Yahya Sinwar He was the man most wanted by the Israeli authorities. Nicknamed “the butcher of Khan Younis”, he was considered the brains of the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023, had not been seen in public since the start of the war.
There was only reappeared with a strange and unusual letter addressed to Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah (later killed in an Israeli attack in late September), according to the Lebanese militant group, in which he reaffirmed his commitment to fighting Israel and supporting the alliance of Iranian-backed militants known as the “Axis of Resistance.”
Who exactly Sinwar was and why he was a key player in Hamas are questions that arise after his death.
Sinwar has been called many things over the past two months: Israeli army spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht called Sinwar a “face of evil” and declared it “walking death”. Israeli media compared him to Osama bin Ladenwhile a profile published by the IDF calls him “the butcher of Khan Younis”.
Israel has publicly accused Yahya Sinwar of being the “mastermind” behind the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks. The Hamas leader in Gaza has a long history with the Palestinian Islamist group and was responsible for building Hamas’ military wing before forging important new ties with regional Arab powers as the group’s civilian and political leader.
Yahya Sinwar was elected to Hamas’ main decision-making body, serving in 2017 as the political head of Hamas’ Gaza branch. Since then, he has become the leader de facto of the leadership of the terrorist group, according to an investigation by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR, for its acronym in English). The US State Department had deemed him a “global terrorist” since 2015 and he had recently been sanctioned by the UK and France.
He was born in a refugee camp
Yahya Sinwar was born in 1962 in a refugee camp in Khan Younessouth of Gaza. His family was displaced from Al-Majdala Palestinian village located in present-day Askhelon, during the Arab-Israeli War. He joined Hamas in the late 1980s and became one of the founders of its fearsome domestic intelligence apparatus, known as Hamas. Majd.
Yahya Sinwar, former head of the Ezzeldin Al Qassam Brigades. He was convicted in 1988 for participating in the killing of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel, and spent more than two decades in an Israeli prison. Sinwar later said that he spent these years studying his enemy, including learn to speak Hebrew.
He was released in 2011 as part of a deal to exchange more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Shalit, an IDF soldier who had been captured and taken to Gaza, where he was held for more than five years . At the time, Sinwar called the exchange “one of the great strategic monuments in the history of our cause.”
Yahya Sinwar learned Hebrew
He has been arrested three times by Israel and is currently free thanks to the 2011 agreement between Hamas and Israel for the soldier’s release. Gilad Shalitwho was held hostage for five years in Gaza.
In 2008, while in an Israeli prison, he underwent surgery at a Jewish hospital where aggressive brain tumor removed. It is said that it was then learned Hebrew.
In early 2017, he was chosen to replace Ismail Haniya as leader of the organization in Gaza. Yahya Sinwar was sentenced to four life sentences for the deaths of five Arabs from Gaza considered “collaborators of the enemy”. His Islamist extremism led him to found Hamas’s internal political police in the 1980s. He returned to the leadership of Hamas and, on February 13, 2017, he was elected head of the organization’s political office in Gaza.
In August this year, the Islamic terrorist group Hamas has named Yahya Sinwar, considered the mastermind of the October 7 attacks against Israel, as the organization’s new political leader. Sinwar, who was until now in charge of the terrorist group in the Gaza Strip, replaces Ismail Haniye, who died during an Israeli attack on Iran on July 31. Hamas has been announcing contacts for days to choose a replacement for Haniye, a key figure in the terrorist group in recent years. The organization confirmed Sinwar’s election through a media outlet linked to the terrorist group.
