Beirut, Lebanon – Since October 7, when Hamas’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood breached the Israeli-built barrier around Gaza, stormed Israeli towns, killed 1,200 people and took 240 others hostage, Israeli authorities have targeted only one man: Yahya Sinwar.
Israeli officials say Sinwar, head of Hamas in Gaza and a member of its politburo since 2013, was one of the masterminds behind the October 7 attack, along with Mohammed Deif, commander of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, and Marwan Issa, Deif’s deputy. . But Sinwar apparently has the biggest target on his back, as Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have called him a “walking dead man.”
An almost mystical villain
Sinwar, also known as Abu Ibrahim, has a myriad of stories surrounding him, most of which reinforce the idea that he is a quasi-mystical villain.
Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli army spokesman, called Sinwar “the face of evil,” while U.S. President Joe Biden called the attack Sinwar allegedly planned “pure evil.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, has warned that if Hamas is not defeated, “Europe will be next and no one will be safe” and has made concerted efforts to confuse Hamas with ISIL (ISIS).
The man described as “the face of evil” was born in 1962 in a refugee camp in Khan Younis, south of Gaza, to a family that had been displaced by Zionist gangs during the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” of 1948. They were from al-Majdal, a Palestinian village razed and rebuilt to create the Israeli city of Ashkelon.
Before he turned 20, in 1982, Sinwar was first arrested by Israeli authorities for “Islamic activities.” In 1985, he was arrested again and it was during this second stay in prison that he met and became closer to the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Sinwar was attracted to Hamas, and at age 25 he helped found al-Majd, the group’s internal security organization, earning him an uncompromising reputation in his dealings with Palestinians who collaborated with Israel.
Added to this reputation is the interview of former Shin Bet officer Micha Kobi with the Financial Times, who says that Sinwar boasted to him in the late 1980s of having forced the brother of an alleged informant to bury the accused alive.
In 1988, at age 26, Sinwar was arrested and charged with plotting the murder of two Israeli soldiers and killing 12 Palestinians. He was sentenced to four life sentences.
Over the next 22 years in prison, Sinwar remained strictly disciplined, learned to speak and read Hebrew fluently, and became a leader among the prisoners and a focal point in negotiations with prison staff. An Israeli government assessment of his time in prison described Sinwar as charismatic, cruel, manipulative, self-satisfied, cunning and secretive, according to the BBC.
Ehud Yaari, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who interviewed Sinwar four times in prison, told the BBC that Sinwar was a psychopath. “(But) to say about Sinwar, ‘Sinwar is a psychopath, period,’ would be a mistake,” he said, “because then you would miss this strange and complex figure.”
Reach the top
On October 18, 2011, Israel exchanged more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas, and Sinwar was among the Palestinians exchanged for Shalit.
Out of prison, Sinwar quickly rose through the ranks of Hamas. His name landed on Netanyahu’s desk as an assassination target, but the Israeli prime minister reportedly repeatedly rejected plans to kill Sinwar. In 2013, he was elected a member of the Hamas political bureau in the Gaza Strip, before becoming the leader of the movement in Gaza in 2017, replacing Ismail Haniyeh.
“Sinwar has proven himself to be a capable leader,” Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Tel Aviv Tribune, “and the political stakes for Israel are even higher because he was released as part of from a previous prisoner. exchange.”
After rising to the top job, Sinwar participated in reconciliation talks with the Palestinian Authority. But the negotiations ultimately failed. Sinwar has viewed the Palestinian Authority with animosity ever since.
Yet in 2018, Sinwar reported that Hamas’s tactics were moving toward unarmed resistance. Another war with Israel is “certainly not in our interest,” he said at the time.
“Sinwar is a pragmatist, oscillating between political engagement and armed violence depending on circumstances,” Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Tel Aviv Tribune.
But by the end of 2022, Sinwar’s calculus appeared to have changed. On December 14, 2022, Sinwar and other Hamas leaders told a large crowd in Gaza that they predicted “open confrontation” after Israel elected the most right-wing government in its history. Sinwar’s threats were repeated in early 2023.
As the group’s leader, he worked on foreign relations, including repairing ties with Egyptian leaders and rebuilding ties with Iran after disagreements over the Syrian civil war. Today, Sinwar is second only to Ismail Haniyeh in the Hamas hierarchy.
“He is considered one of the key figures who pushed Hamas toward a more militant position,” Byman said.
This may be because he is more visible than other Hamas leaders. For example, analysts like Lovatt believe that Deif was the real mastermind of the October 7 attack. But unlike Sinwar, known for his fiery public speeches, Deif has not been seen publicly in years.
Analysts believe that Sinwar plays a key role in the ongoing negotiations on the exchange of captives and prisoners between Hamas and Israel.
While in captivity, an 85-year-old Israeli peace activist, who has since been released, said she confronted Sinwar when the Hamas leader visited the tunnels where the captives were being held.
“I asked him how he was not ashamed to do such a thing to people who for all these years supported peace,” Yocheved Lifshitz told an Israeli newspaper. ” He did not answer. He was silent.
Yet peace also seems far from the minds of many Israeli and American officials, other analysts say.
They argue that by seeking to portray Sinwar and Hamas as nihilistically violent, Israel and the West are deliberately sidelining any legitimate political goals of Hamas, such as freeing political prisoners or stopping expansion. settlements in the occupied West Bank.
“This is a common aspect of civilizational discourse,” Osamah F Khalil, author of America’s Dream Palace: Middle East Expertise and the Rise of the National Security State, told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“There is an orientalist notion that defines Hamas and Sinwar as so irrelevant that they justify the deaths of 9,000 children and the large-scale destruction of Gaza. »
“Hitler” over the years
Throughout history, many of Israel’s enemies have been compared to Hitler, according to Tamir Sorek, a professor specializing in conflict and resistance in the Palestine/Israel context at Pennsylvania State University.
These “enemies” included Yasser Arafat, the former PLO chairman who became a key partner in peace negotiations with the Israelis, and former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who Khalil said was “described as Hitler on the Nile.
“The atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7 had a huge impact on Israeli society (and) activated the collective memory of the Holocaust and anxieties of annihilation among Jews around the world,” Sorek told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Nonetheless, references to Sinwar as a Hitler-type figure, made by Netanyahu and others in Israel, are also a political move, he suggested.
“(It) also removes responsibility from Israel as a political entity and from the Zionist project, because if Jews are attacked because they are Jews, there is no need to put the October 7 massacre in a context historical, to talk about the massacre of October 7. the siege of Gaza, the 8,000 Gazans killed by Israel from 2000 to October 7, the occupation or the broader apartheid regime that was built in Palestine-Israel.
More than 18,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7.
Dehumanizing enemies – including ordinary Palestinians in general – helps Israel strengthen its case for continuing the attack in Gaza despite international calls for a humanitarian ceasefire.
“Killing or capturing him would allow Israel to claim some form of victory even if much of the Hamas leadership remains intact,” Byman said.
To accommodate Israel’s tactics of targeted assassinations, Hamas has adapted its leadership structure to be less centralized.
“Without Sinwar, and even after the loss of much of Hamas’s senior leadership, the organization would still control Gaza because its rivals are weak and because it has a large number of leaders and fighters. organization,” Byman added.
At the same time, if Sinwar escapes death or capture, it could contribute to Israel’s prolonged punishment of Gaza.
“Israel does not need an excuse to launch airstrikes against Gaza,” Khalil said. “You can still have that bogeyman there.”
