Israeli forces scored a significant blow against Hamas: Hamas leader Jahja al-Sinwar was tracked down and killed. Who was the terrorist leader?
After more than a year of war in the Gaza Strip, it is a great success for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF): in the search for the masterminds of the brutal attack by the Islamist Hamas on Israel on October 7th, the Israeli army has captured Hamas leader Jahja al-Sinwar tracked down and killed.
“The mass murderer Jahja al-Sinwar, who is responsible for the October 7 massacre and atrocities, was eliminated today by soldiers of the IDF,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement sent to the media on Thursday.
video | Hamas leader Sinwar killed in Gaza
Source: reuters
After the death of Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, al-Sinwar was appointed the new “head of the political bureau” of the radical Islamic Palestinian organization in August. The 61-year-old is considered the key mastermind of the Hamas attack on Israel that left more than 1,200 dead. However, al-Sinwar has been on the US terror list since 2015. However, all previous attempts to track down and eliminate him have failed.
Short gray hair, a full beard, a slim build: this is how al-Sinwar appeared in public. He has not appeared in public since October 2023. It is believed that he, like Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, another mastermind of the October 7 massacre, was hiding in the extensive tunnel system under the Gaza Strip. Deif was killed in an airstrike in the Gaza Strip in mid-July.
Hundreds of Hamas fighters invaded southern Israel at dawn on October 7th. They murdered more than a thousand people with a cruelty that even affected babies. 251 people, including many women and children, were also kidnapped as hostages in the Gaza Strip.
Leïla Seurat from the Arab research center Carep in Paris said of al-Sinwar’s role in the attack: “That was his strategy, he planned the operation.” He probably spent one or two years preparing the attack.
Al-Sinwar’s career with Hamas was hidden for decades. When the first Intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, began in 1987 in a refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip, al-Sinwar joined the newly founded Hamas, which denies Israel the right to exist and has declared Israel’s destruction as its goal. He himself also comes from a refugee camp: Chan Yunis in the south. He later studied at the Islamic University in Gaza City.
At 25, al-Sinwar was already heading the Hamas unit that punished Palestinians who worked with the Israelis. He was sentenced to life imprisonment four times for the killing of two Israeli soldiers. In total, al-Sinwar was imprisoned in Israel for 23 years. There he learned Hebrew and asserted himself as a leader of the prisoners. In 2011, al-Sinwar was released as one of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners exchanged for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been taken hostage by Hamas.
Six years later, in 2017, Hamas elected him as its political leader in the Gaza Strip after his predecessor Ismail Haniya took over as chairman of the organization and moved his residence to Qatar. At that time, Hamas spoke out in favor of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, but its long-term goal remained the “liberation” of all of Palestine – by which it meant nothing other than the destruction of Israel.
