Yahya Sinwar has requested Hamas operatives to revive suicide bombings as the mastermind behind the terror group’s October 7 massacre takes it down an even more radical path.
The Hamas leader, 62, increasingly viewed as a violent ‘megalomaniac’ by senior officials within the group has ordered commanders in the West Bank to renew suicide attacks in Israel as he replaces slain Ismail Haniyeh as head of the organisation, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The chilling order was given shortly before a failed suicide bombing in Tel Aviv in August, the report stated, citing anonymous Arab intelligence officials.
Several senior Hamas members reportedly had reservations about the decision, but have chosen not to speak out against the practice since Sinwar claimed power.
In the past week alone, Hamas has claimed two separate shooting attacks in Israel, ome in Tel Aviv that killed seven and one in Beersheba that claimed the life of a female Israeli soldier.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has requested the terror group’s operatives to resume suicide bombings (pictured in 2022)
A billboard of new Hamas leader Yahya Al-Sinwar hanging on a wall at the Palestine Square in Tehran, Iran, 12 August 2024
In July, the leader of Hamas’s political wing, Ismail Haniyeh, was blown up while visiting Tehran to attend the inauguration of the Iranian president. Pictured with Sinwar in 2019
Now, Sinwar is pushing his more violent vision onto Hamas as the Israeli military closes in on the terror group in Gaza amid the ongoing conflict.
Hamas officials in Doha, while publicly praising the October 7 attack, began criticising Sinwar behind closed doors as a ‘megalomaniac,’ according to Arab and Hamas officials.
Haniyeh and others were talking about Sinwar in ‘no uncertain terms,’ Ehud Yaari, an Israeli columnist who interviewed Sinwar in prison, told the Journal.
‘That he made a mistake, that he’s a political amateur.’
The report cited unnamed current and former Arab and Israeli officials who said Sinwar surprised even other Hamas members overseas with the timing of the October 7, 2023, onslaught.
This prompted Hamas officials in Qatar to privately call Sinwar a ‘megalomaniac,’ the report said, adding that Sinwar has recently been talking about the current war and his own role in it in ‘increasingly grandiose terms.’
After Haniyeh’s assassination in July, Hamas political officials had reportedly suggested former leader Khaled Mashaal as his successor, before the Sinwar-led military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, sent a message that Sinwar must be picked.
The Journal report also confirmed previous reports that Sinwar has recently renewed contact with ceasefire-and-hostage deal mediators, citing unnamed Arab officials involved in the negotiations.
The outlet claimed it viewed a handwritten letter by Sinwar from last month in which the terror chief said Hamas is ready for a prolonged war of attrition to ‘break Israel’s will’ and pave the way for the nation’s demise.
The report said the letter quoted the Quran: ‘And they ask, ‘When will that be?’ Say, ‘Perhaps it will be soon.’
Soon after Sinwar claimed control of Hamas, he gave the directive to relaunch suicide bombings to Zaher Jabarin, a Hamas fundraiser who recently took over responsibility for the West Bank from another Hamas leader killed in an Israeli airstrike, according to the outlet.
In his final video message, Muna, the suicide bomber in Tel Aviv, summed up Sinwar’s zero-sum approach to fighting Israel using the motto of Hamas’s armed wing.
‘It is Jihad, victory, or martyrdom,’ he said.
Sinwar also reportedly revived contact with mediators in Qatar this week to explore the possibility of receiving immunity in any potential ceasefire-for-hostages agreement, according to Israel’s Channel 12 news.
The Qatari mediators allegedly advised Sinwar to focus on the hostages, who are the main concern, rather than on his current situation.
Israel accuses Sinwar (pictured) of masterminding the unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war
A Pro-Palestinian protester holds a picture of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar during a march ahead of the October 7 attack anniversary near the White House in Washington
A man carries a child while walking past a collapsed building in the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip on October 9
Sinwar had spent decades in an Israeli prison after being convicted in 1989 of conducting the kidnapping and execution of two Israeli soldiers.
Known as the ‘Butcher from Khan Younis’ due to his enthusiastic execution of Palestinians alleged to have collaborated with Israel, Sinwar was released from jail as part of the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas.
Always considered a hardliner within Hamas, he is infamous for his key role in founding Hamas’s military wing and security services, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam brigades and Majd, which committed numerous terror attacks against Israelis prior to October 7.
It comes as the Hamas head was spotted in black and white images, uncovered by IDF troops during a raid earlier this year, tha showed a man believed to be Sinwar making his way through a tunnel along with his wife and three children, while carrying a large bag.
‘In that bag is about 25kg of dynamite. Around him are at least 20 hostages,’ according to Kobi Michael, Sinwar’s former Shin Bet interrogator.
‘A few times we have had the chance to kill him, but if we do, he will kill all the hostages around him.’
The black and white images (one pictured above), reportedly taken on October 10, show a man said to be Sinwar being led through a tunnel together with a woman and three children are said to be the first of him since the Israel-Hamas war broke out
The IDF says the man circled in red above is Yahya Sinwar in footage reportedly taken on October 10
A man stands before a collapsed building in the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip on October 9
Some 97 hostages who were kidnapped on October 7, 2023, are believed to still be in Gaza a year on. It is not known how many have died in captivity.
In a year of retribution for the cross-border terror attack by Hamas, relentless Israel bombing of Gaza has resulted in the deaths of more than 40,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Israel’s military said it has hit more than 40,000 targets, found 4,700 tunnel shafts and destroyed 1,000 rocket launcher sites during its year-long bombardment of the Strip.
Sinwar is unrepentant about the October 7 attacks, people in contact with him have said, despite unleashing an Israeli invasion that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, laid waste to his homeland and rained destruction on ally Hezbollah.
The list of Hamas leaders killed in the months since includes Mohammed Deif, the head of the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, who was killed in an airstrike on Gaza.
Saleh al-Arouri, a founding commander of the al-Qassam Brigades, was assassinated in an explosion in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, which is a stronghold for Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas and part of Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’.
Then in July, the leader of Hamas’s political wing, Ismail Haniyeh, was blown up, most likely by Israel, while visiting Tehran to attend the inauguration of the Iranian president.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk