Yahya Sinwar was seen as one of the group’s most influential leaders, wielding significant authority while remaining mostly hidden in underground tunnels. Gaza.
Having long been considered the architect of Hamas’s military strategy in Gaza, Sinwar consolidated his power when he was chosen in August to also lead the group’s political bureau, having been promoted to this position after the assassination of the movement’s political head. Ismail Haniyehin Iran.
He was born on October 29, 1962 in Khan Yunis camp, and his original roots go back to Majdal Ashkelon before the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Starting with Hamas
Sinwar was recruited to join agitation He made him head of the internal security unit known as “Majd.”
His job was to find and punish those suspected of violating laws or collaborating with Israeli occupiers, a position that eventually got him into trouble with Israel.
Yahya Al-Sinwar inside prison
Sinwar was imprisoned in 1988 for the murder of four Palestinians whom he accused of collaborating with Israel, according to Israeli court records. He spent more than two decades in prison in Israel, where he learned Hebrew and developed his mouth for Israeli culture and society.
While imprisoned, Sinwar took advantage of an online university program and read Israeli news.
He translated into Arabic tens of thousands of pages of smuggled Hebrew-language biographies written by former heads of the Israeli internal security service, Shin Bet.
Yuval Biton, an Israeli dentist who treated Sinwar while he was in detention and who developed a relationship with him, said Sinwar secretly shared the translated pages so prisoners could study the agency’s counterterrorism tactics.
Biton confirmed that Sinwar liked to call himself a “specialist in the history of the Jewish people.”
Escape several times
Al-Sanwar attempted to escape from prison several times, including trying to dig a hole in the floor of his cell in hopes of digging a tunnel underneath the prison Exit through the visitor center.
He also found ways to smuggle cell phones into prison and use lawyers and visitors to relay messages, including about finding ways to kidnap Israeli soldiers To exchange them for Palestinian prisoners.
These activities were a harbinger of the approach that Sinwar would follow years later when planning the October 7 attack on Israel.
After prison
When he was released from Israeli prison in a prisoner exchange in 2011, Sinwar said the capture by Israeli soldiers was after years of failed negotiations.
Al-Sinwar said at the time: “For the prisoner, the capture of an Israeli soldier is the best news in the universe, because he knows that a ray of hope has opened before him.”
After his release from prison, Al-Sanwar married and had children.
He did not talk much about his family in public, but he once said: “The first words my son said were ‘dad’, ‘mum’ and ‘drone.’
October 7th bill
Yahya Sinwar is considered primarily responsible for the October 7 attack, which resulted in the killing of 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and the detention of 250 hostages, according to Israeli statistics, in the bloodiest days since the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel.
According to Reuters, four Palestinian officials and two sources from governments in the Middle East said in the weeks preceding the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of war in Gaza that Sinwar only sees armed struggle as a way to impose the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Israel responded by launching a large-scale attack that killed more than 42,000 and displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, according to Palestinian health authorities and United Nations statistics.
The conflict has now spread to Lebanon, where Israel has dealt devastating blows to the Iranian-backed armed group Hezbollah, including killing most of its leaders. Tehran, which supports Hamas, may be drawn into open war with Israel.
underground
Sinwar worked in secret, constantly changing locations and using trusted messengers for non-digital communications, according to three Hamas officials and a regional official.
During months of unsuccessful ceasefire talks led by Qatar and Egypt that focused on exchanging Palestinian prisoners for Israeli hostages, Sinwar was the sole decision-maker.
Negotiators waited days for responses passed through a secret chain of messengers.
The killing of Sinwar
One year and 10 days after the October 7 attack, the Israeli army was able to kill Al-Sinwar during clashes during which three gunmen were killed in Tal Al-Sultan in the city of Rafah, and it was later revealed that one of them was Hamas leader Yahya Al-Sinwar.
