Who is Yahya Sinwar?
Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar, known by his nickname Abu Ibrahim, was born on October 29, 1962 in a refugee camp in the city of Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip. Sinwar’s parents had been displaced from their homes in Ashkelon during the 1948 war between the Arabs and Israel.
Sinwar was admitted to Islamic University of Gaza in the early 1980s where his studies in the Arabic language and literature helped him develop a charismatic personality. He entered the university at a time when the youth in Gaza were mostly seeking Islamist ideologies as a way of resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict decades after Pan-Arabism had failed to do so. That was the reason why student organizations that mixed Islamism with Palestinian nationalism were expanding fast in Gaza and in the wider Palestine. Sinwar was arrested in 1982 because of membership in these organizations.
In 1985, and before Hamas was formed, Sinwar contributed to the creation of the Jihad and Dawat organization which was known as al-Majd. The organization was a network of Muslim youth whose task was to disclose the identity of Palestinian spies recruited by Israel in those years. In 1988, it became known that al-Majd is an armed organization and Sinwar was arrested for several weeks.
He received four death sentences the next year on charges of murdering spies working for Israel. He spent most of his time in prison reading Israeli newspapers and mastering the Hebrew language. The Financial Times has quoted a Shin Bet interrogator of Sinwar as saying that he read books about Israeli figures like Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin and knows the Israeli figures from the top to the bottom of the establishment.
Some of the main developments in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict happened when Sinwar was in prison, including the signing of the Oslo Accords between the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel in the early 1990s which ordered a peace process for creating two governments within the Palestinian lands in return for recognition of Israel by the PLO. The process was derailed after suicide bombings by Hamas and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish man in 1995 although there was still hope for several years that the peace process could be resumed again.
That hope was further dashed during the second intifada of Palestine (the 2000-2005 uprising) and after Hamas won the 2006 elections in Gaza against the PLO.
When Sinwar was released from prison in 2011, doors to peace were both open and shut but he hadn’t seen any of the optimism that existed in the Oslo Accords years.
Return to the embrace of Hamas
The release of Yahya Sinwar was part of an exchange of high-profile prisoners with Gilad Shalit. Shalit, a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), was captured by Hamas in 2006 while stationed at a border crossing. After several unsuccessful attempts to mediate Shalit's release, Egypt and Germany negotiated an agreement for his freedom in October 2011.
In April 2012, just a few months after his release, Sinwar was elected as a member of Hamas's political bureau in the Gaza Strip. He used his experiences as a leader in the Israeli prison system and gained a reputation among Hamas for being able to bring together his fellow prisoners. He urged fighters to capture Israelis, leading the United States to add Sinwar to its list of global terrorists in 2015. Meanwhile, Hamas was attempting to maintain its position in the Gaza Strip, having been weakened by conflict with the Israeli regime. It was in this context that Sinwar was elected as the Gaza-based leader of Hamas in 2017.
A man who became Israel’s nightmare
In one of his first public appearances, Sinwar told a group of young people in Gaza: “The era of Hamas speaking about recognizing Israel is over. Now the discussion is about when we will eliminate Israel." During the early years of Sinwar's leadership, his pragmatic approach began to reverse the isolation of Hamas.
Months after Sinwar took control of Hamas, the movement reached a reconciliation agreement with the Palestinian Authority (PA). For the first time since 2007, Hamas briefly handed over the control of most parts of Gaza to the PA. Relations with Egypt also improved as the neighboring country eased its restrictions on its border crossing with Gaza. The PA also reached out to Iran to establish relations, and Iran welcomed Hamas back into its network of allies and resumed its support for the group.
In May 2021, weeks of escalating tensions in occupied Quds and clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police came to an end, especially in the area around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, leaving hundreds injured. During these clashes and in response to the attacks of the Israeli regime, Hamas sent rockets to the south and center of occupied Quds, and 11 days of fierce clashes continued between the group and the Israelis.
Sinwar becomes more popular after operations
In 2022, during a rally commemorating the establishment of Hamas, Sinwar urged each member of the group to be prepared to defend Al-Aqsa in case Israel does not agree to release Palestinian prisoners. He warned of a potential flood of soldiers and missiles towards Israel if demands of the Palestinians were not met.
Eventually, after the martyrdom of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, Hamas nominated Yahya al-Sinwar as its new political leader.
Sinwar is currently on the top of Israel's most-wanted list, with Israeli security agencies considering him the mastermind behind the October 7, 2023, attacks. That comes Hamas has not yet provided details on how Sinwar will operate in the group's political bureau.
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