After what Hamas attacked Israel In October, triggering the war in Gaza, Israeli leaders described the group’s top official in the territoryYahya Sinwar, as a “living dead man”. Viewing him as an architect of the attack, Israel has portrayed Sinwar’s assassination as a target of its counterattack.
Seven months later, Sinwar’s survival is emblematic of the failures of Israel’s war, which has devastated much of Gaza but left Hamas’ top leadership largely intact and failed to free most of the captives captured during the attack. October.
Israeli officials have been forced to negotiate with him, albeit indirectly, to free the remaining hostages. Sinwar has emerged as a shrewd negotiator who has avoided an Israeli victory on the battlefield while dealing with Israeli envoys at the negotiating table, according to Hamas, Israeli and US officials. Some spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence issues and diplomatic negotiations.
Although the talks feature Egypt and Qatar as mediators, the consent of Sinwar — believed to be hidden in a network of tunnels beneath Gaza — is required for Hamas negotiators to agree to any concessions, officials say.
Although Sinwar technically does not have authority over the entire Hamas movement, his leadership role in Gaza has given him enormous importance in how Hamas operates, allies and enemies say.
“No decision can be made without consulting Sinwar,” said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a Hamas member and political analyst who befriended Sinwar while both were imprisoned in Israel during the 1990s and 2000s.
Sinwar has rarely been heard from since the start of the war, unlike Hamas officials based outside Gaza, including Ismail Haniyeh, the movement’s highest-ranking civilian official. Although he is nominally lower in rank than Haniyeh, Sinwar has been key in Hamas’s decision to demand a permanent ceasefire, US and Israeli officials say.
With the October 7 attacks, Sinwar devised a strategy that he knew would provoke a fierce Israeli response. According to Hamas’ calculations, the death of many Palestinian civilians was the cost of altering the status quo with Israel.
American and Israeli intelligence analysts believe that Sinwar is motivated primarily by a desire to take revenge on Israel and weaken it. Sinwar was born in Gaza in 1962 to a family that had fled their home, along with hundreds of thousands of other Palestinian Arabs who fled during the wars surrounding the creation of the State of Israel.
He joined Hamas in the 1980s. He was later imprisoned for murdering Palestinians whom he accused of apostasy or collaborating with Israel, Israeli court records from 1989 reveal. He spent more than 20 years in detention in Israel before being released in 2011. , along with more than a thousand other Palestinians, in exchange for an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas. Six years later, he was elected leader of Hamas in Gaza.
While in prison, Sinwar learned Hebrew and developed an understanding of Israeli culture, according to other former inmates and Israeli officials. He now appears to be using that knowledge to sow divisions in Israeli society and increase pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, according to Israeli and American officials.
They believe Sinwar has timed the release of videos of some Israeli hostages to incite public outrage against Netanyahu during crucial phases of the ceasefire talks.
Some Israelis want the remaining hostages freed even if it means accepting Hamas’ demands for a permanent truce that would keep it in power. But Netanyahu has been reluctant to agree to end the war, in part because of pressure from some of his right-wing allies, who have threatened to resign if the war ends with Hamas intact.
Israeli and American intelligence officials say Sinwar’s strategy is to keep the war going for as long as necessary to destroy Israel’s reputation and damage its relationship with the United States.
Hamas denies that Sinwar or the movement is trying to further exploit Palestinian suffering. “Hamas’ strategy is to stop the war right now,” said Ahmed Yousef, a Hamas veteran based in Rafah.
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