Last man standing: the hunt for Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar
His high-ranking colleagues have been killed but the ‘cruel, cunning’ ideologue who masterminded the October 7 attacks has disappeared into the tunnels beneath Gaza.
Only one of the high-value Hamas targets sought by Israel remains – Yahya Sinwar. After the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader, and Israel’s confirmation that it has killed Mohammed Deif, the military chief, Sinwar is the last man standing.
The group’s leader in Gaza, a veteran of the Israeli prison system, was behind the October 7 attack on Israeli communities across the border with Gaza.
A committed ideologue, it appears that he did not care about the horror it would visit upon his people.
Sinwar was let out of an Israeli jail in 2011 as part of a deal that accompanied the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier. He returned to lead Hamas in Gaza and consolidate the territory’s repressive internal security system, focusing on those suspected of collaborating with Israel.
Since October 7, he has disappeared into the group’s network of tunnels. His name appears on arrest warrants awaiting approval by the International Criminal Court.
Sinwar, 62, was born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Gaza to parents who had fled their homes in what became Israel during what Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe, in 1948.
He grew up under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement founded in Egypt that began as a charity but later fostered a nascent Hamas.
He fell under the sway of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who founded Hamas. Sinwar took responsibility for internal security and the repression that went with ensuring the loyalty of the local population.
He was jailed by Israel in 1988 for the killing of two Israeli soldiers as well as the murder of 12 Palestinians suspected of collaboration. In one case, Sinwar told interrogators that he forced a man to bury his brother alive with only a spoon.
An intelligence assessment said he was “cruel, authoritative, influential” while noting his “unusual abilities of endurance” and “ability to carry crowds”.
From his cell he targeted informants and helped co-ordinate the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. He studied his enemy in detail, learning Hebrew and poring over modern Israeli history.
Yassin’s assassination by Israel in 2004 paved the way for Sinwar to become the figure in which Hamas would unite their dual priorities – repressive leadership and a hatred of Israel.
That year he survived a brain tumour thanks to the skills of Israeli surgeons. In 2011 he was freed in the Shalit prisoner swap.
Israeli officials tried to exclude him from the negotiations, putting him in solitary confinement. But ultimately they had to submit to Palestinian demands.
Sinwar shunned the comfortable life chosen by Haniyeh, who was living mostly in Qatar and serving as the Hamas envoy.
He was secretly elected in 2017 to succeed Haniyeh as the Hamas leader in Gaza, taking on his role with gusto.
He ordered Hamas fighters to capture more Israeli soldiers than ever as currency for swaps with the cell mates he had left behind in Israel.
Prolonged contact with Sinwar gave Israeli security chiefs a false sense of security. Before October 7, Israel was satisfied that while Sinwar was a violent extremist, he was more preoccupied with ensuring Hamas’s grip over Gaza than war. They had perhaps forgotten the part of the intelligence assessment of Sinwar that noted he was “cunning and manipulative” and able to “keep secrets even inside prison”.
Soon after the October 7 attack, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said Sinwar was a “dead man walking”. Those who have dealt with him say there is no chance that he would willingly be taken alive.
Gershon Baskin, 68, the Israeli who negotiated the Shalit prisoner swap, said: “Sinwar knows very well he will be killed.” He has cited future martyrdom as a reason for having at least eight children to succeed him.
On November 7, Israel claimed to have trapped Sinwar in a Gaza bunker. Airdropped leaflets offered a bounty of $US400,000 for information on him.
In February, however, Israel’s military released footage of Sinwar and his family moving through tunnels under Khan Yunis, believed to have been taken on October 10.
Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, an Israeli peace activist taken hostage on October 7 and later released, said she and other hostages met Sinwar in the tunnels and he had spent several days with them, conversing in Hebrew.
Her testimony contributed to an Israeli assessment that Sinwar was using the hostages as a human shield.
“I asked him how he wasn’t ashamed, to do such a thing to people who for years support peace,” Lifshitz said. “He didn’t answer. He was quiet.”
The Times
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