Who was Mohammed Sinwar: last man standing for Hamas, now killed in Gaza

Last man standing

Over the past 20 months, Israel has effectively decimated the leadership and organisation of Hamas.

Military chief Deif and political bureau chairman Haniyeh were killed last July, while Yahya Sinwar, the man on the ground in Gaza and purported mastermind of the October 2023 attacks, was shot dead in October.

At the time of his death, Yahya Sinwar was the most powerful leader in Hamas and its most prominent face. He had been personally coordinating military operations in Gaza, instead of retreating to the relative safety of Qatar like many senior Hamas officials had done. After his death, Hamas fighters unofficially chose his brother, Mohammed, to lead them.

According to The Wall Street Journal, in the seven months since his brother’s death, Mohammed Sinwar, along with north Gaza military head Izz al-Din Haddad, led whatever little armed resistance persisted in Gaza, largely working independently from the group’s leaders in Doha.

Mohammed Sinwar is also said to have been leading a recruitment drive for the group, one which analysts say was witnessing some success.

“We are in a situation where the pace at which Hamas is rebuilding itself is higher than the pace that the IDF is eradicating them,” Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli brigadier general, told The WSJ in January.

In the Israeli view, Mohammed Sinwar was an obstacle in ceasefire negotiations, and to Israel’s stated goal of “completely eliminating Hamas”. That made him the most wanted target of Israeli forces in recent months. Some Israeli reports suggested that Mohammed was more hardline than his brother Yahya.

While Haddad is expected to take over after Mohammed Sinwar’s death, he does not have the Sinwar name and the stature that comes with it.

The death of Mohammed Sinwar will thus leave a massive power vacuum in the Hamas leadership in Gaza, one that will be very hard to fill given the catastrophic losses that Israel has inflicted upon the group.

A shadowy figure

Hardly anything is known about Mohammed Sinwar. Like his brother Yahya, Mohammed Sinwar is said to have joined Hamas at an early age, and was considered close to former military chief Mohammed Deif.

But unlike his brother, who spent more than two decades in an Israeli prison, Mohammed spent only nine months in the 1990s in an Israeli jail and another couple of years in a Palestinian Authority prison in Ramallah, from which he escaped in 2000.

This meant that even Israel’s security establishment had a relatively limited understanding of the younger Sinwar, believed to have been either 49 or 50 years old. According to The WSJ, “He has operated largely behind the scenes… earning him the nickname ‘Shadow’.”

In 2005, Mohammed Sinwar became the head of Hamas’ Khan Younis Brigade. He is said to have been a key player in the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006. Shalit’s release was secured in 2011 in what remains the largest prisoner swap Israel has made to date: 1,027 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons were let go in exchange for Shalit.

The most high-profile of these prisoners was none other than Yahya Sinwar, whose inclusion in the swap is said to have been insisted upon by his brother.

Mohammed Sinwar has been wanted by Israeli authorities for years, and was said to have been targeted in at least six assassination attempts until 2021, The New York Times reported.

But he had proven so elusive that he would not be recognised by most people in Gaza — and did not participate even in his father’s funeral to maintain secrecy about his identity and whereabouts, according to a 2022 interview he gave to Al Jazeera.