Israel kills Hamas chief: Who was Yahya Sinwar? Why is his death significant?

Who was Yahya Sinwar?

Yahya Sinwar was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp in south Gaza in 1962, back when the region was under Egyptian control. His parents were expelled from Ashkelon by Zionist forces in 1948 during the Palestinian Nakba (“catastrophe”), which saw mass-scale ethnic cleansing of Arabs amidst the formation of Israel.

Sinwar was active in the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s, and was arrested for protesting Israeli occupation while a college student at the Islamic University in Gaza. He is credited with founding Hamas’s Internal Security Force Al Majd, responsible for managing internal security matters, investigating — and allegedly brutally eliminating — suspected Israeli agents and Palestinian collaborators, and tracking down Israeli intelligence and security services officers.

Sinwar is also credited with founding the fearsome al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, and the largest militia operating in Gaza prior to last year’s October 7 attacks.

In 1988, Sinwar was arrested by Israel for the murder of 12 “collaborating” Palestinians (an act that had earned him the moniker ‘Butcher of Khan Younis’), and plotting the abduction and death of two Israeli soldiers.

He spent 22 years in various Israeli prisons before being released in 2011 as part of a massive prisoner exchange deal. He rejoined Hamas and rose through the ranks to succeed Ismail Haniyeh as Hamas’s leader in Gaza in 2017. He was elevated to the position of Hamas Politburo chief this August after Haniyeh was killed in a targeted missile strike in Iran the month before.

What was Yahya Sinwar’s role in the October 7 attack?

Israel has long viewed Sinwar as the mastermind of the October 7 attack, and referred to him as “a dead man walking”.

It is now believed that the attack was planned as early as December 2022, when Sinwar promised to send Israel “endless rockets” and deploy “a limitless flood of soldiers”, in a rally in Gaza.

The October 7 attack saw Hamas fighters break Israeli defences, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 150 Israelis hostage. This was the biggest flare-up in Gaza in years, and raised major questions about the readiness of Israel’s defence apparatus.

The US, a key ally to Israel, last month charged Sinwar and other Hamas leaders with “financing, directing, and overseeing a decades-long campaign to murder American citizens and endanger the national security of the United States”.

Attorney-General Merrick Garland said: “On October 7, Hamas terrorists, led by these defendants, murdered nearly 1200 people, including over 40 Americans, and kidnapped hundreds of civilians… Yahya Sinwar and the other senior leaders of Hamas are charged today with orchestrating this terrorist organization’s decades-long campaign of mass violence and terror — including on October 7.”

What is the significance of Israel killing Yahya Sinwar?

For Hamas, which has suffered immensely under the boot of the Israeli war machine, this would be a massive blow — one that could truly lead to an existential crisis.

At the same time, it also provides a tiny opening to end hostilities in Palestine. Israel’s casus belli, since the very beginning, has been to “wipe Hamas off the Earth”. To this rather vague end, Sinwar’s death is a major milestone. It is perhaps the most prominent assassination of an enemy leader by Israel, after the killing of Haniyeh in July, and Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah in September.

While it is unclear how Hamas, and Palestinians would react to this loss, for the US and other Israel allies, it marks an opportunity to cool temperatures in Israel, and provide the Zionist nation with an out in the conflict that has claimed thousands of lives, cost billions of dollars, and left the world in a protracted political and moral crisis.

As an article in the CNN put it: “With progress toward a ceasefire-for-hostages deal to pause the war stubbornly stuck for months, senior [US] administration officials had hung onto hope that Sinwar might one day be taken out — opening doors in the talks that simply would not be available otherwise”.

However, there is no guarantee that this would happen. In fact, tensions might even escalate in the near future depending on what Israel does next.

(With inputs from Agencies)