The German magazine “Der Spiegel” published a lengthy report prepared by 7 writers in which they talked about the possible consequences of the raging war between Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the Gaza Strip.
The magazine devoted a large portion of the report to the biography of the head of the Hamas movement in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, whom it considers the mastermind of the October 7 attacks on Israel.
However, the report’s authors concluded that the attack and subsequent developments brought the Palestinian issue back to the center of world attention, and was a “turning point” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as “the situation is no longer what it was before,” and Israel was forced to abandon the illusion With its ability to “manage” the conflict with the Palestinians.
From the results of the attack
As a result of the Hamas attack and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza, the normalization talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia were “suspend,” and both Russia and China now see the current situation as an “opportunity” to impose their influence in the region, while the European Union struggles to determine its future role in this conflict. The US government faces challenges because of its pro-Israel stance and feels isolated, according to a Der Spiegel report.
The German magazine quoted the Israeli expert in the field of opinion polls, Dalia Scheindlin, as saying that the Hamas movement has now become, for many Palestinians, “number one” in the fight against Israel, at a time when the “secular” Fatah movement – which controls the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank – has become No importance.
The report says that this was one of Hamas’ goals, in addition to another goal, which was to detain the largest number of prisoners to pressure the release of Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons.
Undermining Israelis’ sense of security
There is a third goal that may have been on Sinwar’s imagination – according to the magazine – which is to undermine the Israelis’ sense of security, their confidence in the state and the army, and to hit their weak point: the deep fear of annihilating their people, who have been oppressed for thousands of years.
The report’s authors wondered: How did matters reach the point where Hamas became able to launch this violent attack? Why would Hamas risk its rule over the Gaza Strip, or rather its very existence? Can Israel destroy it with this war? Or might Hamas eventually emerge stronger in the long run?
Questions that Der Spiegel advises anyone looking for answers not to ignore Yahya Sinwar.
Who is Hamas and who is Yahya Sinwar?
The report says that the story of Hamas began in December 1987 as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and Yahya Al-Sinwar was in his mid-twenties, and he was his most “diligent” student.
Before that, Yassin and his companions did not participate in the armed resistance, which was dominated by “secular nationalists.” Rather, their goal was to “Islamize” society.
In the 1970s, Yassin obtained a license from the Israeli military administration to establish an Islamic association, and his followers ran schools, clinics, and religious centers. At that time, Israel feared armed nationalists, saw religious Muslims as a “counterweight” to them, and supported them.
When Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization at the time, while he was in exile in Tunisia, was thinking about negotiating with Israel and a two-state solution, Hamas took a different path – according to the report’s authors – as it saw the moment as appropriate for armed struggle.
Establishment of a Palestinian state
Unlike the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, Hamas has been seeking the establishment of a Palestinian state, not “global jihad” or the establishment of a caliphate.
After Hamas began attacking Israelis in 1989, Michael Kobe – who was leading investigations for the Israeli internal security service “Shin Bet” in the Gaza Strip in the late 1980s – decided to take a radical step on May 9 of that year. He ordered the arrest of all Hamas members. Including Yassin and Yahya Al-Sanwar.
The report stated that Kobe met Sinwar personally when the latter was 27 years old. Kobe says that Sinwar “did not say a word at first,” explaining that he was Yassin’s most important aide, and the founder and leader of “Majd,” the internal intelligence service of Hamas, and only under pressure from Yassin did Sinwar speak to him.
“It has been clear to me since then that Hamas is our greatest enemy,” Kobe added, adding, “What we are doing now in Gaza came too late.”
Hamas is everything to him
When Kobe asked him why he did not start a family when he was in his late twenties, Sinwar replied, “Hamas is my wife, my son, my daughter, and my father. Hamas is everything to me,” and stressed that the day will come when Hamas men will come out of prison to destroy Israel.
In 1989, an Israeli court sentenced Sinwar to life imprisonment 4 times, and he went on hunger strike 3 times, and fought for better treatment for his fellow prisoners, before he was released in 2011 as part of a deal under which Israel released 1,027 Palestinian detainees in exchange for soldier Gilad Shalit. .
This deal may have been the model for the attack of last October 7. The report’s authors ask, “If Israel released 1,027 prisoners in exchange for one soldier, what if Hamas kidnapped dozens of Israelis?”
Charisma full of intelligence
Kobe describes the Hamas leader in Gaza as “full of charisma and intelligence.” He learned Hebrew within a few months, showed interest in Israeli history and politics, and learned a little about the Jewish holy book, the Torah.
While Yahya Al-Sanwar was in prison, the world around him was changing. In the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington in 1993, Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed an agreement stipulating the exchange of “land for peace.”
The “Der Spiegel” report touched on the killing of Rabin in 1995 at the hands of an extremist Jew, as “current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Minister for Security Affairs Itamar Ben Gvir were among the main figures who incited the assassination.”
The report indicated that Muhammad Dhia Ibrahim Al-Masry – nicknamed Muhammad Al-Deif – assumed leadership of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, succeeding engineer Yahya Ayyash, who was assassinated by Israel.
The report’s authors claimed that Al-Deif and Al-Sanwar were the ones who planned the attack on October 7th.
The Palestinian Authority rejected
According to the German magazine, Hamas’ victory in the 2006 legislative elections represented a rejection of the Palestinian Authority due to “incompetence and corruption” and an expression of “frustration” with the faltering peace process. Some Christians even voted for the Islamists.
The magazine claims that weakening the Palestinian Authority is the common goal that unites the right in Israel with Hamas in Gaza, and both sides initially benefit from this; As Hamas continues to build its small state, Netanyahu buys calm, continues to expand settlements in the West Bank, and makes the two-state solution seem even more unrealistic.
It is said that Sinwar proposed from inside the prison the idea of digging tunnels to kidnap Israeli soldiers in order to exchange them for Palestinian detainees.
After Sinwar was elected – a few months later – as head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in February 2017, the former leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, presented a new program that included an amendment to the 1988 Hamas Charter in some of its provisions.
Although the new document does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, it is the first time that Hamas has spoken about a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.
Gaza is a hungry tiger trapped in a cage
“In a surprise to many,” the report adds, Al-Sinwar spoke with foreign journalists, saying, “If we have the opportunity to resolve the conflict without destruction, we agree to that. We want to invest in peace and love.”
But Der Spiegel’s report believes that Sinwar’s speech was only one part of his message to journalists. As for the other part, it was “gloomy and foreboding,” as it says that Gaza resembles “a very hungry tiger trapped in a cage,” and that the animal that “the Israelis tried to humiliate has been freed, and no one knows where it will move and what it will do,” adding that Hamas cannot It continues as before: “The conditions here are unbearable and the explosion is inevitable.”
According to the report, it is not easy to weaken Hamas economically, because its main sources of income are abroad. The magazine estimates Hamas’s annual income at about $500 million.
The German magazine confirms – quoting analyst Michael Milstein from Tel Aviv University – that even if Israel succeeds in defeating Hamas militarily, it will continue to exist underground and abroad, “and it cannot be destroyed.”
