Jahja Sinwar once persecuted alleged “traitors” among the Palestinians with particular brutality, spent many years in Israeli custody and rose through the ranks in Hamas. Now, the leader of the terrorist organization is said to be sitting in a bunker in Gaza. And the noose around him is tightening.
While other Hamas leaders reside in the Emirate of Qatar, it is based in the Gaza Strip. Jahja Sinwar has directed the activities of the Palestinian Islamic organization since 2017. Alongside Mohammed Deif, the head of the so-called Qassem Brigades – the armed wing of Hamas – Sinwar is said to have played a key role in planning the devastating terrorist attack on Israel on October 7. And he is at the top of the list of people Israel now wants to eliminate. Now the noose around him seems to be tightening. At least that’s what the Israeli military reports. They claim to have already surrounded the Hamas leader’s bunker during his advance on Gaza City.
Jahja Sinwar is a former enemy of Israel. He grew up in the Palestinian refugee camp in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. In 1982, at age 20, he was arrested in Israel for the first time in several months.
He made initial contacts with Islamic activists, who initially represented a minority among Palestinian organizations. At that time, nationalist and left-wing groups such as Fatah or the Popular Left Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which was co-founded by Palestinian Christian George Habasch and spread terror internationally through plane hijackings, still dominated.
Next to Sheikh Yassin
Sinwar was already at Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s side in the early 1980s and was one of his advisors. Sheikh Yassin, who used a wheelchair since his youth, built armed cells underground with the help of the Jordanian extremist wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. The aim was to fight Israel and – in the future – establish an Islamic state in the region.