Days after October 7 last year, Israeli investigators identified Yahya Sinwar, then Hamas military leader in Gaza, as the mastermind of the surprise attack on Israel.
To their astonishment, they learned that Sinwar had not only conceived what he called “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” but had planned and organized the assault almost single-handedly. Only a handful of close associates had been informed of the plans, some just days before the attack, which killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, kidnapped more than 250 Israelis and was followed by an Israeli massacre which has so far caused more than 42,000 deaths. and devastated the Gaza Strip.
His unwavering commitment to the Hamas cause marked Sinwar’s activist career.
Born in a refugee camp in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, to parents forced to flee their home in what became Israel in 1948, Sinwar was drawn to Islamist activism as a teenager. In the early 1980s, Sinwar, a science student at the Islamic University of Gaza, contacted Ahmed Yasin, a charismatic cleric who established a local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In 1987, Yasin recruited Sinwar to the newly created Hamas group and appointed him head of its fledgling intelligence service. Its tasks included discovering and punishing Israeli spies and collaborators, as well as people in Gaza who violated Hamas’s strict codes of “morality.” Sinwar followed through with determination, later confessing to murdering at least 12 Palestinians.
Arrested in 1988 and sentenced to four life sentences for attempted murder and sabotage, he spent 23 years in Israeli prisons. In prison, Sinwar refused to speak to Israelis and personally punished those who did, according to a former Israeli interrogator who worked at the facility where Sinwar was held. He also tried to escape several times: “He is a 1,000% committed man and 1,000% violent, a very, very tough man,” the interrogator said.
But Sinwar was also a subtle and quick-witted political operator who decided to take advantage of his years in prison to learn Hebrew and study his enemy. Sinwar repeatedly organized prison strikes to improve his working conditions and survived brain cancer in 2008 after being treated by Israeli doctors. Sinwar also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel in which he describes life and activism in Gaza.
He was to be among a thousand prisoners to be exchanged in 2011 for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas five years earlier, but Sinwar rejected the deal. The agreement was still respected and Sinwar, returning to Gaza, immediately returned to the front line of militancy. A journalist who met him at the time told the Guardian that the Hamas leader was so focused that it was as if “the world didn’t exist behind his eyes.”
In Gaza, where Hamas had seized power four years earlier, Sinwar married, had children, and quickly began to gain supporters. He crushed an attempt by independent jihadists to establish a beachhead in the territory and is credited with the 2016 assassination of another senior Hamas commander, Mahmoud Ishtewi, in an internal power struggle.
With his well-established reputation for determination, Sinwar took overall command of Hamas in Gaza in 2018, cementing relations between the organization’s military and civilian administrative wings and gradually alienating political leaders abroad.
Convinced that capturing Israeli soldiers was the “only way to free the prisoners”, a task he saw as central to his view of Hamas’s role, Sinwar began planning a major operation aimed at providing a bargaining chip to free Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
It is not known exactly when he conceived what became the October 7 attacks, but it is possible that he considered different plans for many years. In 2022, Israel seized on a Hamas plan for a major attack across the fence, dubbed the Wall of Jericho. Despite its importance, the project was abandoned because authorities believed the group was incapable of carrying out such an operation.
Sinwar also spread a smokescreen, lulling Israel into false security with potentially misleading public statements.
In 2022, Hamas produced a television series called Fist of the Free, which showed its militants massively attacking Israel. Sinwar presented awards to all participants in a public ceremony, praising the series’ accuracy in a speech and saying their work was “an integral part of what we’re doing.”
Analysts are divided on whether Sinwar foresaw the consequences of the October 7 raid, as well as its main objectives. It seems clear that he thought Hezbollah would launch a supporting offensive against Israel – which did not happen – and perhaps he thought Israel would not attack Gaza as it has for the past year with so many Israeli hostages.
After the October 7 attack, Sinwar went into hiding, possibly in the network of tunnels that Hamas built under southern Gaza. Until his assassination by Israel.
