Hamas's most prominent face...
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Yahya Sinwar was not at home and was believed to be hiding underground in the Gaza Strip. But a senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that “it is only a matter of time before we catch him.”
Yahya Sinwar was the founder of Hamas' military branch but is now the movement's political leader - Photo: GI
Israel has publicly accused Sinwar of being the “mastermind” behind the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7 – although experts say Sinwar may have been just one of several leaders of the operation – making the 61-year-old activist one of the main targets of the war in the Gaza Strip.
A longtime activist in the Palestinian insurgency, Sinwar was responsible for building up Hamas' military wing before forging important new ties with regional Arab powers as the group's civilian and political leader.
Sinwar was elected to Hamas's main decision-making body in 2017 as the political leader of Hamas' Gaza branch. However, he has since become the de facto leader of Hamas' main political body, according to research by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
Harel Chorev, a senior researcher at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, said that while Sinwar is a key figure in Hamas, he should not be considered the organization's sole leader.
“Sinwar is considered the top person because he has a very high public profile, but Hamas does not operate in a simple way. Hamas is a decentralized organization with several separate power centers and he is one of them,” Chorev said.
Chorev believes that while Sinwar was a prominent figure, he was only one of a “trio” of Hamas officials responsible for the October 7 attack, along with Mohammed al-Masri, commonly known as Mohammed Deif — the commander of the Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military arm, and Deif’s deputy Marwan Issa.
Sinwar, with his silver hair and deep-set dark eyes beneath prominent eyebrows, is by far the best-known and most recognizable of the three leaders, but it was Deif who triggered the October 7 attack. And while Sinwar has spent the past few years giving speeches and taking photos, Deif is a deeply mysterious figure, having not been seen in public for decades.
But not the only one
Yahya Sinwar was born in 1962 in a refugee camp in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. His family was displaced from Al-Majdal, a Palestinian village in present-day Askhelon, during the Arab-Israeli war.
Yahya Sinwar (in light shirt, standing in the middle) is heavily guarded by Hamas and may be hiding in tunnels in the Gaza Strip - Photo: CNN
Sinwar joined Hamas in the late 1980s and became one of the founders of the group's feared internal intelligence apparatus, known as Majd. Sinwar was convicted in 1988 of his role in the murder of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel, and spent more than two decades in an Israeli prison.
Sinwar later said he spent years studying Israel, including learning to speak Hebrew. Sinwar was released in 2011 as part of a deal in which more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners were exchanged for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who had been captured and held in the Gaza Strip for more than five years.
At the time, Sinwar called the exchange “one of the great strategic milestones in the history of our career.”
Researcher Chorev said the release of Yahya Sinwar was prompted by the fact that Yahya's brother - one of Shalit's kidnappers - insisted on including his brother in the hostage exchange deal.
Back in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar rose through the ranks and quickly became a key figure in Hamas. Chorev said Sinwar was known for his cold and hard-line approach to anyone he suspected of betraying or collaborating with Israel.
As Hamas' political leader, Sinwar focused on the group's foreign relations. According to ECFR, Sinwar was responsible for restoring Hamas's relations with Egyptian leaders, who were wary of the group's support for political Islam and continued efforts to seek military funding from Iran.
Sinwar is seen as a key decision-maker and likely the main contact in the Gaza Strip during tense negotiations over the release of more than 240 hostages taken into the enclave by Hamas in its October 7 attacks. The talks involve senior figures from Israel, Hamas, the United States, Qatar and Egypt.
“In the end, there were two people leading the negotiations,” said Gershon Baskin, a prominent Israeli peace activist who was involved in the release of the Israeli soldier Shalit in 2011. “One was Yahya Sinwar from Hamas, and the other was Benjamin Netanyahu from Israel.”
Yahya Sinwar played a key role in negotiating a temporary ceasefire and hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas. Photo: CBC
More than 100 Israeli and foreign hostages were released by Hamas and 240 Palestinian prisoners and detainees were released by Israel as part of a ceasefire reached during those talks, before the temporary ceasefire collapsed on December 1, with Israel and Hamas blaming each other for the failure.
Sinwar has been called a number of names over the past two months: Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht called Sinwar “the face of evil” and declared him “the walking dead.” Israeli media compared Sinwar to Osama bin Laden, while an IDF profile dubbed him “the Butcher of Khan Younis.”
But Chorev said that despite such descriptions and despite Sinwar's high-profile role, he was just one of many commanders Israel needed to eliminate before it could say it had "completely destroyed Hamas."
“Simply put, if Israel kills Sinwar, it does not mean that they will destroy Hamas. However, Hamas can still be overthrown even if Sinwar is still alive… because it is not (a hierarchical organization). For Israel to destroy Hamas, they need to destroy a large number of important power centers, not just him,” Chorev said.
Nguyen Khanh
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