd was folded into its security cadre. In 1988, the network was found to possess weapons, and Sinwar was detained by Israel for several weeks. The following year, he was convicted for the murder of Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel and was sentenced to four life sentences in prison.
During Sinwar’s long incarceration, he maintained powerful sway over his fellow prisoners, using tactics of abuse and manipulation and help from his connections outside prison. He made a point to punish fellow prisoners he suspected of being informants and once compelled some 1,600 prisoners to undertake a hunger strike. He also spent much of his spare time studying what he could about his Israeli enemies, reading Israeli newspapers and becoming fluent in Hebrew in the process.
Some of the most transformative events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict took place during Sinwar’s decades in prison. In the early 1990s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel concluded the Oslo Accords, which set out a peace process for the creation of a Palestinian state in exchange for the PLO’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist. The process was derailed by suicide bombings by Hamas and the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist. However, hope of getting the process back on track remained for several years. That glimmer of hope dimmed during the second Palestinian intifada (uprising; 2000–05), and in elections held in 2006 Palestinians registered their disappointment with the PLO by giving a plurality of the vote to Hamas. As a result of that outcome, the relationship between Israel and the interim Palestinian Authority (PA), which had been set up by the Oslo Accords, deteriorated even further. In 2007, when factional fighting within the PA left Hamas in sole charge of the Gaza Strip, Israel and Egypt blockaded the territory, setting the stage for several armed conflicts between Hamas and Israel in the years ahead. By the time Sinwar was released in 2011, the door for peace had both opened and closed, and he had witnessed none of the optimism of the Oslo era firsthand.
Sinwar's release came as part of the high-profile prisoner swap for Gilad Shalit. Shalit, a soldier of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), had been abducted by Hamas in 2006 while he was stationed at a border crossing. After several failed attempts to broker Shalit’s freedom, Egypt and Germany secured a deal for his release in October 2011. Sinwar’s brother, Mohammed, who had been assigned to guard Shalit, insisted that Sinwar be included in the exchange. On the same day that Shalit was released to Israel, Sinwar was among the first set of Palestinian prisoners who were returned to the Gaza Strip. When he arrived, he was already sporting the emblematic green headband of Hamas’s armed wing.
In April 2012, just months after his release, Sinwar was elected a member of Hamas’s political bureau in the Gaza Strip. He put his experience as a prison leader to use and gained a reputation within Hamas for bringing its factions together to compromise. He made calls on militants to capture Israelis, prompting the United States to add Sinwar to its list of specially designated global terrorists in 2015. In the meantime, Hamas was struggling to maintain its stature in the Gaza Strip: it had been weakened by conflict with Israel, and its ability to provide goods and services had been hindered by its isolation. It was becoming increasingly unpopular, while other militant groups such as the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) grew more appealing to hard-liners and began offering some services of their own. It was in this context that Sinwar was elected head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2017.
Sinwar’s fiery rhetoric spoke to the hard-line militants, and his history of a heavy hand earned their trust that he would carry out his threats. In one of his first public appearances, Sinwar told a group of young Gazans: “Gone is the time in which Hamas discussed recognition of Israel. The discussion now is about when we will wipe out Israel.” Observers braced for the group to take on a more militant direction. But, in his first several years as leader, he laid low, and his pragmatic approach toward dealmaking began to reverse Hamas’s isolation. Months after Sinwar took the reins, Hamas forged a reconciliation deal with the Palestinian Authority, and, for the first time since 2007, it relinquished control of much of the Gaza Strip to the PA for a brief period. Relations with Egypt also improved, and the neighboring country eased its restrictions on its border crossing with the Gaza Strip. The group also reached out to Iran for rapprochement, and Iran restored Hamas to its network of allies and resumed offering it full support. In late 2018, negotiations with Israel for a long-term truce were underway and continued until the announcement in January 2020 of United States President Donald Trump's peace plan, which was embraced by Israel as a path forward but dismissed by the Palestinians as a nonstarter.
The contradictions of Sinwar’s leadership, as both firebrand and pragmatist, were reflected in a new document of general principles issued by the group after he took charge: it at once acknowledged that a Palestinian state within the borders of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is “a formula of national consensus”—read by many at the time as consenting to a two-state solution -- while simultaneously refusing “recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity” in any part of historic Palestine.
May 2021 marked a return to his more regular hostility. Weeks of escalating tensions in Jerusalem boiled over, and clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police, particularly at the compound surrounding Al-Aqsa Mosque, left hundreds injured. Hamas responded by sending rockets into Jerusalem and southern and central Israel, prompting 11 days of intense fighting between Hamas and Israel. Sinwar’s popularity surged after the conflict, and his virulence returned in full force. At a rally in 2022 celebrating the anniversary of Hamas’s founding, he called upon each person to “be ready to rise up as a gale to defend Al-Aqsa” if Israel would not conclude a deal to release Palestinian prisoners. In rhyming Arabic he continued to muster the crowd: “We will come to you in a roaring flood, in rockets without end, and in a flood of soldiers limitless [in number]. We will come to you with millions of our people (ummah), one tide after another.”
On October 7, 2023, Hamas, in an assault that it dubbed "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood," led the most devastating attack on Israel since its independence. It began with a barrage of at least 2,200 rockets in just 20 minutes, providing cover for at least 1,500 militants who infiltrated Israel at dozens of points along the heavily fortified border by using explosives, bulldozers, and paragliders. They not only attacked military outposts but also killed families inside their homes and attendees of an outdoor music festival. Within hours, about 1,200 people were dead and some 240 others were taken hostage. Adding to the trauma of the event was the fact that it was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. The assault showed hallmarks of Sinwar’s tactics, and the taking of hostages echoed his preoccupation with prisoner exchanges.
Israel’s response to the attack was devastating for Gazans. Israel declared war for the first time in 50 years and implemented a full siege that cut off water, electricity, food, and fuel from entering the Gaza Strip. Within weeks, air strikes had led to more Palestinian deaths than any previous conflict for the Palestinians since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, while more than 1.4 million had become internally displaced. When, in November, Israel released about 240 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 110 of the hostages taken by Hamas, the number of released prisoners paled in comparison to the thousands detained since October 7. Sinwar, presumed to be hiding in the web of Gaza’s subterranean tunnels, was the top target for Israel in its invasion and was considered, according to an IDF spokesman, “a dead man walking.” In May 2024, the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor announced that he would seek arrest warrants for Sinwar and fellow Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif, as well as for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israeli operations killed Haniyeh and Deif in July of 2024 and Sinwar, the last surviving leader of the triumvirate, on October 16, 2024.
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Yahya Sinwar (born October 29, 1962, Khan Younis refugee camp, Gaza Strip—died October 16, 2024, Rafah, Gaza Strip) was the de facto leader of Hamas from 2017 to 2024 and the de jure leader as head of its political bureau from August 2024 to October 2024. Sinwar was an early architect of Hamas’s armed wing and he was considered one of the masterminds behind the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, the deadliest day for Israel since its independence. As Israel launched the Israel-Hamas War in response to the attack, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) referred to Sinwar as “a dead man walking.” Israeli forces killed him a year later on October 16, 2024, in a firefight in the southern Gaza Strip.
Early life, early activity in Hamas, and imprisonment
Sinwar was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp to parents who had been displaced from Ashkelon in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The camp was densely packed with impoverished families, who lived in poor conditions and relied on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for basic services. In the early 1980s he enrolled at the Islamic University of Gaza, where his study of the Arabic language helped shape his charismatic self-presentation. He entered the university at a time when many young Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were looking toward Islamism to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after decades of pan-Arabism had failed to do so, and student organizations that combined Islamic thought with Palestinian nationalism were quickly growing. In 1982 Sinwar was detained for his participation in such organizations, although there were no formal charges.
In 1985, prior to the formation of Hamas, Sinwar helped organize al-Majd (Arabic: “Glory”; an acronym for Munaẓẓamat al-Jihād wa al-Daʿwah, “Organization for Jihad and Daʿwah [promotion of Islamic ideals]”). Al-Majd was a network of Islamist youths who tasked themselves with exposing the growing number of Palestinian informants who had been recruited by Israel in recent years. When Hamas was formed in 1987, al-Majd was folded into its security cadre. In 1988 the network was found to possess weapons, and Sinwar was detained by Israel for several weeks. The following year, he was convicted for the murder of Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel and was sentenced to four life sentences in prison.
During Sinwar’s long incarceration, he maintained powerful sway over his fellow prisoners, using tactics of abuse and manipulation and help from his connections outside prison. He made a point to punish fellow prisoners he suspected of being informants and once compelled some 1,600 prisoners to undertake a hunger strike. He also spent much of his spare time studying what he could about his Israeli enemies, reading Israeli newspapers and becoming fluent in Hebrew in the process.
Some of the most transformative events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict took place during Sinwar’s decades in prison. In the early 1990s the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel concluded the Oslo Accords, which set out a peace process for the creation of a Palestinian state in exchange for the PLO’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist. The process was derailed by suicide bombings by Hamas and the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist, but hope of getting the process back on track remained for several years. That glimmer of hope dimmed during the second Palestinian intifada (uprising; 2000–05), and in elections held in 2006 Palestinians registered their disappointment with the PLO by giving a plurality of the vote to Hamas. As a result of that outcome, the relationship between Israel and the interim Palestinian Authority (PA), which had been set up by the Oslo Accords, deteriorated even further. In 2007, when factional fighting within the PA left Hamas in sole charge of the Gaza Strip, Israel and Egypt blockaded the territory, setting the stage for several armed conflicts between Hamas and Israel in the years ahead. By the time Sinwar was released in 2011, the door for peace had both opened and closed, and he had witnessed none of the optimism of the Oslo era firsthand.
Sinwar’s release in Shalit prisoner exchange and his rise in the ranks of Hamas
Sinwar’s release came as part of the high-profile prisoner swap for Gilad Shalit. Shalit, a soldier of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), had been abducted by Hamas in 2006 while he was stationed at a border crossing. After several failed attempts to broker Shalit’s freedom, Egypt and Germany secured a deal for his release in October 2011. Sinwar’s brother, Mohammed, who had been assigned to guard Shalit, insisted that Sinwar be included in the exchange. On the same day that Shalit was released to Israel, Sinwar was among the first set of Palestinian prisoners who were returned to the Gaza Strip. When he arrived, he was already sporting the emblematic green headband of Hamas’s armed wing.
In April 2012, just months after his release, Sinwar was elected a member of Hamas’s political bureau in the Gaza Strip. He put his experience as a prison leader to use and gained a reputation within Hamas for bringing its factions together to compromise. He made calls on militants to capture Israelis, prompting the United States to add Sinwar to its list of specially designated global terrorists in 2015. In the meantime, Hamas was struggling to maintain its stature in the Gaza Strip: it had been weakened by conflict with Israel, and its ability to provide goods and services had been hindered by its isolation. It was becoming increasingly unpopular, while other militant groups such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) grew more appealing to hard-liners and began offering some services of their own. It was in this context that Sinwar was elected head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2017.
Leadership of Hamas and the October 7, 2023, attacks
Sinwar’s fiery rhetoric spoke to the hard-line militants, and his history of a heavy hand earned their trust that he would carry out his threats. In one of his first public appearances, Sinwar told a group of young Gazans: “Gone is the time in which Hamas discussed recognition of Israel. The discussion now is about when we will wipe out Israel.” Observers braced for the group to take on a more militant direction. But, in his first several years as leader, he laid low, and his pragmatic approach toward dealmaking began to reverse Hamas’s isolation. Months after Sinwar took the reins, Hamas forged a reconciliation deal with the PA, and, for the first time since 2007, it relinquished control of much of the Gaza Strip to the PA for a brief period. Relations with Egypt also improved, and the neighboring country eased its restrictions on its border crossing with the Gaza Strip. The group also reached out to Iran for rapprochement, and Iran restored Hamas to its network of allies and resumed offering it full support. In late 2018, negotiations with Israel for a long-term truce were underway and continued until the announcement in January 2020 of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump’s peace plan, which was embraced by Israel as a path forward but dismissed by the Palestinians as a nonstarter.
The contradictions of Sinwar’s leadership, as both firebrand and pragmatist, were reflected in a new document of general principles issued by the group after he took charge: it at once acknowledged that a Palestinian state within the borders of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is “a formula of national consensus”—read by many at the time as consenting to a two-state solution—while simultaneously refusing “recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity” in any part of historic Palestine.
May 2021 marked a return to his more regular hostility. Weeks of escalating tensions in Jerusalem boiled over, and clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police, particularly at the compound surrounding Al-Aqsa Mosque, left hundreds injured. Hamas responded by sending rockets into Jerusalem and southern and central Israel, prompting 11 days of intense fighting between Hamas and Israel. Sinwar’s popularity surged after the conflict, and his virulence returned in full force. At a rally in 2022 celebrating the anniversary of Hamas’s founding, he called upon each person to “be ready to rise up as a gale to defend Al-Aqsa” if Israel would not conclude a deal to release Palestinian prisoners. In rhyming Arabic he continued to muster the crowd: “We will come to you in a roaring flood, in rockets without end, and in a flood of soldiers limitless [in number]. We will come to you with millions of our people (ummah), one tide after another.”
On October 7, 2023, Hamas, in an assault that it dubbed “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” led the most devastating attack on Israel since its independence. It began with a barrage of at least 2,200 rockets in just 20 minutes, providing cover for at least 1,500 militants who infiltrated Israel at dozens of points along the heavily fortified border by using explosives, bulldozers, and paragliders. They not only attacked military outposts but also killed families inside their homes and attendees of an outdoor music festival. Within hours, about 1,200 people were dead and some 240 others were taken hostage. Adding to the trauma of the event was the fact that it was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. The assault showed hallmarks of Sinwar’s tactics, and the taking of hostages echoed his preoccupation with prisoner exchanges.
Israel’s response to the attack was devastating for Gazans. Israel declared war for the first time in 50 years and implemented a full siege that cut off water, electricity, food, and fuel from entering the Gaza Strip. Within weeks, air strikes had led to more Palestinian deaths than any previous conflict for the Palestinians since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, while more than 1.4 million had become internally displaced. When in November Israel released about 240 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 110 of the hostages taken by Hamas, the number of released prisoners paled in comparison to the thousands detained since October 7. Sinwar, presumed to be hiding in the web of Gaza’s subterranean tunnels, was the top target for Israel in its invasion and was considered, according to an IDF spokesman, “a dead man walking.” In May 2024 the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor announced that he would seek arrest warrants for Sinwar and fellow Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif, as well as for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israeli operations killed Haniyeh and Deif in July and Sinwar, the last surviving leader of the triumvirate, in October.
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Yahya Sinwar | |
|---|---|
يحيى السنوار | |
 Sinwar in 2011 | |
| Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau | |
| In office 6 August 2024 – 16 October 2024 | |
| Deputy | Khalil al-Hayya |
| Preceded by | Ismail Haniyeh |
| Leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip | |
| In office 13 February 2017[1] – 16 October 2024 | |
| Prime Minister | |
| Preceded by | Ismail Haniyeh |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar 29 October 1962 Khan Yunis, Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip |
| Died | 16 October 2024 (aged 61) Tel al-Sultan, Rafah, Palestine |
| Cause of death | Killed in action |
| Nationality | Palestinian |
| Political party | Hamas |
| Spouse | Samar Muhammad Abu Zamar (m. 2011) |
| Children | 3 |
| Relatives | Mohammed Sinwar (brother) |
| Education | Islamic University of Gaza (BA) |
| Nickname | Abu Ibrahim (kunya) |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  Hamas |
| Branch | Al-Qassam Brigades |
| Service years | 1987–2024 |
| Conflicts | |
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Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar (Arabic: يحيى إبراهيم حسن السنوار, romanized: Yaḥyá Ibrāhīm Ḥasan al-Sinwār; 29 October 1962 – 16 October 2024)[note 1] was a Palestinian militant and politician who served as the de facto leader of Hamas.[2] He was the chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau from August 2024[3] and the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip from February 2017 until his death, succeeding Ismail Haniyeh in both roles.[4][5]
Sinwar was born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Egyptian-ruled Gaza in 1962 to a family who had been expelled or fled from Majdal 'Asqalan (modern Ashkelon) during the 1948 Palestine War.[6] He finished his studies at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he received a bachelor's degree in Arabic studies.[7] For orchestrating the abduction and killing of four Palestinians he considered to be collaborators and two Israeli soldiers in 1989, Sinwar was sentenced to four life sentences by Israel, of which he served 22 years until his release among 1,026 others in a 2011 prisoner exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.[4] During his time in prison, Sinwar continued to coordinate the execution of Palestinians suspected of collaboration with Israel and planned the abduction of Israeli soldiers. In 2004 he received medical treatment from Israeli surgeons at Soroka Medical Center for a life-threatening brain tumor.[8][9] Sinwar was one of the co-founders of the security apparatus of Hamas.[10][11][12][13]
In 2017, Sinwar was elected as the leader of Hamas in Gaza and claimed to pursue 'peaceful, popular resistance' the following year, supporting the 2018–2019 Gaza border protests,[14] though he is also reported to have been dedicated to eradicating Israel[15] and is said to have seen military confrontation as the only path to "liberating Palestine", saying that this would be achieved "by force, not negotiations".[16] He also developed strong ties with Iran.[17][18][19] Re-elected as Hamas leader in 2021, Sinwar survived an assassination attempt by Israel that same year. He is widely regarded as the mastermind behind the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel in 2023.[20][21][22][23] The group had been planning the attack for two years, with Sinwar seeking to involve Hezbollah and Iran, while avoiding confrontations to maintain the element of surprise.[24][25]
Hamas and the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades have been designated terrorist organisations by the United States, the European Union, and other countries and, in September 2015, Sinwar was specifically designated a terrorist by the United States government.[10] In May 2024, Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, announced his intention to apply for an arrest warrant for Sinwar for war crimes and crimes against humanity, as part of the ICC investigation in Palestine.[26] Sinwar was killed on 16 October 2024, during a firefight with the Israeli military.[27]
Early life and education
Yahya Ibrahim Hassan al-Sinwar was born on 29 October 1962,[28] in the Khan Yunis refugee camp, when the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian rule, where he spent his early years.[29] His family were forcibly expelled from Majdal Asqalan (Arabic: مدينة المجدل, romanized: Medīnat al-Majdal),[30] now known as Ashkelon, during the Nakba, and sought refuge in the Gaza Strip. Sinwar, discussing his refugee upbringing, tied it to his Hamas involvement in conversations with fellow prisoners during his later imprisonment. According to Esmat Mansour, another inmate, Sinwar was deeply affected by the communal living conditions and food distribution in the refugee camp.[8] After he graduated from high school at Khan Yunis Secondary School for Boys, he went on to the Islamic University of Gaza, where he received a bachelor's degree in Arabic studies.[31][32] His younger brother is Mohammed Sinwar, a military leader in Hamas.[33]
Early activities and imprisonment
Sinwar was first arrested in 1982 for subversive activities and he served several months in the Far'a prison where he met other Palestinian activists, including Salah Shehade, and dedicated himself to the Palestinian cause.[31] Arrested again in 1985,[5] upon his release he co-founded with Rawhi Mushtaha the Munazzamat al Jihad w'al-Dawa (Majd), an organization that worked, among others, to identify collaborators with Israel among the Palestinian population,[4] which in 1987 became the Hamas "police".[31] Sinwar's killing of suspected collaborators with Israel gained him the nickname "The Butcher of Khan Younis".[34][35][36]
In 1988, Sinwar planned the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and the murder of four Palestinians whom he suspected of cooperating with Israel. He was arrested on February that year; during questioning he admitted to strangling one of the victims with his bare hands, suffocating another with a kaffiyeh,[8] inadvertently killing a third during a violent interrogation, and accidentally shooting the fourth during an attempted abduction, and showed investigators an orchard where the four bodies were buried.[37] He was sentenced to four life sentences in 1989.[5][10] Sinwar regarded extracting confessions from collaborators as a righteous obligation. He told interrogators that one of them had even said, "he realized he deserved to die."[8][37] Sinwar persisted in targeting informants while in prison. Israeli authorities suspected him of ordering the beheadings of two suspected informants. Hamas operatives reportedly disposed of the victims' severed body parts by throwing them out of cell doors and telling guards to "take the dog's head."[8]
Sinwar, respected for his resourcefulness among fellow inmates, attempted multiple escapes, including digging a hole in his cell floor to tunnel under the prison. He collaborated with Hamas leaders outside, smuggling cellphones into the prison and using visitors to relay messages. These often involved planning to kidnap Israeli soldiers for prisoner exchange. Years later, Sinwar would say, "for the prisoner, capturing an Israeli soldier is the best news in the universe, because he knows that a glimmer of hope has been opened for him."[8]
Sinwar's time in prison was transformative, shaping his leadership qualities, according to Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official. Sinwar also mastered Hebrew through an online program and extensively studied Israeli news to comprehend his adversary better. He meticulously translated Hebrew autobiographies of former Shin Bet chiefs into Arabic, sharing them with fellow inmates to study counterterrorism tactics. He referred to himself as a "specialist in the Jewish people's history". Sinwar once remarked to supporters: "They wanted prison to be a grave for us, a mill to grind our will, determination and bodies. But, thank God, with our belief in our cause we turned the prison into sanctuaries of worship and academies for study."[8] Ma'ariv reported that during his time in prison, Sinwar enrolled in fifteen courses through the Open University of Israel over a span of seven years, beginning in 1995. Most were in history, covering topics such as the history of the Jews in the Second Temple and Rabbinic periods, the First Temple period, The Holocaust, and Zionism, along with a political science course on governance and Israeli democracy.[38]
Hamas elects its leaders democratically within prison. Committees handle day-to-day decisions and punishments, while an elected "emir" and a high council oversee operations for limited terms. Sinwar alternated as emir with Rawhi Mushtaha, a confidant, during his imprisonment, serving as emir in 2004. Despite his leadership among prisoners, Sinwar remained humble, sharing cooking duties and other chores with junior inmates as well as making knafeh for fellow prisoners, fostering camaraderie.[8]
In 2004, Sinwar, displaying symptoms like standing for prayer then falling and drifting in and out of consciousness, complained of neck pain. A prison dentist, Yuval Bitton, suspected a brain issue, possibly a stroke or abscess, urging urgent hospitalization. At Soroka Medical Center, Israeli surgeons removed a brain tumor that would have been fatal. Bitton emphasized that without surgery, the tumor would have burst. He recounts that a few days later, he visited Sinwar in the hospital with a prison officer. Sinwar asked the Muslim officer guarding him to thank the dentist and to explain to him the significance of his life-saving surgery in Islam and how he felt indebted to him for saving his life. Sinwar rarely interacted with Israeli prison authorities, but he began regular meetings with a dentist. Their discussions, unlike the dentist's usual chats with inmates, focused solely on Hamas ideology. Sinwar, who knew the Qu'ran by heart, articulated Hamas' beliefs, emphasizing its religious stance on the land. He dismissed the possibility of a two-state solution, asserting the land belonged to Muslims.[8]
In a search of Sinwar's cell, guards confiscated a handwritten novel he completed at the end of 2004. The book, titled The Thorn and the Carnation, mirrored his life and the Palestinian resistance. The story revolves around Ahmed, a devout Gazan boy, navigating life under Israeli occupation during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. At least one copy was smuggled out, and a typed PDF was found in an online library by The New York Times.[8]
Sinwar's sole interview with an Israeli television outlet in 2005 saw him warning Israelis to "be scared" of Hamas's election victory. However, he privately conveyed that much depended on the Israeli government's actions. He emphasized Hamas' demand for rights from the Israeli leadership, not control of the entire town.[8]
Sinwar played a pivotal role in the negotiations for Gilad Shalit's release. Despite being part of the negotiation team, Sinwar opposed deals that did not include high-profile prisoners, known as "the impossibles", such as those serving multiple life sentences. Even after negotiations secured the release of over a thousand prisoners, including some high-profile ones, Sinwar remained adamant. This stance led to a rift in Hamas leadership, with Saleh al-Arouri, another prominent Hamas figure, recognizing the need for compromise. Despite efforts to persuade Sinwar, he persisted, even attempting to orchestrate a hunger strike involving 1,600 Hamas prisoners. His unwavering principles and refusal to compromise complicated negotiations. Eventually, Sinwar's authority waned as other Hamas leaders negotiated a deal without him, as Israeli authorities had put him in solitary confinement until the deal was reached. He was the most senior Palestinian prisoner released to Gaza among 1,026 others in the 2011 prisoner exchange for the soldier. In an interview with Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV, he expressed determination to continue efforts to free more prisoners, urging the Al-Qassam Brigades to kidnap soldiers for exchanges.[8]
Following his release from prison, Sinwar was elected to a role within Hamas akin to defense minister.[8]
In November 2012, during the 2012 Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip, Sinwar met Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani in Tehran[39] and after his 2017 election as the group's leader in Gaza he cultivated closer cooperation between Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.[40][41]
Torture of Mahmoud Ishtiwi
Sinwar was believed to have overseen the torture and execution (in February 2016) of the Qassam Brigades' Zeitoun Battalion commander Mahmoud Ishtiwi, who was accused of embezzlement, homosexuality,[34][42] and giving Israel information that led to the deaths of Widad and Ali Deif when their home was bombed by Israel in August 2014. Ishtiwi was reportedly whipped, suspended from a ceiling for hours across multiple days, and ultimately killed by being shot with three bullets to the chest.[43]
Leadership of Hamas in the Gaza Strip (2017–2024)
In February 2017, Sinwar was secretly elected the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, taking over from Ismail Haniyeh. In March, he established a Hamas-controlled administrative committee for the Gaza Strip, opposing power sharing with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Sinwar rejected any reconciliation with Israel,[4] and was said to have been dedicated to its eradication[15], seeing military confrontation as the only path to "liberating Palestine", and saying that this would be achieved "by force, not negotiations".[16] He called on militants to capture more Israeli soldiers.[10] In September 2017, a new round of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority began in Egypt, and Sinwar agreed to dissolve the Hamas administrative committee for Gaza.[44] He was said to have silenced hard-line voices in Gaza, ordering against the use of tunnels that Mohammed Deif wanted to use to sneak fighters into Israel before they were shut down by new classified Israeli technology in 2017.[14]
On 16 May 2018, in an unexpected announcement on Al Jazeera, Sinwar stated that Hamas would pursue "peaceful, popular resistance" to the Israeli occupation, opening the possibility that Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organisation by many countries, may play a role in negotiations with Israel.[14] A week earlier he had encouraged Gazans to breach the Israeli siege, saying "We would rather die as martyrs than die out of oppression and humiliation," and adding, "We are ready to die, and tens of thousands will die with us."[45]
On 1 December 2020, Sinwar tested positive for COVID-19 and was reportedly following the advice of health authorities and taking precautionary measures. A spokesman for the group also said that he was in "good health and [...] pursuing his duties as usual".[46]
In March 2021, Sinwar was elected to a second four-year term as the head of Hamas in Gaza.[47]
On 15 May 2021, an Israeli airstrike was reported to have hit Sinwar's home; there were no immediate details of any deaths or injuries. The strike took place in the Khan Yunis region of southern Gaza in the midst of increasing tension between Israelis and Palestinians.[48] In the week that followed, he appeared publicly at least four times. The most obvious was in a press conference on 27 May 2021. During the conference, Sinwar stated he would walk home from the venue and invited Benny Gantz, the Israeli Minister of Defense to order his assassination during his walk home. Sinwar spent the next hour in the streets of Gaza taking photos with the public.[49]
In the autumn of 2022, Hamas began planning a surprise attack on Israel. Sinwar sought to convince Iran and Hezbollah to participate in the attack or in a broader conflict with Israel,[24][25] aiming to cause its 'collapse'.[24] During one meeting, Sinwar acknowledged that such an attack would likely require sacrifices, probably referring to the people of Gaza.[24] In September 2022, he reviewed the battle plans, though the attack was postponed.[24] By May 2023, Sinwar and his colleagues were relieved to have avoided a minor confrontation during Ramadan, intending to preserve the element of surprise for the 7 October attack.[24]
Israel–Hamas war
Sinwar and Mohammed Deif are regarded as the masterminds behind the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, the deadliest attack in Israeli history.[20][21][22] The attack left around 1,200 people dead and about 240 taken as hostages in Gaza. Following the attack, Sinwar was put under EU terrorist sanctions[50] and became a top target for assassination by the Israeli military.[51] Israeli intelligence presumed Sinwar was hiding in a complex system of tunnels beneath Gaza and was surrounded by hostages acting as human shields.[52]
After three weeks of conflict in the Israel–Hamas war, Sinwar proposed the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli confinement in exchange for the release of all the hostages kidnapped in the conflict.[53][54] Sinwar reportedly visited the hostages in the early days of the war promising they would not be harmed.[55] When one of the hostages, Yocheved Lifshitz, said Sinwar should be ashamed of himself, he was silent.[55]
On 7 November, after Israel had surrounded Gaza City, it claimed it had "trapped" Sinwar in a bunker there.[56] Israeli military authorities later claimed he was in Khan Yunis in an underground bunker.[57] Leaflets allegedly dropped by Israel into Gaza proclaimed a bounty of $400,000 for providing information on Sinwar's location.[58] According to Reuters, Israel is demanding the exile of Sinwar, Deif, and four other Hamas leaders from Gaza as a condition for a ceasefire.[59]
By February 2024 the IDF believed that Sinwar had moved to Rafah from Khan Younis. According to the IDF, Sinwar was constantly on the move and thus was unable to personally command Hamas forces.[60] On 13 February the IDF released CCTV footage dated 10 October showing Sinwar and his wife and children as well as his brother Ibrahim in a Hamas tunnel complex in Khan Younis. The IDF stated that they were collecting intelligence and interrogating Hamas commanders and their relatives to find Sinwar.[61]
On 20 May 2024, Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, announced his intention to apply for an arrest warrant for Sinwar for war crimes and crimes against humanity, as part of the ICC investigation in Palestine.[62][63]
In June 2024, The Wall Street Journal published what it said were leaked communications between Sinwar and Hamas' leadership, in which Sinwar claimed to "have the Israelis right where we want them" and suggested that Palestinian civilian deaths were "necessary sacrifices" that would "infuse life into the veins of this nation, prompting it to rise to its glory and honour".[64][65] The authenticity of these messages could not be verified.[66] Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas spokesperson, refuted the report, asserting that Sinwar never made such comments and was instead focused on ending the conflict swiftly, calling the circulated statements "completely incorrect".[67]
On 3 September 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice announced criminal charges against Sinwar for his role in the 7 October attack on Israel. The charges, which were filed under seal in February 2024, include conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals.[68][69][70]
Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau (2024)
Following the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh on 31 July 2024, Hamas named Yahya Sinwar as the new "overall leader" of the movement, as well as the new chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau. The announcement came after the Shura Council, the body that elects Hamas's politburo, voted unanimously to choose Sinwar as the new leader, in what was described by a Hamas official as a "message of defiance to Israel".[71][72]
According to the BBC, Yahya Sinwar's election as the leader of Hamas "signalled the end of an era and the beginning of a new, more extreme phase". Per Hamas officials, he was elected due to his considerable popularity in the Arab and Islamic worlds following the October 7 attacks and his strong connections with the "Axis of Resistance", a network of armed groups led by Iran.[19] According to The Wall Street Journal, his election suggests that the movement endorsed his strategy of waging war against Israel in conjunction with Iran's militia allies, also noting that Sinwar had gained increasing popularity among Palestinians due to his approach in handling the conflict.[17] The Economist report indicated that Sinwar's election made a ceasefire less likely as he represented Hamas's most extreme faction. His leadership consolidated Hamas's alignment with Iran and its resistance to diplomatic negotiations.[18]
The IDF Military Intelligence Directorate announced in September that they had begun an investigation into Sinwar's possible death in an airstrike after noting that he had not been heard from for some time.[73] Israel Hayom reported that Israeli authorities believed he was still alive, and lacked any direct evidence of his death, but were "exploring other scenarios".[74] In October Sinwar re-established contact with the Hamas delegation in Qatar.[75]
Personal life
Sinwar married Samar Muhammad Abu Zamar in 21 November 2011,[76][77] who is 18 years younger than him, and has three children. The oldest one is Ibrahim Yahya, hence the name Abu Ibrahim as his kunya. His wife holds a master's degree in theology from the Islamic University of Gaza.[78]
In addition to his native Arabic, Sinwar spoke Hebrew, which he learned during his imprisonment, along with insights into Israeli culture.[8]
Sinwar was a hafiz, meaning that he had completely memorized the Quran.[8]
Death
On 17 October 2024, Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet said they were looking into whether Sinwar was among three individuals killed in an operation in Gaza that had taken place the previous day, though neither Israel or Hamas made any official confirmation.[79] IDF soldiers who were investigating a strike on Hamas members found a body with striking resemblance to Sinwar and a DNA sample was collected.[80][81][82] the body of Sinwar was found dressed in military fatigues, clad in a kuffiyeh and grasping an AK-47,[83] Additional items found on his person included 40,000 NIS in cash,[84] a lighter and an UNRWA employee ID.[85] According to Kan radio, his associates were found with cash, weapons and fake IDs.[86][87]
The IDF confirmed through DNA analysis that Sinwar had been killed a day earlier in Gaza during a firefight with the IDF.[79][27] Israel Police said in a statement that the body matched Sinwar's dental records and fingerprints.[88][89] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Sinwar's death marked the beginning of a new era without Hamas's rule over Gaza, urging Gazans to seize the opportunity to break free from its tyranny, and adding that those holding hostages will be spared if they surrender and release them.[90]
Bibliography
- Sinwar, Yahya (2004), The Thorn and the Carnation,[note 2] ISBN 9798224053018 (published by Draft2digital)
See also
Notes
References
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- ^ a b c نبذة عن حياة الأسير يحيى السنوار مؤسس الجهاز الأمني لحركة المقاومة الإسلامية حماس [About the life of the prisoner Yahya Sinwar founder of the security apparatus of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas] (in Arabic). Palestinian Information Center. 15 April 2010. Archived from the original on 24 June 2016.
- ^ "Yehya Ibrahim Sinwar". Ezzedeen AL-Qassam Brigades. Archived from the original on 2 September 2016.
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- ^ a b Levinson, Chaim (8 November 2023). ""חנקתי אותו. הוא הבין שמגיע לו למות": העדויות של יחיא סינוואר כשנחקר בישראל" ["I strangled him. He understood that he deserved to die": Yahya Sinwar's testimony when he was interrogated in Israel]. Haaretz (in Hebrew). Archived from the original on 30 November 2023. Retrieved 30 November 2023.
- ^ "איזה תלמיד היה סינוואר? גיליון הציונים של מנהיג חמאס נחשף". Maariv (in Hebrew). 13 September 2024. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
- ^ Lieber, Dov (25 December 2017). "Iran pledging all its might to Hamas for Jerusalem battle, terror group says". The Times Of Israel. Archived from the original on 28 December 2023. Retrieved 28 December 2023.
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- ^ محلل إسرائيلي: أي عار هذا الذي نعيشه.. السنوار تجول في شوارع غزة وتحدى إسرائيل باغتياله ورسائله بكل اتجاه [Israeli analyst: What shame is this what we live in .. Sinwar wandered in the streets of Gaza and challenged Israel by assassinating him and his messages in every direction]. Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on 27 May 2021. Retrieved 27 May 2021.
- ^ Camut, Nicolas (16 January 2024). "EU sanctions Hamas' Gaza leader over October 7 attacks on Israel". Politico. Archived from the original on 23 April 2024. Retrieved 13 April 2024.
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- ^ Harris, Shane (27 February 2024). "Hamas leader hiding in Gaza, but killing him risks hostages, officials say". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 13 April 2024.
- ^ "Hamas chief in Gaza says ready for 'immediate' prisoner swap with Israel". Al Arabiya English. 28 October 2023. Archived from the original on 4 November 2023. Retrieved 29 October 2023.
- ^ Bronner, Ethan; Meyer, Henry (16 November 2023). "Hamas Mastermind Who Tricked Israel Is Top Target in Gaza Tunnels". Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on 16 November 2023. Retrieved 26 November 2023.
- ^ a b Harel, Amos; Freidson, Yael (29 November 2023). "'I Asked Him How He Isn't Ashamed': 85-year-old Israeli Hostage Confronted Hamas Chief Sinwar in Gaza Tunnel". Haaretz. Reuters contributed to this report. Archived from the original on 29 November 2023. Retrieved 29 November 2023.
- ^ "Israel says Hamas leader trapped in bunker as its troops battle militant group in Gaza City". CBC. Reuters. 7 November 2023. Archived from the original on 15 December 2023. Retrieved 15 December 2023.
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- ^ Mills, Andrew; Al-Mughrabi, Nidal; Hassan, Ahmed Mohamed; Williams, Dan; Georgy, Michael; Lubell, Maayan; Landay, Jonathan; Lewis, Simon; Daniel, Frank Jack (24 January 2024). Flynn, Daniel (ed.). "One-month Gaza truce focus of intensive talks, sources say". Reuters. Retrieved 24 January 2024.
- ^ Beaumont, Peter; Hamdouna, Nedal Samir (7 February 2024). "'Our last stop is Rafah': trapped Palestinians await Israeli onslaught". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 20 May 2024. Retrieved 13 February 2024.
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- ^ Khan, Karim A.A (20 May 2024). "Statement of ICC Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan KC: Applications for arrest warrants in the situation in the State of Palestine". Archived from the original on 20 May 2024. Retrieved 20 May 2024.
- ^ Kottasová, Ivana (20 May 2024). "EXCLUSIVE: ICC seeks arrest warrants against Sinwar and Netanyahu for war crimes over October 7 attack and Gaza war". CNN. Archived from the original on 20 May 2024. Retrieved 20 May 2024.
- ^ Said, Summer; Jones, Rory (10 June 2024). "Gaza Chief's Brutal Calculation: Civilian Bloodshed Will Help Hamas". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 11 June 2024. Retrieved 11 June 2024.
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- ^ "Reports: Hamas chief incommunicado, Israel checking longshot possibility he's dead". The Times of Israel. 23 September 2024.
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Yahya Sinwar, the Palestinian militant leader who emerged from two decades of prison in Israel to rise to the helm of Hamas and help plot the deadliest assault on Israel in its history, died on Wednesday. He was in his early 60s.
His death was announced by the Israeli military on Thursday, which said he had been killed by a unit of trainee squad commanders who encountered him while on an operation in southern Gaza.
A longtime Hamas leader who assumed its top political office in August, Mr. Sinwar was known among supporters and enemies alike for combining cunning and brutality. He built Hamas’s ability to harm Israel in service of the group’s long-term goal of destroying the Jewish state and building an Islamist, Palestinian nation in its place.
He played a central role in planning the surprise assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed about 1,200 people, brought 250 others back to Gaza as hostages and put him at the top of Israel’s kill list. Israeli leaders vowed to hunt him down, and the military dropped fliers over Gaza offering a $400,000 reward for information on his whereabouts.
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But for more than a year, he remained elusive, surviving in tunnels Hamas had dug beneath Gaza, even as Israel killed many of his fighters and associates.
Mr. Sinwar’s legacy among Palestinians is complex. He built a force capable of striking the Middle East’s most sophisticated military despite the tight Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza. But the Oct. 7 attack led Israel to commit not just to ending Hamas’s 17-year rule of Gaza, but also to destroying the group altogether.
The assault raised Hamas’s standing in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and elsewhere in the Arab world, according to polls, but not among Gazans, whose lives and homes bore the brunt of Israel’s subsequent invasion.
And while he succeeded at bringing the Palestinian cause back to the world’s attention, he failed to bring his people closer to independence or statehood — and at a tremendous cost to those whom he claimed to want to liberate. Israel reduced much of Gaza to rubble in response to Hamas’s attack, and more than 42,000 Palestinians were killed, according to the Gaza health authorities.
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When word of his death spread in Gaza, many people celebrated.
Mohammed, a 22-year-old who had been repeatedly displaced during the war, said he blamed Mr. Sinwar for the hunger, unemployment and homelessness the conflict had caused.
“He humiliated us, started the war, scattered us and made us displaced, without water, food or money,” Mohammed said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from Hamas members. “He is the one who made Israel do this.”
The news of Mr. Sinwar’s death, he said, marked “the best day of my life.”
As the leader of Hamas in Gaza from 2017 to 2024, Mr. Sinwar quietly rekindled the group’s relationship with Iran, a longtime patron, helping Hamas develop the ability to outsmart Israel’s defenses. And while covertly preparing for a giant war with Israel, he led Israel to believe that he wanted the opposite: not exactly peace, but at least some quiet.
Many in the Israeli security establishment spent the years before the war focusing on other threats and assuming that Gaza was under control, some said in interviews after the war began.
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Mr. Sinwar’s life was profoundly shaped by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He was born in 1962 in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, a crowded, impoverished territory on the Mediterranean coast bordering Israel and Egypt.
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Information about his parents was not immediately available, but like most Gaza inhabitants, his family members were registered Palestinian refugees. They or their ancestors had fled or been chased from their homes in the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948 and longed to return.
Mr. Sinwar studied Arabic at the Islamic University of Gaza and became involved in Islamist politics. Around the start of the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada, against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1987, Palestinian Islamists founded Hamas, which pledged to destroy Israel and replace it with a Palestinian state. Israel, the United States and other countries designated Mr. Sinwar a terrorist and Hamas as a terrorist organization.
Mr. Sinwar, an early Hamas member, led a group charged with punishing Palestinians accused of spying for Israel, often with execution. He performed the task with such brutality that he earned the nickname Butcher of Khan Younis.
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In 1988, Israel arrested Mr. Sinwar and later prosecuted him in the killing of four Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. He spent more than two decades in Israeli prisons, an experience that he later said allowed him to study his enemy.
“They wanted the prison to be a grave for us — a mill to grind our will, determination and bodies,” he said in 2011. “But, thank God, with our belief in our cause, we turned prison into sanctuaries of worship and academies for study.”
He learned Hebrew, read widely about Israeli history and society and became a prison leader, participating in negotiations between the inmates and their jailers.
“There is no doubt that he is stubborn and a good negotiator,” recalled Sofyan Abu Zaydeh, who met Mr. Sinwar in prison in the late 1980s and later served as a minister in the Palestinian Authority.
Over the years, Israel missed several opportunities to keep Mr. Sinwar off the battlefield — or eliminate him altogether.
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During Mr. Sinwar’s incarceration, Yuval Bitton, a prison dentist, got to know him and learned about his continued efforts to punish Palestinians he suspected of working with Israel, Dr. Bitton told The Times in 2024.
In 2004, Mr. Sinwar developed a pain in the back of his neck that Dr. Bitton told colleagues required urgent medical attention. Doctors removed an aggressive brain tumor that could have killed Mr. Sinwar if left untreated, and Mr. Sinwar thanked Dr. Bitton for saving his life.
“It was important to him that I understood from a Muslim how important this was in Islam — that he owed me his life,” said Dr. Bitton, who later became the head of intelligence for the Israeli Prison Service.
In a painful twist of fate, when Hamas struck Israel in 2023, Dr. Bitton’s nephew Tamir Adar was among the hostages taken back to Gaza, where he died soon after.
In 2011, Israel and Hamas agreed to exchange one captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. Mr. Sinwar was the most senior prisoner freed in the deal. He returned from prison with both deeper knowledge of Israel and a firmer commitment to freeing other Palestinian prisoners.
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“He promised his colleagues when he left that their freedom was his burden,” recalled Mr. Abu Zaydeh. “Oct. 7, on a basic level, was about freeing prisoners.”
He returned to Gaza to find a new reality. In 2007, Hamas had seized control from the more moderate Palestinian Authority. That made Hamas, for the first time, not just an armed group, but also a de facto government overseeing electricity, garbage collection and other public services.
Hamas’s takeover prompted Israel and Egypt to impose a blockade on Gaza, restricting the movement of goods and people into and out of the territory and deepening the strip’s poverty and isolation.
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Mr. Sinwar climbed the ranks inside Hamas. In 2012 he became the representative of Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, a role akin to defense minister. That bound him tighter to Hamas’s fighting force and its mysterious commander, Muhammad Deif, another architect of the Oct. 7 attack, whom Israel killed in a large bombardment in Gaza in July.
In 2017 Mr. Sinwar became the leader of Hamas in Gaza, taking over from Ismail Haniyeh, who moved to Qatar and served as the group’s top political leader until Israel assassinated him in Tehran in July. In that role, Mr. Sinwar sought new ways to protest the blockade and draw attention to Palestinian grievances. In 2018, Hamas put its weight behind large protests by Palestinians in Gaza who sought to march to their ancestral villages inside Israel in demonstrations that Israel violently suppressed.
Mr. Sinwar also projected an interest in improving the lives of Gazans. In a rare interview with an Italian journalist in 2018, he called for a long-term cease-fire.
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“I am not saying I won’t fight anymore,” he said. “I am saying that I don’t want war anymore. I want the end of the siege. You walk to the beach at sunset and you see all these teenagers on the shore chatting and wondering what the world looks like across the sea. What life looks like,” he added. “I want them to be free.”
In 2021, Hamas launched a new war — its third major conflict with Israel since 2008 — to protest Israeli efforts to evict Palestinians in East Jerusalem and Israeli police raids on the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a touchstone of the Palestinians’ claim to the city. During the conflict, Israel bombed his home in an unsuccessful attempt to kill him.
On live television after a cease-fire took hold, Mr. Sinwar announced that he would walk home and dared Israel to assassinate him. He then strolled through Gaza, shaking hands, waving to store owners and stopping for photos with passers-by.
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His violent rhetoric against Israel never softened. In 2022, he gave a fiery speech calling on Palestinians everywhere, including inside Israel, to “get your cleavers, axes or knives ready.” Less than a week later, three Israeli Jews were killed in an ax attack in central Israel.
But Mr. Sinwar also continued to seek accommodations with Israel, negotiating to allow the entry of about $30 million in monthly aid to Gaza from Qatar and an increase in the number of permits for Gazans to work in Israel — both badly needed for the territory’s sputtering economy.
Such moves, in addition to Mr. Sinwar’s decision to keep Hamas out of clashes between Israel and other armed groups, led to a belief in the Israeli security establishment that tight security measures and limited improvements in Gazans’ quality of life could keep Hamas contained.
But that hope was dashed on Oct. 7, 2023, when fighters disabled Israel’s border defenses, stormed into Israel by sea, air and land, and rampaged through Israeli communities and military bases, shooting soldiers and civilians and showing how wrong Israel’s assessments of Mr. Sinwar were.
Israel responded with overwhelming force, destroying large parts of Gaza, launching a ground invasion aimed at destroying Hamas, and causing one of the fastest rising death tolls of any war in this century.
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Mr. Sinwar did not appear publicly during the war, leaving it unclear what he thought Hamas had accomplished in its attack on Israel and how he felt about the tremendous cost in Palestinian lives.
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