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Yahya Sinwar’s registration took place in 2022
Item information
- Author: Frank Gardner
- Role: BBC security correspondent
2 hours ago
Yahya Sinwar has disappeared. It is no surprise that thousands of Israeli soldiers, supported by drones, electronic listening devices and human informants, are trying to find out his whereabouts.
Sinwar, who has snowwhite hair and black eyebrows, is the leader of Hamas’ political wing in Gaza and one of Israel’s most wanted men.
“This heinous attack was decided by Yahya Sinwar,” said IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi. “Therefore he and all who are under him are dead men.”
This includes Mohammed Deif, the leader of Hamas’s military wing, the Izzedine alQassam Brigades.
Hugh Lovatt, policy researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), believes that Deif was the mastermind behind the planning of the October 7 attack because it was a military operation, but that Sinwar “would probably have been part of the group, who planned and planned the attack.
Israel believes Sinwar, who is effectively Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s deputy, is hiding with his bodyguards in tunnels beneath Gaza and not communicating with anyone for fear his signal could be tracked and located.
Education and prisons
Sinwar, 61, known as Abu Ibrahim, was born in Khan Younis refugee camp on the southern tip of the Gaza Strip. His parents were from Ashkelon but became refugees after what Palestinians call “alNaqba” (the catastrophe) the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in Palestine in the war that followed the creation of Israel in 1948.
He was educated at Khan Younis Boys’ Secondary School and later completed his Arabic studies at the Islamic University of Gaza.
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Portraits of Israeli child hostages are on display at a rally in Tel Aviv
At the time, Khan Younis was a “bastion” of support for the old radical Islamic group the Muslim Brotherhood (founded in Egypt), says Ehud Yaari, a fellow at the Institute for Near East Policy in Washington, who interviewed Sinwar four times in prison in 2014.
The Islamic group “was a huge movement of young people who went to mosques in the poverty of the refugee camp,” says Yaari, and later acquired similar prominence for Hamas.
Sinwar was first arrested by Israel in 1982 at the age of 19 for “Islamic activities” and was arrested again in 1985. At that time, he gained the trust of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin, who was in a wheelchair.
The two became “very, very close,” says Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv Institute for National Security Studies. This relationship with the organization’s spiritual leader would later give Sinwar a “halo effect” within the movement, Michael adds.
Two years after Hamas was founded in 1987, he founded the group’s feared internal security organization, alMajd. He was only 25 years old.
AlMajd became famous for punishing those accused of socalled moral crimes Michael says he targeted shops that sold “sex videos” and also for hunting down and killing anyone suspected of to collaborate with Israel.
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A mural depicting the late Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
Yaari says he is responsible for numerous “brutal murders” of people suspected of cooperating with Israel. “Some of it with his own hands and he was proud of it and talked to me and others about it.”
According to Israeli authorities, he later confessed to punishing a suspected informant by having his brother bury the man alive, doing the job with a spoon instead of a shovel.
“He’s the type of man who can gather followers, fans and a lot of people who are just afraid of him and don’t want to fight with him,” says Yaari.
In 1988, Sinwar allegedly plotted to kidnap and murder two Israeli soldiers. He was arrested that same year, convicted by Israel of the murder of twelve Palestinians and given four life sentences.
The years in prison
Sinwar spent much of his adult life more than 22 years in Israeli prisons from 1988 to 2011. His time there, partly in solitary confinement, appears to have led to even greater radicalization.
“He managed to impose his authority ruthlessly and violently,” says Yaari. He positioned himself as a leader among the prisoners, negotiated on their behalf with the prison authorities and enforced discipline among the prisoners.
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An armed man provides security on the stage as Sinwar speaks at the rally in 2021
An Israeli government assessment of Sinwar during his time in prison described him as “cruel, authoritarian, influential and with unusual resilience skills, cunning and manipulative, content with little…Keeps secrets even within the prison among other prisoners…He has the ability to crowd to move.
Yaari’s assessment of Sinwar, based on the time they knew each other, is that he is a psychopath. “[Mas] To say of Sinwar, “Sinwar is a psychopath, period,” would be a mistake,” he says, “because he is a strange and complex character.”
He is, says Yaari, “extremely smart, cunning a guy who knows how to turn a kind of personal charm on and off.”
When Sinwar said that Israel must be destroyed and insisted that there was no place for Jews in Palestine, “he quipped, ‘Maybe we’ll make an exception for you.'”
While incarcerated, Sinwar became fluent in Hebrew by reading Israeli newspapers. Yaari says that even though Yaari was fluent in Arabic, Sinwar always preferred to speak to him in Hebrew.
“He tried to improve his Hebrew,” says Yaari. “I think he wanted to benefit from someone who spoke Hebrew better than the prison guards.”
Sinwar was released in 2011 as part of a deal that resulted in the release of 1,027 Palestinian and Israeli Arab prisoners from prison in exchange for a single Israeli hostage, IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.
Shalit was held captive for five years after being kidnapped by, among others, Sinwar’s brother, a senior Hamas military commander. Since then, Sinwar has called for further kidnappings of Israeli soldiers.
By then, Israel had ended its occupation of Gaza and Hamas was in charge, having won an election and then eliminated its rival, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah party, by throwing many of its members from the roofs of tall buildings.
Brutal discipline
When Sinwar returned to Gaza, he was immediately accepted as leader, says Michael. This largely had to do with his reputation as a founding member of Hamas who sacrificed so many years of his life in Israeli prisons.
But also “people were simply afraid of him because he was someone who murdered with his hands,” says Michael. “He was very brutal, aggressive and charismatic at the same time.”
“He’s not a talker,” says Yaari. “When he speaks to the public, he’s like someone from the mafia.”
Yaari adds that Sinwar also formed an alliance with the Izzedine alQassam Brigades and Chief of Staff Marwan Issa immediately after his release from prison.
In 2013, he was elected a member of the Hamas Politburo in the Gaza Strip before becoming its head in 2017.
Sinwar’s younger brother Mohammed also played an active role in Hamas. He claimed to have survived several Israeli assassination attempts before being declared dead by Hamas in 2014. Media reports have since emerged that he may still be alive, active in Hamas’ military wing, hiding in tunnels beneath Gaza, and may even have played a role in the attacks on October 7 this year.
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Mohammed Sinwar
Sinwar’s reputation for cruelty and violence earned him the nickname “The Butcher of Khan Younis.”
“He’s a guy who enforces brutal discipline,” Yaari says. “The people in Hamas knew and still know: Those who disobey Sinwar are putting their lives at risk.”
He is considered responsible for the imprisonment, torture and murder of a Hamas commander named Mahmoud Ishtiwi in 2015, who was accused of embezzlement and homosexuality.
In 2018, in a statement to foreign media, he advocated that thousands of Palestinians break the border barrier between the Gaza Strip and Israel as part of protests against the relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Later that year, he claimed to have survived an assassination attempt in the West Bank by Palestinians loyal to the rival Palestinian Authority (PA).
However, there have also been periods of pragmatism, supporting temporary ceasefires with Israel, prisoner exchanges and reconciliation with the rival Palestinian Authority. He was even criticized by some opponents who thought he was too moderate, says Michael.
Several people working in Israeli defense and security believe it was a fatal mistake to release Sinwar from prison as part of the prisoner exchange.
Israelis feel lulled into a false sense of security, believing that by offering Hamas economic incentives and more work permits, the movement has lost interest in the war.
“He sees himself as the man destined to liberate Palestine his goal is not to improve the economic situation or social services in Gaza,” Yaari says.
In 2015, the US State Department officially designated Sinwar as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist.” In May 2021, Israeli airstrikes hit his home and office in the Gaza Strip. In April 2022, in a televised address, he encouraged people to attack Israel using all available means.
Analysts have identified him as a key figure linking Hamas’ political office to its armed wing, the Izzedine alQassam Brigades, which led the Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel.
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Sinwar (center) on the border with Egypt in 2017
On October 14, an Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, described Sinwar as “the face of evil.” He added: “We have this man and his entire team in our sights. We’ll catch up with them.”
Sinwar is also close to Iran. A partnership between a Shia country and a Sunni Arab organization is not a given, but both have the goal of ending the State of Israel and “liberating” Jerusalem from Israeli occupation.
They’re working together now. Iran funds, trains and arms Hamas, helping it expand its military capabilities and amass an arsenal of thousands of rockets with which to attack Israeli cities.
Sinwar thanked for the support in a speech in 2021. “Without Iran, the resistance in Palestine would not have its current capabilities.”
However, killing Sinwar would be more of a “PR victory” for Israel than any actual impact on the movement, says Lovatt.
NGOs tend to act like the head of a hydra an operational commander or symbolic leader is removed and quickly replaced by another. His successor sometimes lacks the same experience or credibility, but the organization still manages to somehow recover.
“Of course he would be a loss,” says Lovatt, “but he would be replaced and there are structures in place for that. It’s not like killing bin Laden. There are other important political and military leaders within Hamas.”
Perhaps the big question is: What will happen to Gaza when Israel ends its military campaign to eradicate Hamas, and who will be in charge at the end?
And can they prevent it from again becoming a base for attacks on Israel and triggering the kind of destructive retaliation we are now seeing?
With additional reporting from Jon Kelly