Yahya Sinwar is perhaps the most influential figure in Palestine at the moment. He spent most of his 56 years in prison, whether it was an Israeli prison or an open prison like Gaza. Gazans gathered around television on May 16, 2013, two days after Israel killed 60 Palestinian protesters on the border between Gaza and Israel, to see if a new wave of incitement and violence would push them toward another war.They were not listening to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, nor to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, but to Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, who would represent all of Palestine in the future. They were not listening to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, nor to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, but to Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, who would represent all of Palestine in the future. Yahya Sinwar was pressured by those who fought against oppression to avenge the dead. But despite this, he announced to Al Jazeera that Hamas will continue its peaceful popular resistance. It was very surprising to hear such a statement from Yahya Sinwar.
Yahya Sinwar was born in Khan Yunis camp in Gaza, he is one of the founding members of Hamas. He also helped Hamas create secret police tasked with identifying Palestinians who cooperated with Israel. Yahya Sinwar was sentenced to life imprisonment four times by the Israeli court in 1988. The situation took a critical turn when Israel exchanged prisoners for the release of its soldier held by Hamas. Israel used Yahya Sinwar for negotiations. He was allowed to talk to the leaders of Hamas, who wanted the release of more than 1,000 of their people in exchange for an Israeli soldier. Israel recognized all but a few names, including that of Yahya Sinwar. He was released from prison in 2011. Some in Israel regretted that decision when they saw Yahya Sinwar become the commander of the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.
Since its establishment in 1980, Hamas has been divided between its political elite and fighters from the al-Qassam Brigades. This division deepened in 2014 after the third Hamas-Israel conflict. Because of Yahya Sunwar’s past and years spent in Israeli prisons, he has considerable influence in Hamas’s military circles. The opinion of Israeli analysts was that Yahya Sinwar will face difficulties in political matters, all their opinions proved wrong, in 2019 when Yahya Sinwar was chosen to take over the administration of Gaza, not only Israelis but also Palestinian citizens. There were doubts about Yahya Sinwar’s leadership. The Israeli army chief said that the appointment of Yahya Sinwar has closed the gap between the political and military wing of Hamas. Gazans feared that a man who had spent many years in an Israeli prison would be aggressive and hard-line. Israeli investigators say about Yahya Al-Sinwar that he is a very strict and practical person. Former Palestinian security chief Muhammad Dahlan also had the same opinion about him.
Yahya Sinwar limited the role of Hamas leaders outside Palestine. They also temporarily silenced hardline voices in Gaza. Hamas has spent years building a network of underground tunnels to send its fighters across the border to wreak havoc on Israeli territory. But since 2016, the Israeli army has been tracking and destroying these tunnels with the help of a secret technology. The head of Al-Qassam Brigade, Muhammad Al-Zaif, wanted these tunnels to be used as soon as possible, but Yahya Sanwar rejected this.
But all this did not indicate a fundamental change, but rather a strategic move by Hamas to adopt a peaceful approach. Even the Gazan fighters continued to believe that their meagre stockpile of arms and ammunition could not cause significant damage to Israel. Hamas realists believe that any further conflict with Israel could prove disastrous for Gaza. In his first meeting with foreign journalists, Yahya Sinwar said, “The most dangerous thing is that the hope of a dignified life is disappearing among the youth in Gaza, which needs to be addressed immediately, otherwise It will be very difficult to stop the youth, impulse to sacrifice one’s life against tyranny”.
On the other hand, Israeli investigators and government officials continued to use their insidious political tactics to propagate that Yahya Sinwar was a very determined person. He appears to be a better leader than Mahmoud Abbas, but if Yahya Sinwar wants to lead Palestine, he cannot do so with an armed group. The world will not recognize Hamas until it The path of violence is not abandoned. Yahya Sinwar is more powerful than any Hamas leader in the recent past. Now they have to decide how realistic they can be.
Now, despite the 48-day fiercest war and 70% of Gaza being turned into ruins, Yahya Sinwar is still missing, and thousands of Israeli soldiers are trying to find him with the help of drones and advanced equipment and spies. Yahya al-Sinwar, the head of Hamas’s political department in Gaza, a unique figure with full black eyebrows despite his full white head and beard, is on the list of Hamas leaders wanted by Israel. This is because Israel blames him and other Hamas leaders for the October 7 attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and took 200 hostages.
In early October, Israel Defence Forces Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said that “Yahya Sinwar is a commander and he will be killed.” IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said, “Yahya Sinwar made the decision to carry out this deadly attack. That is why all those who worked with him, including him, will be killed if caught.” Among them is Muhammad al-Zaif, who is the head of the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.
Hewlett, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Affairs (ECFR), believes al-Zaif was among those who planned the October 7 attacks because it was a military operation, but Al-Sinwar “may have been part of that group.” who planned the attack and influenced the decision. “Al-Sinwar is believed to be the deputy of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and is believed by Israel to be in underground tunnels in Gaza with his bodyguards and for fear of anyone. They are not communicating so that Israel does not know about their location.
61-year-old Yahya al-Sinwar, known as Abu Ibrahim, was born in a refugee camp in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip. His parents were from Asqalan and they were forced to leave their homeland in 1948 as a result of the Nakba, the establishment of Israel. He received a bachelor’s degree in Arabic from the university.
Ahad Yari, a research fellow at the Washington Institute of Near East Policy, interviewed Al-Sinwar four times in prison. There was a strong youth movement for which they would go to mosques while living the poverty of the refugee camps, which would later become of equal importance to Hamas. Al-Sinwar was first arrested by Israel in 1982 when he was 19. He was arrested again in 1985 for “extremist activities”. That was the time that he gained the trust of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the wheelchair-bound founder of Hamas. According to Kobe Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, the closeness between the two had increased greatly. This relationship left an indelible impression of loyalty and sincerity on Al-Sinwar’s organization.
Two years later, in 1987, Hamas was established and al-Sinwar himself established the group’s internal security department, which was named al-Majd. He was only 25 years old at that time. Al-Majjad quickly became notorious for punishing people accused of mass crimes. According to Michael, he raided stores that sold “sex videos” and executed anyone accused of collaborating with Israel. was According to Yari, “He is the kind of man around whom his supporters and admirers gather. In 1988, al-Sinwar allegedly planned the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers. He was arrested that year and served 12 years in Israel.” He was sentenced to life imprisonment four times for murdering people.
Al-Sinwar spent 22 years in prison from 1988 to 2011, which is a large part of his middle age. He also spent some time in solitary confinement there, and due to this, his grief and revenge against this cruelty became more intense. “He was able to establish his rule through force,” Yari added. “According to the Israeli government, he is a “tyrannical” domineering and influential leader with extraordinary abilities of endurance, cunning and manipulation, and of spending little resources. He kept secrets among the inmates even in prison, and he had an immense ability to lead a mob.”
Yari’s analysis of Al-Sinwar is also interesting. It comes after all the meetings that took place between them in prison. According to Yari, he is a “psychopath” but to simply say that Al-Sinwar is a psychopath would be a mistake because then you would be ignoring his mysterious and complex personality. Al-Sinwar is a very witty and cunning person who knows how to add and detract from the attractiveness of his personality. Al-Sinwar says that Israel must be destroyed and there is no place for Jews in Palestine. At the same time, he would jokingly say, “Maybe we can make room for them.”
While in prison Al-Sinwar had mastered the Hebrew language and read Israeli newspapers. Al-Sinwar always preferred to speak with them in Hebrew even though Yaari himself could speak Arabic. According to Yari, “He wanted to improve his Hebrew. I think he wanted to master the language by talking to someone who could speak Hebrew better than the prison warden.”
Al-Sinwar was released in 2011 following a deal that freed 1,028 Palestinian and Israeli Arab prisoners in exchange for the release of a lone Israeli soldier hostage, “Jaladshalit”. It should be noted that Shalit was held hostage for 5 years after the abduction and this work was done by al-Sinwar’s brother, who is still a senior military commander of Hamas, along with other Hamas operatives. Al-Sinwar has since called for the kidnapping of more Israeli soldiers, and this policy is behind the kidnapping of Israelis in the recent war. Remember that this time three Israeli generals and other important Israeli officials are under the control of Hamas. By that time, Israel had ended its occupation of the Gaza Strip and it was under the control of Hamas. This happened due to winning the election and completely eliminating his rival Yasser Arafat’s al-Fatah party from the belt. Meanwhile, several workers of Al-Fatah Party were thrown from the top of the buildings.
According to Michael, when Al-Sinwar returned to Gaza, he was immediately recognized as the leader. This had more to do with the fact that he had made a name for himself as the founding leader of Hamas and had spent 22 years of his life in prison. Also, people loved his loyalty and planning.
Yari says that he does not know how to make a good speech but when he is talking to the public, it seems that someone from the crowd is speaking and speaking from his heart. Everyone is ready to die for the truth of Al-Sanwari. Soon after his release from prison, al-Sinwar immediately allied himself with the Izzudin al-Qassam Brigades and Chief of Staff Marwan Isa. In 2013, he was elected as a member of the Hamas Political Bureau in Gaza, and in 2017, he was made its head.
Al-Sinwar’s younger brother Muhammad also played an important role for Hamas. He managed to survive several assassinations attempts by Israel, but then Hamas confirmed his death in 2014. In this regard, there have been media reports that he is still alive and active in the military sector of Hamas and is hiding in tunnels in Gaza and may have played an important role in the October 7 attacks, however. Nothing is clear in this regard yet. Here, I should also clarify that it has been the best effort of all the analysts about Yahya Al-Sinwar to somehow portray Yahya Al-Sinwar as a cruel, oppressive, and mentally ill person to the world and not to blame the oppression of Israel. Not only should it be hidden, but the ongoing barbaric oppression of Israel should be presented as a coercion of Israel, while the members of a forced and oppressed nation have been declared by the United Nations to be a legal war against oppression in many of its resolutions. However, here a famous American writer “De Brown” in his book “Bury My Heart on Wounded Knee” writes:
We should not despair of American support for Israel. Even a little knowledge of history informs us that both Israel and America are built on the same analogy. Move over. The atrocities of the Israelis are exactly the same as what the Americans did to the native people (Red Indians). The greatest feat of bravery of the US Army is that on December 29, 1890, its Cavalry 7 brutally killed more than 500 unarmed women and children of the Lakota tribe, and the cruelty is that the Cavalry of the US Army 6 Awarded the Medal of Honor. That is why it is important to advise Americans to read the full history.
