Who Is Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s New Political Leader?

[Pelican Press 0]

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Who Is Yahya Sinwar, ******’s New Political Leader?

Yahya Sinwar, the newly named political chief of ****** and one of the architects of the Oct. 7 ******-led ******* on *******, has long been viewed as one of the militant group’s most influential leaders, wielding outsize power while remaining mostly hidden in underground tunnels beneath Gaza. His selection on Tuesday as ******’s top diplomatic leader — replacing Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Iran last week — consolidates his power.

Here’s what we know about Mr. Sinwar and his past.

Formative years

Mr. Sinwar was born in Gaza in 1962 to a family that had fled its home, along with several hundred thousand other ************ ****** who fled or were forced to flee during the wars surrounding the creation of the state of *******. This displacement deeply influenced his decision to join ****** in the 1980s.

Mr. Sinwar had been recruited by ******’s founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who made him chief of an internal security unit known as Al Majd. His job was to find and punish those suspected of violating Islamic morality laws or cooperating with the ******** occupiers, a position that eventually landed him in trouble with ******** authorities.

A crucible

Mr. Sinwar was imprisoned in 1988 for murdering four Palestinians whom he accused of apostasy or collaborating with *******, according to ******** court records. He spent more than two decades in prison in *******, where he learned Hebrew and developed an understanding of ******** culture and society.

While incarcerated, Mr. Sinwar took advantage of an online university program and devoured ******** news. He translated into Arabic

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of contraband Hebrew-language autobiographies written by the former heads of *******’s domestic security agency, Shin Bet.

Yuval Bitton, an ******** dentist who treated Mr. Sinwar when he was in custody and who developed a relationship with him, said Mr. Sinwar had surreptitiously shared the translated pages so that inmates could study the agency’s counterterrorism tactics. Mr. Sinwar liked to call himself a “specialist in the ******* people’s history,” Dr. Bitton said.

The two men spoke regularly. “The conversations with Sinwar were not personal or emotional,” Dr. Bitton said. “They were only about ******.”

Mr. Sinwar knew the Quran by heart, and he coolly ***** out his organization’s governing doctrines, Dr. Bitton said, describing Mr. Sinwar’s motivations as religious and not political.

During his time in prison, Mr. Sinwar also wrote a novel called “The Thorn and the Carnation,” a coming-of-age

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: The narrator, a Gazan boy named Ahmed, emerges from hiding during the 1967 *****-******** war to a life under ******** occupation, which causes the “chests of youth to boil like a cauldron.” In retaliation, Ahmed’s friends and family ******* the occupiers and those who collaborate with the ******. Woven throughout the book is the theme of the unending sacrifice demanded by the resistance.

Mr. Sinwar once

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that prison is a crucible. “Prison builds you,” he said, adding that it gave him time to reflect on what he believed in and the price he would be willing to pay for it.

Nonetheless, Mr. Sinwar tried to escape from custody several times, once digging a ***** in his cell floor in hopes of tunneling under the prison and exiting through the visitor center. And he found ways to plot against ******* with ****** leaders on the outside, managing to smuggle cellphones into the prison and use lawyers and visitors to ferry messages out, including about finding ways to kidnap ******** soldiers to trade for ************ prisoners.

These activities foreshadowed the approach Mr. Sinwar would take years later when planning the Oct. 7 ******* on *******.

After prison

When he was released from ******** prison in a prisoner swap in 2011, Mr. Sinwar said that the capture of ******** soldiers was, after years of ******* negotiations, the proven tactic for freeing Palestinians incarcerated by *******. “For the prisoner, capturing an ******** soldier is the best news in the universe, because he knows that a glimmer of hope has been opened for him,” Mr. Sinwar said at the time.

After his release from prison, Mr. Sinwar married and had children. He has said little in public about his family but once remarked that “the first words my son spoke were ‘father,’ ‘mother’ and ‘drone.’”

His hard-line stance suggests that he will not be eager to reach a cease-***** agreement with ******* that would end the fighting in Gaza and lead to the return of about 115 hostages, living and *****, taken from ******* who are still being held in Gaza.

Indeed, ******** and U.S. intelligence officers have said that Mr. Sinwar’s strategy is to keep the war in Gaza going for as long as it takes to shred *******’s international reputation and to damage its relationship with its primary ally, the ******* States.

What does this mean for cease-***** negotiations?

Since the war began, most cease-***** talks have taken place in Egypt and Qatar. But Mr. Sinwar has still played a principal role, even from his hide-out in Gaza. Throughout the talks, Mr. Sinwar’s consent has been required by ******’s negotiators before they agree to any concessions, according to officials familiar with the talks.

While ****** officials have previously insisted that Mr. Sinwar does not have the final say in the group’s decisions, his leadership role in Gaza and his forceful personality have given him outsize importance in how ****** operates, according to allies and foes alike.

“There’s no decision that can be made without consulting Sinwar,” said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a ****** member and political analyst who befriended Mr. Sinwar while they were both jailed in ******* during the 1990s and 2000s. “Sinwar isn’t an ordinary leader. He’s a powerful person and an architect of events,” Mr. al-Awawdeh added.

Waiting for Mr. Sinwar’s approval has often slowed cease-***** negotiations. ******** strikes have damaged much of Gaza’s communications infrastructure, and it has sometimes taken a day to get a message to Mr. Sinwar and another day to receive a response.

Mr. Sinwar has sometimes disagreed with ****** leaders outside Gaza and is seen as less ready to concede ground to the ******** negotiators, in part because he knows that he is likely to be ******* whether or not the war ends. The ****** of his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, in an ********** in Tehran last week, lends credence to this perception, as has *******’s response.

“The appointment of arch-********** Yahya Sinwar as the new leader of ******, replacing Ismail Haniyeh, is yet another compelling reason to swiftly eliminate him and wipe this vile organization off the face of the earth,” ******* Katz, *******’s foreign minister, said in a post on social media on Tuesday.

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#Yahya #Sinwar #Hamass #Political #Leader

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