Yahya Sinwar

Yahya Sinwar (born October 29, 1962, Khan Younis refugee camp, Gaza Strip) is the leader (2017– ) of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and an early architect of Hamas’s armed wing. Sinwar is considered one of the masterminds behind the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, the deadliest day for Israel since its independence (see Israel-Hamas War of 2023).

Early life, early activity in Hamas, and imprisonment

Sinwar was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp to parents who had been displaced from Ashkelon in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The camp was densely packed with impoverished families, who lived in poor conditions and relied on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for basic services. In the early 1980s he enrolled at the Islamic University of Gaza, where his study of the Arabic language helped shape his charismatic self-presentation. He entered the university at a time when many young Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were looking toward Islamism to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after decades of pan-Arabism had failed to do so, and student organizations that combined Islamic thought with Palestinian nationalism were quickly growing. In 1982 Sinwar was detained for his participation in such organizations, although there were no formal charges.

In 1985, prior to the formation of Hamas, Sinwar helped organize al-Majd (Arabic: “Glory”; an acronym for Munaẓẓamat al-Jihād wa al-Daʿwah, “Organization for Jihad and Daʿwah [promotion of Islamic ideals]”). Al-Majd was a network of Islamist youths who tasked themselves with exposing the growing number of Palestinian informants who had been recruited by Israel in recent years. When Hamas was formed in 1987, al-Majd was folded into its security cadre. In 1988 the network was found to possess weapons, and Sinwar was detained by Israel for several weeks. The following year, he was convicted for the murder of Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel and was sentenced to four life sentences in prison.

During Sinwar’s long incarceration, he maintained powerful sway over his fellow prisoners, using tactics of abuse and manipulation and help from his connections outside prison. He made a point to punish fellow prisoners he suspected of being informants and once compelled some 1,600 prisoners to undertake a hunger strike. He also spent much of his spare time studying what he could about his Israeli enemies, reading Israeli newspapers and becoming fluent in Hebrew in the process.

Some of the most transformative events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict took place during Sinwar’s decades in prison. In the early 1990s the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel concluded the Oslo Accords, which set out a peace process for the creation of a Palestinian state in exchange for the PLO’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist. The process was derailed by suicide bombings by Hamas and the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist, but hope of getting the process back on track remained for several years. That glimmer of hope dimmed during the second Palestinian intifada (uprising; 2000–05), and in elections held in 2006 Palestinians registered their disappointment with the PLO by giving a plurality of the vote to Hamas. As a result of that outcome, the relationship between Israel and the interim Palestinian Authority (PA), which had been set up by the Oslo Accords, deteriorated even further. In 2007, when factional fighting within the PA left Hamas in sole charge of the Gaza Strip, Israel and Egypt blockaded the territory, setting the stage for several armed conflicts between Hamas and Israel in the years ahead. By the time Sinwar was released in 2011, the door for peace had both opened and closed, and he had witnessed none of the optimism of the Oslo era firsthand.

Sinwar’s release in Shalit prisoner exchange and his rise in the ranks of Hamas

Sinwar’s release came as part of the high-profile prisoner swap for Gilad Shalit. Shalit, a soldier of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), had been abducted by Hamas in 2006 while he was stationed at a border crossing. After several failed attempts to broker Shalit’s freedom, Egypt and Germany secured a deal for his release in October 2011. Sinwar’s brother, Mohammed, who had been assigned to guard Shalit, insisted that Sinwar be included in the exchange. On the same day that Shalit was released to Israel, Sinwar was among the first set of Palestinian prisoners who were returned to the Gaza Strip. When he arrived, he was already sporting the emblematic green headband of Hamas’s armed wing.

In April 2012, just months after his release, Sinwar was elected a member of Hamas’s political bureau in the Gaza Strip. He put his experience as a prison leader to use and gained a reputation within Hamas for bringing its factions together to compromise. He made calls on militants to capture Israelis, prompting the United States to add Sinwar to its list of specially designated global terrorists in 2015. In the meantime, Hamas was struggling to maintain its stature in the Gaza Strip: it had been weakened by conflict with Israel, and its ability to provide goods and services had been hindered by its isolation. It was becoming increasingly unpopular, while other militant groups such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) grew more appealing to hard-liners and began offering some services of their own. It was in this context that Sinwar was elected head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2017.

Leadership of Hamas and the October 7, 2023, attacks

Sinwar’s fiery rhetoric spoke to the hard-line militants, and his history of a heavy hand earned their trust that he would carry out his threats. In one of his first public appearances, Sinwar told a group of young Gazans: “Gone is the time in which Hamas discussed recognition of Israel. The discussion now is about when we will wipe out Israel.” Observers braced for the group to take on a more militant direction. But, in his first several years as leader, he laid low, and his pragmatic approach toward dealmaking began to reverse Hamas’s isolation. Months after Sinwar took the reins, Hamas forged a reconciliation deal with the PA, and, for the first time since 2007, it relinquished control of much of the Gaza Strip to the PA for a brief period. Relations with Egypt also improved, and the neighboring country eased its restrictions on its border crossing with the Gaza Strip. The group also reached out to Iran for rapprochement, and Iran restored Hamas to its network of allies and resumed offering it full support. In late 2018, negotiations with Israel for a long-term truce were underway and continued until the announcement in January 2020 of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump’s peace plan, which was embraced by Israel as a path forward but dismissed by the Palestinians as a nonstarter. The contradictions of Sinwar’s leadership, as both firebrand and pragmatist, were reflected in a new document of general principles issued by the group after he took charge: it at once acknowledged that a Palestinian state within the borders of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is “a formula of national consensus”—read by many at the time as consenting to a two-state solution—while simultaneously refusing “recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity” in any part of historic Palestine.

May 2021 marked a return to his more regular hostility. Weeks of escalating tensions in Jerusalem boiled over, and clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police, particularly at the compound surrounding Al-Aqsa Mosque, left hundreds injured. Hamas responded by sending rockets into Jerusalem and southern and central Israel, prompting 11 days of intense fighting between Hamas and Israel. Sinwar’s popularity surged after the conflict, and his virulence returned in full force. At a rally in 2022 celebrating the anniversary of Hamas’s founding, he called upon each person to “be ready to rise up as a gale to defend Al-Aqsa” if Israel would not conclude a deal to release Palestinian prisoners. In rhyming Arabic he continued to muster the crowd: “We will come to you in a roaring flood, in rockets without end, and in a flood of soldiers limitless [in number]. We will come to you with millions of our people (ummah), one tide after another.”

On October 7, 2023, Hamas, in an assault that it dubbed “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” led the most devastating attack on Israel since its independence. It began with a barrage of at least 2,200 rockets in just 20 minutes, providing cover for at least 1,500 militants who infiltrated Israel at dozens of points along the heavily fortified border by using explosives, bulldozers, and paragliders. They not only attacked military outposts but also killed families inside their homes and attendees of an outdoor music festival. Within hours, about 1,200 people were dead and some 240 others were taken hostage. Adding to the trauma of the event was the fact that it was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. The assault showed hallmarks of Sinwar’s tactics, and the taking of hostages echoed his preoccupation with prisoner exchanges.

Israel’s response to the attack was devastating for Gazans. Israel declared war for the first time in 50 years and implemented a full siege that cut off water, electricity, food, and fuel from entering the Gaza Strip. Within weeks, air strikes had led to more Palestinian deaths than any previous conflict for the Palestinians since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, while more than 1.4 million had become internally displaced. When in November Israel released about 240 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 110 of the hostages taken by Hamas, the number of released prisoners paled in comparison to the thousands detained since October 7. Sinwar, presumed to be hiding in the web of Gaza’s subterranean tunnels, is the top target for Israel in its invasion and is considered, according to an IDF spokesman, “a dead man walking.”