Who is Yahya Sinwar, the “pragmatic” leader and mastermind of the October 7 attacks, named head of Hamas? – First post

Yahya Sinwar is set to become the next head of Hamas, the militant group, following the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in a suspected Israeli attack in Tehran last week. He is believed to be the architect of the October 7 attack on Israel, the deadliest attack in Israel’s history.

The Palestinian group’s announcement came amid rising tensions in West Asia, particularly with Iran vowing to retaliate against Israel for the killing of Haniyeh on its soil. A senior Hamas leader said the organization was “sending a strong message to the occupation that Hamas continues its path of resistance.”

The 61-year-old ascetic is a security operative “par excellence,” according to Abu Abdallah, a member of Hamas who spent years with him in Israeli prisons. “He makes decisions with utmost calm, but he is intractable when it comes to defending Hamas’ interests,” Abu Abdallah said. AFP in 2017 after his former co-detainee was elected leader of Hamas in Gaza.

Until now, the “butcher of Khan Younis” was the head of Hamas in Gaza and was already on Israel’s hit list, but after the announcement he became their numero uno target. Let’s take a look at who Yahya Sinwar is.

Early life and militant Hamas

Born in the Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza, Sinwar joined Hamas when Sheikh Ahmad Yassin founded the group around the time the first Palestinian intifada began in 1987.

Sinwar established the group’s internal security apparatus the following year and went on to head an intelligence unit dedicated to evicting and mercilessly punishing — sometimes killing — Palestinians accused of providing information to Israel.

According to a transcript of an interrogation of security officials published in Israeli media, Sinwar confessed to strangling an alleged collaborator with a keffiyeh scarf in a Khan Younis cemetery.

A graduate of the Islamic University of Gaza, he learned perfect Hebrew during his 23 years in Israeli prisons and is said to have a deep understanding of Israeli culture and society.

He is serving four life sentences for killing two Israeli soldiers when he became the oldest of 1,027 Palestinians released in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011. Sinwar later became a senior commander in the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the wing military. Hamas, before taking over the overall leadership of the movement in Gaza.

While his predecessor, Haniyeh, encouraged Hamas’s efforts to present a moderate face to the world, Sinwar preferred to force the Palestinian issue to the fore through more violent means.

The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says Israel’s air and ground attack, launched in response to the Oct. 7 attacks, has killed at least 39,653 people in the Palestinian territory.

Dreams of a single Palestinian state

Sinwar dreams of a single Palestinian state that would reunite the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank – controlled by Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party – and annex East Jerusalem.

According to the US think tank the Council on Foreign Relations, he has vowed to punish anyone who obstructs reconciliation with Fatah, the rival political movement with which Hamas engaged in factional fighting after the 2006 elections.

That reunion remains elusive, but the release of prisoners resulting from November’s brief truce with Israel has boosted Hamas’s popularity in the West Bank.

Sinwar followed a path of being “radical in military planning and pragmatic in politics,” according to Leila Seurat of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (CAREP) in Paris. “He does not support force for force’s sake, but to lead to negotiations” with Israel, she said.

The Hamas chief was added to the US list of most wanted “international terrorists” in 2015. Security sources outside Gaza say Sinwar took refuge in the network of tunnels built under the territory to withstand Israeli bombs.

Vowing in November to “find and eliminate” Sinwar, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant urged Gazans to hand over Sinwar, adding “If you get him before us, it will shorten the war.”

With inputs from AFP