Who was Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and what does his death mean for the war in Gaza?

AFTER A CAREER in the shadows from Israeli prisons to the internal security apparatus of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar emerged as the leader of the Palestinian group after igniting a war that has engulfed the region.

Chief architect of the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, the deadliest in its history, Sinwar was killed during an operation in Gaza, Israel’s military said today. Hamas has yet to confirm his death.

Sinwar rose to become the group’s overall leader in August after the killing of political chief Ismail Haniyeh in July, which has been widely blamed on Israel, despite the IDF never claiming the assassination.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Sinwar’s death on Thursday, saying “his elimination is an important landmark in the decline of the evil rule of Hamas”.

“Today evil has suffered a heavy blow,” he added.

A security operator ‘par excellence’

The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people in Israel, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed 42,438 people, the majority civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

According to Abu Abdallah, a Hamas member who spent years alongside him in Israeli jails, Sinwar was a security operator “par excellence”.

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“He makes decisions in the utmost calm, but is intractable when it comes to defending the interests of Hamas,” Abu Abdallah told AFP in 2017, after his former co-detainee was elected Hamas’s leader in Gaza.

Born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in southern Gaza, Sinwar joined Hamas when Sheikh Ahmad Yassin founded the group around the time the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, began in 1987.

Sinwar set up the group’s internal security apparatus the following year and went on to head an intelligence unit dedicated to flushing out and mercilessly punishing – sometimes killing – Palestinians accused of providing information to Israel.

A graduate of the Islamic University in Gaza, he learned perfect Hebrew during his 23 years in Israeli jails and was said to have a deep understanding of Israeli culture and society.

Four life sentences

He was serving four life terms for the killing of two Israeli soldiers when he became the most senior of 1,027 Palestinians released in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011.

Sinwar later became a senior commander in the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, before taking overall leadership of the movement in Gaza.

Sinwar was said to have strived for a single Palestinian state bringing together the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank – controlled by Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party – and annexed east Jerusalem.

With Fatah much weakened over years of decline, the prisoner releases resulting from the brief November truce agreement with Israel saw Hamas’s popularity soar in the West Bank.

Sinwar pursued a path of being “radical in military planning and pragmatic in politics”, said Leila Seurat of the Arab Centre for Research and Political Studies in Paris.

“He doesn’t advocate force for force’s sake, but to bring about negotiations” with Israel, she said.

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Israel's foreign minister says Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has been killed in Gaza

The Hamas chief was added to the US list of the most wanted “international terrorists” in 2015.

A ‘good day’ for the world

US President Joe Biden on Thursday hailed Israel’s killing of the Hamas leader as a “good day” for the world, saying it also removed a key obstacle to a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal.

The comments reflect growing calls in Washington for a ceasefire even as it backs key ally Israel, amid tensions between Biden and Netanyahu over Israel’s conduct in the conflict sparked by Hamas’s attacks.

Israel has fiercely rejected these calls.

Meanwhile, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is hopeful that the killing of Sinwar will clear the way for a “new phase” in the deadly conflict.

“With the death of Yahya Sinwar, the person principally responsible for the 7 October attacks no longer exists,” Meloni said in a statement.

“I am convinced that a new phase should be launched: it is time for all the hostages to be released, for a ceasefire to be immediately proclaimed and for the reconstruction of Gaza to begin.”

However, Israel has said it is committed to the “destruction” of Hamas.