After Hamas attacked Israel in October, triggering the war in Gaza, Israeli leaders described the group’s most senior official in the region, Yahya Sinwar, as a “dead man walking”. Israel believed Sinwar was the mastermind of the attack and considered his assassination the main target of its devastating counterattack.
Seven months later, Sinwar’s survival symbolized the defeat of Israel’s war. Most of the prisoners.
Even as Israeli officials sought to kill him, they were forced to negotiate, albeit indirectly, with him to free the remaining hostages. Hamas, Israeli and U.S. officials said Sinwar was not only a strong-willed commander but also a shrewd negotiator who engaged Israeli envoys at the negotiating table and prevented an Israeli victory on the battlefield. Some requested anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence assessments and diplomatic negotiations on Sinwar.
While the talks are being mediated between Egypt and Qatar, Hamas negotiators must seek the approval of Sinwar – who is believed to be holed up in a tunnel beneath Gaza – before agreeing to make any concessions, according to some officials. in the network.
Hamas officials insist that Sinwar does not have the final say in the group’s decisions. But while Sinwar does not technically have authority over the entire Hamas movement, his leadership role in Gaza and his strong personality give him a role in how Hamas operates, according to allies and foes alike played an extremely important role.
“Any decision must be made in consultation with Sinwar,” said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a Hamas member and political analyst who was imprisoned in Israel in the 1990s and 2000s. During this time, he became friends with Sinwar. “Sinwar is not an ordinary leader, he is a powerful man and the mastermind of events. He is not some kind of manager or director, but a leader,” Mr al-Awawdeh added .
Mr. Sinwar has been little heard from since the war began, unlike Hamas officials based outside Gaza, including Ismail Haniyeh, the movement’s most senior civilian official. U.S. and Israeli officials say Sinwar, despite being nominally junior to Haniyeh, has been central to Hamas’s behind-the-scenes decision to insist on a permanent ceasefire.
Waiting for Sinwar’s approval tends to slow down negotiations, officials and analysts said. Israeli strikes have destroyed much of Gaza’s communications infrastructure, and it sometimes takes a day to send a message to Sinwar and another day to receive a response, according to U.S. officials and Hamas members.
To Israeli and Western officials, Mr. Sinwar emerged as both a ruthless adversary and a deft political operator capable of analyzing Israeli society and adjusting his policies accordingly during negotiations that stalled again in Cairo last week. .
As the mastermind of the October 7 attack, Mr. Sinwar hatched a strategy that he knew would provoke a violent response from Israel. But in Hamas’s calculations, the deaths of many Palestinian civilians who cannot enter Hamas’ underground tunnels are a necessary price for subverting the status quo with Israel.
U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies spent months assessing Sinwar’s motives, according to people familiar with the intelligence. Both U.S. and Israeli analysts believe Sinwar’s main motive is to retaliate against Israel and weaken it. Intelligence analysts say the well-being of the Palestinian people or the establishment of a Palestinian state appears to be secondary.
Learn about Israeli society
Mr. Sinwar was born in Gaza in 1962, part of a family that fled or was forced to flee their homeland along with hundreds of thousands of other Palestinian Arabs during Israel’s founding war.
Mr. Sinwar joined Hamas in the 1980s. He was later imprisoned for murdering Palestinians whom he accused of apostasy or collusion with Israel, according to Israeli court records from 1989. More than 1,000 other Palestinians were released along with them. Six years later, Mr. Sinwar was elected leader of Hamas in Gaza.
While in prison, Sinwar learned Hebrew and learned about Israeli culture and society, according to former inmates and Israeli officials who monitored him in prison. Sinwar now appears to be using that knowledge to sow divisions in Israeli society and put more pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Israeli and U.S. officials.
They believe Sinwar chose the time to release some of the Israeli hostage videos to stoke popular anger against Netanyahu at a critical stage of ceasefire negotiations.
Some Israelis want the remaining hostages released, even if it means agreeing to Hamas’s demands for a permanent truce to keep the group and Mr Sinwar in power. But Netanyahu has been reluctant to agree to end the war, in part due to pressure from some of his right-wing allies who have threatened to resign if the war ends and Hamas is not affected.
If Mr Netanyahu has been accused of stalling the fight for personal gain, so has his old nemesis Mr Sinwar.
Israeli and U.S. intelligence officials say Sinwar’s strategy is to keep the war going until it destroys Israel’s international reputation and damages its relationship with its main ally, the United States. As Israel faces intense pressure to avoid an operation in Rafah, Hamas fired rockets from Rafah into a nearby crossing on Sunday, killing four Israeli soldiers.
If this is Hamas’s strategy, it appears to be paying off: Israel’s operation on the edge of Rafah last week came against a backdrop of President Biden’s strongest criticism of Israeli policy since the war began. Biden said he would halt some future arms shipments if Israeli forces began a full-scale invasion of the city’s downtown.
Show an image of unity
Hamas and its allies deny that Sinwar or the movement seek to further exacerbate Palestinian suffering.
“Hamas’ strategy is to stop the war immediately,” said Ahmed Youssef, a Hamas veteran based in Rafah. “Stop the genocide and massacre of the Palestinian people.”
U.S. officials said Mr. Sinwar showed contempt for his colleagues outside Gaza because they were unaware of Hamas’s specific plans for the Oct. 7 attack. military operation, although Israeli intelligence officials said they were unsure of the extent of his involvement.
A senior Western official familiar with the ceasefire negotiations said Sinwar appeared to make decisions with his brother Mohammed, a senior Hamas military leader, and that throughout the war he sometimes spoke with Hamas leaders outside Gaza. Disagreement. While outside leadership has at times been more willing to compromise, Sinwar has been less willing to give in to Israeli negotiators, in part because he knows he could be killed whether the war ends or not, the official said.
Even if negotiators reach a ceasefire, Israel could pursue Sinwar for the rest of his life, the official said.
Hamas members project an image of unity, downplaying Sinwar’s personal role in decision-making and insisting that Hamas’s elected leadership collectively determines the movement’s trajectory.
Some say that if Mr Sinwar played a larger role in the war, it was mainly because of his position: As leader of Hamas in Gaza, Mr Sinwar Have a greater say, but not the final say.
“Sinwar’s opinion was very important because he was down to earth and leading the movement from within,” said Mr. Abu Marzouk, the first leader of Hamas’s political office in the 1990s.
But Haniyeh had “the final say” on key decisions, Abu Marzouk said, adding that all Hamas’ political leaders had “one opinion.” Mr. Haniyeh could not immediately be reached for comment.
Still, Sinwar’s strength of character was somewhat unusual, said his cellmate, Awad. Awad said other leaders may not have incited the Oct. 7 attack, preferring to focus on technocratic governance issues.
“If someone else had been in his position, things might have gone down in a calmer way,” he said.
Sinwar himself could not be reached for comment and has been little heard from since October. U.S. and Israeli officials said Sinwar hid near the hostages and used them as human shields. An Israeli hostage released during the November truce said she met Sinwar while in captivity.
In February, the Israeli military released a video it said soldiers captured from a security camera they discovered in a Hamas tunnel beneath Gaza. The video shows a man hurrying through a tunnel accompanied by a woman and children.
The military said the man was Mr Sinwar and was on the run with his family.
This claim cannot be confirmed: the man’s face is turned away from the camera.
