Israel vows to kill newly-appointed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar

Hamas named Yahya Sinwar, its top official in Gaza who masterminded the October 7 attacks in Israel, as its new leader yesterday – and it didn’t take long for Israel to declare him a dead man. The selection of Sinwar, a calculated and secretive figure close to Iran, is widely seen as a defiant signal that the group is prepared to keep fighting after the assassination of his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh.

Gaza has suffered 10 months of hell, with huge swathes of the Strip demolished and almost 40,000 people said to have been killed amid incessant Israeli strikes. But Sinwar is a ruthless hardliner who has vowed to fight to the bitter end and worked decades to develop Hamas’ military and intelligence capabilities. Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya television of his appointment: ‘There is only one place for Yahya Sinwar, and it is beside Mohammed Deif and the rest of the October 7th terrorists. That is the only place we’re preparing and intending for him.’

The announcement of Sinwar as the new Hamas leader comes at a particularly volatile moment. Fears of a wider regional war are higher than ever, with Iran vowing revenge against Israel over Haniyeh’s killing and Lebanon’s Hezbollah threatening to retaliate over Israel’s killing of one of its top commanders in an airstrike in Beirut last week. Hamas released a brief statement on his appointment that read: ‘The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas announces the selection of Commander Yahya Sinwar as the head of the political bureau of the movement, succeeding the martyr Commander Ismail Haniyeh, may [God] have mercy on him.’

But Lebanon’s Hezbollah immediately declared its staunch support of Sinwar, highlighting his appointment as a symbol of Israeli failure in Gaza. ‘Selecting the brother Yahya Sinwar from the heart of the besieged Gaza Strip – who is present the frontlines with resistance fighters and between the children of his people, under the rubble, blockade, killings and starvation – reasserts that the goals the enemy is seeking by killing leaders have failed,’ the group said. Even before his appointment as Hamas ‘ political chief, Sinwar was said to be the Palestinian group’s real decision-maker and the chief architect of October 7 along with late military chief Mohammed Deif, who Israel claims to have eliminated in a strike last month.

While his predecessor Haniyeh was seen as Hamas’ leading representative on the international stage and played a direct role in negotiations over a cease-fire in Gaza through U.S., Qatari and Egyptian negotiators, Sinwar maintained control over the group’s day-to-day operations in Gaza, where he has resided ever since October 7. As a result, he has not been seen in public since the attacks, confined to tunnels and secure compounds underground to avoid the threat of Israeli strikes.

Obsessive, disciplined and dictatorial, the wiry, grey-haired 61-year-old is one of Hamas’ most hardline elements and appears hell-bent on continuing the fight against Israel, even as nearly 40,000 of his countrymen and women lie dead with tens of thousands more languishing in famine, disease and homelessness. Sinwar was born in Gaza’s Khan Younis refugee camp in 1962, and was first arrested by Israel in 1982 when he was a student at the Islamic University in Gaza. A founding member of Hamas’ student movement, Sinwar was active during the first intifada against Israel, which started in Gaza in 1987. He also murdered several Gazans he suspected of collaborating with Israeli forces.

Unlike Haniyeh, who was effectively a career lawmaker and politician, Sinwar spent most of his career in the shadows, working his way up through the internal security apparatus of Hamas in between stints in Israeli prisons. There he is said to have learned fluent Hebrew to study his enemy, and he ultimately became one of Hamas’ top political leaders, being appointed as the Palestinian group’s chief in Gaza in 2017.

Known for his secrecy, Sinwar is an excellent security operator, according to Abu Abdallah, a Hamas member who spent years alongside him in Israeli jails. ‘He makes decisions in the utmost calm, but is intractable when it comes to defending the interests of Hamas,’ Abdallah said in 2017 after his former co-detainee was elected Hamas’s leader in Gaza. The Hamas chief was added to the U.S. list of the most wanted ‘international terrorists’ in 2015. In a show of defiance two years ago, Sinwar ended one of his few public speeches by inviting Israel to assassinate him, proclaiming: ‘I will walk back home after this meeting.’

He then did so, shaking hands and taking selfies with people in the streets. But he is also deeply feared for his iron grip in Gaza, where public dissent is suppressed. He is known as the ‘Butcher of Khan Younis’ for his brutal approach to Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. After October 7, Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht called Sinwar the ‘face of evil’ and declared him a ‘dead man walking’.

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