Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, has maintained the position of an armed struggle to be able to establish a Palestinian nation. He carried this through in the context of the lead-up to the attack anniversary of the October 7 attacks, which caused mass casualties and subsequently led to the unleashing of havoc on Gaza by the Israelis.
It said on Thursday that it had assassinated the 62-year-old Sinwar, designer of the assault that left 1,200 dead, mostly civilians, and has taken 250 hostages. The Israeli reaction has been swift and vicious, killing an estimated 42,400 Palestinians and displacing nearly 1.9 million, according to Palestinian health officials and UN estimates.
The conflict has already spilled out of Gaza into Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Israel has significantly degraded the Iranian-backed group. Experts say Sinwar has brought most of the militant groups, including Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, into the ring and that could be the turning point in the regional conflict.
Despite the chaos, the grip of Sinwar on Hamas appears to be tight. After the suspected Israeli strike that claimed his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh’s life, Sinwar emerged as the coordinator-in-chief of the organization. Operating from a network of tunnels in Gaza, Sinwar is reported to have survived multiple airstrikes that may have killed other senior Hamas leaders.
Dubbed “The Face of Evil” by Israeli officials, Sinwar has run his operations in secret, relying on messengers trusted as few others, to do the communicating. To back him up, Sinwar has boasted high tolerance for hardship, not just for himself but also among Palestinian people, as a good testament to past negotiations, of which there is a notable prison exchange in 2011.
Sinwar’s years spent in the refugee camps in Gaza and 22 years spent in Israeli custody shaped his resolve. He has always called for armed resistance, seeing a military struggle as the only way to reclaim Palestine from Israeli occupation.
Despite his orchestration of the October 7 raids, which he had long planned together with his military commander, Mohammed Deif, the broader ambitions underpinning Sinwar’s goal to establish a Palestinian nation are still unfulfilled. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed the possibility of an independent Palestinian state from the ashes of the conflict.
Sinwar’s more autocratic leadership style and dogmatic commitment to Hamas’ ideology have rendered him a polarizing figure, revered by supporters for their sense of being in the cause. By virtue of early life experiences in childhood poverty and imprisonment, he has confirmed the resolve to pursue military action as a means of achieving objectives set for Palestine.