New Delhi: Yahya Sinwar, the ‘Butcher of Khan Younis’, the leader of Hamas’ political wing and one of the masterminds behind the 7 October, 2023, attack on Israel, was confirmed to have been killed by Israel Thursday.
Sinwar, who was dubbed by Israel a “dead man walking” after the assault that set off the Gaza war, rose from being an enforcer for both the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in its nascent years, to become its chief in 2017 and eventually the head of its political bureau in August this year.
Although the Hamas leader’s killing in Rafah is a major win for Israel after a year-long hunt, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that this was “not the end of the war in Gaza, it’s the beginning of the end”.
Yahya Sinwar is dead.
He was killed in Rafah by the brave soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces.
While this is not the end of the war in Gaza, it's the beginning of the end. pic.twitter.com/C6wAaLH1YW
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) October 17, 2024
With both Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, the former leader of Hamas’ military wing, dead, Tel Aviv has succeeded in killing those it believed to be the two architects behind ‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’—the attack that saw Hamas fighters break into Israeli villages, kill close to 1,200 people and take another 251 hostages back into the Gaza strip.
Around 101 hostages remain in Gaza. Tel Aviv’s retaliation to the attack has seen over 42,000 Palestinians killed according to the Gaza health ministry, while large swathes of Gaza have turned into rubble.
Deif was killed in July 2024. In the past year, Israeli forces have been able to kill a number of leaders of Hamas and its ally Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, including Ismail Haniyeh and Hassan Nasrallah.
Who was Yahya Sinwar?
Sinwar was born in 1962 in the Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza. His parents were originally from al-Majdal, the Palestinian village from where they were forcibly deported by Israel during the Nakba in 1948. Al-Majdal was renamed Ashkelon in 1950 after the last Palestinians were removed.
Fourteen years after the Nakba, the Khan Younis refugee camp developed into a town of sorts, but was occupied by Egypt around the time Sinwar was born.
By the time he was five years old, Israel had succeeded in defeating the Arab nations in the 1967 Six-Day War, and the Gaza strip was occupied by Tel Aviv.
While studying Arabic at the Islamic University of Gaza in the 1980s, Sinwar became active in the Islamic Bloc, the student wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, eventually becoming its leader.
The BBC reported that he was first arrested by Israeli security forces in 1982 while still a teenage university student. Eventually, by 1985, Sinwar had founded the enforcement arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, and went on to lead Hamas’s internal security organisation, al-Majd, after the group was born in 1987.
By that year, Sinwar had developed a reputation of being a ruthless enforcer and had grown close to the founder of the group, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Sinwar used to pray at the same mosque as Yassin in Gaza city, according to The Washington Post.
In January 1988, he was arrested by Israel and convicted to four life terms along with 30 years for founding al-Majd and the murder of four Palestinians. During the interrogation, Sinwar confessed to at least 12 murders, according to The Post.
As leader of al-Majd, he became infamous for his brutal methods of punishing anyone accused of morality offences, or collaborating with Israel, the BBC report said.
He used a machete to decapitate suspected collaborators and in one instance even killed an individual by putting him in a grave and burying him alive, according to The New Yorker.
Most stories of Sinwar’s ruthlessness and brutality have come from the accounts of Israeli interrogators, which have been widely reported.
From Israeli prisons to architect of 7 October
Sinwar was in prison from 1988 to 2011. Reports said that as he did time, the future leader of Hamas devoured Israeli newspapers, radio broadcasts and books and became fluent in Hebrew—to better understand his enemies.
In prison, Sinwar also continued his activities, including going after prisoners suspected of collaboration, while sending smuggled messages to Hamas’ operatives outside.
His brother, Mohammed Sinwar, was suspected of playing a key role in a raid that led to the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit by Hamas in 2006.
Sinwar was among the 1,027 Palestinians released by Israel in 2011 in a prisoner exchange to secure Shalit’s freedom.
Within a month of his release, Sinwar married Samar, a woman 18 years his junior, and eventually became father to three children. His prolonged incarceration had toughened his image, facilitating his quick rise in Hamas.
According to reports, Sinwar travelled to Tehran in 2012 and met with General Qasesm Suleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ al-Quds Force.
He formed ties with Haniyeh and Deif and in 2017, while Haniyeh became the head of Hamas’ political wing, Sinwar became the leader of the group in Gaza.
In his early years in charge, Sinwar often offered a more peaceful view of Hamas’ resistance to Israel, declaring that war was in no one’s interest. However, as Qatari money flooded in, Sinwar began to construct the tunnel complex within the strip, while arming the militia with weapons.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
Also read: “Good day for Israel and for the world”: Joe Biden on killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar