After a year of persecution with the most advanced technology, the best Israeli special forces and help from the United States, Yahya Sinwar appears to have finally been assassinated by regular soldiers who happened upon him and who did not even know who they were. had. killed.
Sinwar, the elusive leader of Hamas and mastermind of the October 7 attacks on Israel, was most wanted by Israel. According to initial reports, the soldiers were not part of an operation to assassinate him and did not even know he might be nearby. They did not realize that Sinwar was the person they had killed until they carefully examined his face and found his identification documents.
Until he was found, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) destroyed much of the Gaza Strip and ended the lives of more than 42,000 Palestinians, expelling 2 million people from their homes – almost the entire population. a human disaster that Israel committed after the surprise attack by Hamas, in which more than 1,200 Israelis died and 250 others were kidnapped.
Before his death, the last time Sinwar was seen was a few days after the October 7 attack, when he appeared in the darkness of an underground Gaza tunnel to speak to a group of hostages . In fluent Hebrew, perfected during his more than 22 years in an Israeli prison, Sinwar assured them that they were safe and would soon be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.
One of the hostages was Yocheved Lifshitz (85), a veteran peace activist from kibbutz Nir Oz, who responded to the Hamas leader: “I asked him how it was possible that he was not ashamed to do something like that to people who had supported peace all these years,” said the woman in the Davar newspaper after her release: after 16 days of captivity. “[Sinwar] “He didn’t respond, he remained silent.”
A few months later, the Israeli military discovered video recorded by Hamas security cameras around the same time that day, October 10. It showed Sinwar following his wife and three children through a narrow tunnel until they disappeared into the darkness.
Brute force, advanced technology and the massacre of civilians
The ferocious manhunt that Israel launched after the attacks required a combination of brute force and advanced technology. Sinwar’s pursuers demonstrated their willingness to do everything to kill the Hamas leader and destroy his entourage, even at the cost of a massacre of civilian victims.
Under the authority of the Israeli Security Agency (better known as Shabak or Shin Bet), the hunters It was staffed by spy officers, IDF special operations units, military engineers and surveillance experts. A group which has institutional and personal reasons to be forgiven for the security failures which made the October 7 attack possible.
Despite this, they went through more than a year of frustration. “If, at the start of the war, they had told me that [Sinwar] I would still be alive [un año después]“It would have seemed unbelievable to me,” admitted Michael Milshtein, former head of the Palestinian affairs section of Israeli military intelligence (known as Aman). “But remember that Sinwar had been preparing for this offensive for a decade, the IDF spy services were very surprised by the size and length of the tunnels under Gaza, as well as their sophistication. »
Some members of the Israeli defense believed that Sinwar would surround himself with hostages to use them as human shieldsalthough others said it would delay their travel and put a spotlight on the people around them. It is true that the risk of ending the lives of the hostages did not prevent the IDF from launching 900 kilo bombs against targets where, according to them, Hamas leaders could be found.
According to information provided by Israel, no trace of the hostages was ultimately found near Sinwar when he was discovered and killed. He was apparently in the company of only two men.
If Sinwar’s persecutors shared one attribute, it was experience: selective killings have been a fundamental strategy of the army since the creation of the State of Israel. The country has killed more people than any other Western country since World War II.
Within the Corps of Combat Engineers, the Yahalom Special Section has more experience in tunnel warfare than any other similar section in the West, in addition to having the latest generation American radars for this type of infrastructure. After decades of spying on Hamas communications, Israeli clandestine unit 8200 is a world leader in electronic warfare.
The Shin Bet lost many of its sources in Gaza in 2005, when Israel ended its presence in the territory, but since the ground invasion began in October 2023, it has worked hard to rebuild the network of informants , by recruiting them among the flows of Palestinians. desperately fleeing from the onslaught.
Before Thursday’s deadly encounter and despite the formidable capabilities of the task force created to catch Sinwar, it only came close to catching him once. It was late January in a bunker near his hometown, Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza. When he fled, the leader left behind clothes and more than a million shekels. [unos 250.000 euros] in bundles of notes. Although some thought his escape was a sign of panic, latest reports indicate that Sinwar left the scene days before Israeli forces stormed the bunker.
Sinwar, in secret
One of the hypotheses of the team responsible for tracking him was that Sinwar had abandoned all types of electronic communication, aware of the skills and technological tools of his pursuers.
In Israeli prison, Sinwar not only studied Hebrew. Also, the habits and culture of your enemy. According to Milshtein, who now works at Tel Aviv University in the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies, Sinwar “truly understands the basic instincts and deepest feelings of Israeli society.” . “I’m pretty sure his every move is based on his understanding of Israel,” he said.
During his year in hiding, Sinwar maintained communication with the outside world, although with apparent difficulty. The long and unsuccessful negotiations for a ceasefire, mediated by Egypt and Qatar, were often interrupted by the time that elapsed between sending messages to the clandestine commander and his response.
The prevailing theory is that to stay in charge, Sinwar resorted to messengers, starting with his brother Mohammed, Gaza’s top military commander. These people were part of a small, increasingly selective clique of aides he trusted.
The team pursuing him gambled on Sinwar’s need to use messengers to issue orders and control hostage negotiations. They hoped the smugglers would ultimately be their undoing, as was the case for Osama bin Laden, whose hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, was discovered by tracking one of them after years of the team’s search. American woman who tracked him down.
It is also believed that it was a courier who led the trackers to Mohammed Deif, the largest Israeli war trophy before Sinwar. On July 13 at 10:30 a.m., the veteran Hamas commander and first on Israel’s most wanted list since 1995, emerged from a hiding place near the Al Mawasi displaced persons camp. He was accompanied by Rafaa Salameh, a close lieutenant.
According to the IDF version, the bombs dropped by Israeli fighters killed the two men in an instant. And also dozens of Palestinians. But according to Hamas, Deif is not dead. The truth is that we haven’t seen him since.
Many members of the Israeli security services regretted the apparent historic opportunity they missed in September 2003, when their planes prepared to bomb the house where all the Hamas leaders were meeting. Instead of destroying the entire building with a hail of bombs, for fear of civilian casualties, after discussions within the military chain of command, the Israeli Air Force launched a precision missile against the so-called meeting room. They entered the wrong room and the Hamas leaders survived.
The likelihood of killing large numbers of civilians was no longer an obstacle in July 2024. For the attack on Deif, the plane used 900 kilo bombs, the same ones the Biden administration had suspended sending in may due to their indiscriminate destruction. . Israel reportedly dropped eight such bombs on July 13. 90 Palestinians were killed and nearly 300 injured.
Assassinate a Prominent Leader
According to Yossi Melman, co-author of “Spies Against Armageddon” and author of other books on Israeli espionage, it is possible that Deif made a mistake that Sinwar had managed to avoid. “Maybe Deif was more arrogant or maybe he thought ‘they tried to kill me so many times, I lost an eye and an arm but I still survived, so can -may God be with me.” “The Shabak and the army have been waiting for this opportunity, the basis of all these selective killings is waiting for a small mistake from the other party,” Melman explained.
Last year, the possibility of an agreement on Sinwar’s exile was on the table during negotiations in Cairo and Doha. Some have suggested that Sinwar may have crossed the border and hid in Egyptian territory, in a tunnel in the town of Rafah. But these theories underestimated the ideological zeal of a man who had risen through the ranks of Hamas by establishing himself as the executioner of suspected informants.
“It is in the most fundamental of his DNA, to stay in Gaza and fight to the death, he will prefer to die in his bunker,” predicted a few months ago Milshtein, who, within the Military Intelligence Service, devoted himself to the study of Sinwar and other Hamas leaders.
If this is true, Sinwar died getting his wish. Given the determination of both parties, perhaps this death was written into their destiny. Sinwar would never leave or surrender, and if the hunt by high-tech spy services failed, Israel would raze Gaza to the ground.
Another question is whether his death will serve to stop the war. As Ram Ben-Barak, former deputy director of the Mossad (foreign intelligence service), said after Sinwar’s fall, “another will come.” “This is an ideological war, not a Sinwar war.”
“After almost 50 years of killings, we understand that this is a fundamental part of the game. “Sometimes you have to assassinate a very prominent leader,” Milshtein said. “But to start thinking that this is going to change the rules of the game and that an ideological organization is going to collapse by killing one of its leaders is a total mistake,” he added. “You can’t fantasize, it won’t end the war.”
Translation of Francisco de Zárate
