Sinwar contributed to the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip. He is now the key to his endgame.

JERUSALEM — After Hamas attacked Israel in October, sparking war in the Gaza Strip, Israeli leaders described the group’s top official in the territory, Yehia Sinwar, like a “dead man walking”. Considering him the architect of the raid, Israel presented the assassination of Sinwar as one of the major objectives of its devastating counterattack.

Seven months later, Sinwar’s survival is emblematic of the failures of Israel’s war, which ravaged much of Gaza but left Hamas’s leadership largely intact and failed to free most captured prisoners during the October attack.

Even as Israeli officials seek to kill him, they have been forced to negotiate with him, albeit indirectly, to free the remaining hostages. Sinwar established himself not only as a willing commander, but also as a shrewd negotiator who prevented an Israeli victory on the battlefield while engaging Israeli envoys at the negotiating table, according to Hamas officials, Israel and the United States. Some spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence assessments on Sinwar and diplomatic negotiations.

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While the talks are being held under the auspices of Egypt and Qatar, it is Sinwar – who is believed to be hiding in a network of tunnels under Gaza – whose consent Hamas negotiators need before accepting concessions, according to some of these officials.

Hamas officials insist that Sinwar does not have the final say in the group’s decisions. But although Sinwar does not technically have authority over the entire Hamas movement, his leadership role in Gaza and his strong personality have given him outsized importance in how Hamas operates, according to allies and enemies alike. .

“No decision can be made without consulting Sinwar,” said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a Hamas member and political analyst who befriended Sinwar while both were imprisoned in Israel in the 1990s and 2000s. “Sinwar is not an ordinary leader, he is a powerful person and an architect of events. He’s not some kind of manager or director, he’s a leader,” al-Awawdeh added.

Sinwar has rarely been heard from since the start of the war, unlike Hamas officials based outside Gaza, including Ismail Haniyeh, the highest civilian leader of the movement. Although nominally Haniyeh’s junior, Sinwar played a central role in Hamas’s behind-the-scenes decision to maintain a permanent ceasefire, U.S. and Israeli officials say.

Waiting for Sinwar’s approval often slowed negotiations, officials and analysts say. Israeli strikes damaged much of Gaza’s communications infrastructure, and it sometimes took a day to deliver a message to Sinwar and a day to receive a response, according to U.S. officials and Hamas members.

To Israeli and Western officials, Sinwar emerged during those negotiations, stalled again in Cairo last week, as both a brutal adversary and a skilled political operator, capable of analyzing Israeli society and seemingly adapt its policy accordingly.

As the architect of the October 7 attacks, Sinwar developed a strategy that he knew would provoke a fierce response from Israel. But in Hamas’s calculations, the deaths of many Palestinian civilians – who do not have access to Hamas’ underground tunnels – was the necessary cost of upending the status quo with Israel.

U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies spent months assessing Sinwar’s motivations, according to sources briefed on the intelligence. Analysts in the United States and Israel believe that Sinwar is primarily motivated by a desire to take revenge on Israel and weaken it. The well-being of the Palestinian people or the creation of a Palestinian state, intelligence analysts say, seem secondary.

An understanding of Israeli society

Sinwar was born in Gaza in 1962 to a family that had fled their home, along with several hundred thousand other Palestinian Arabs who fled or were forced to flee during the wars surrounding the creation of the state of Israel.

Sinwar joined Hamas in the 1980s. He was later imprisoned for killing Palestinians whom he accused of apostasy or collaboration with Israel, according to 1989 Israeli court records. Sinwar spent more than two decades in detention Israeli prison before being released in 2011, along with more than 1,000 other Palestinians, in exchange. for an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas. Six years later, Sinwar was elected leader of Hamas in Gaza.

In prison, Sinwar learned Hebrew and developed an understanding of Israeli culture and society, according to former detainees and Israeli officials who monitored him in prison. Sinwar now appears to be using this knowledge to sow divisions in Israeli society and increase pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, according to Israeli and US officials.

They believe Sinwar scheduled the release of videos of some Israeli hostages to spark public outrage against Netanyahu during crucial phases of the ceasefire talks.

Some Israelis want the remaining hostages released, even if it means accepting Hamas’s demands for a permanent truce that would keep the group – and Sinwar – in power. But Netanyahu has been reluctant to agree to end the war, in part because of pressure from some of his right-wing allies, who have threatened to resign if the war ends without Hamas being dismantled.

If Netanyahu has been accused of prolonging the fighting for his personal benefit, so has his archenemy, Sinwar.

Israeli and American intelligence officers say Sinwar’s strategy is to keep the war going for as long as it takes to destroy Israel’s international reputation and damage its relations with its main ally, the United States. As Israel faced intense pressure to avoid launching an operation in Rafah, Hamas fired rockets from Rafah toward a nearby border crossing last Sunday, killing four Israeli soldiers.

If it was a gamble by Hamas, it seems to have paid off: Israel launched an operation on the fringes of Rafah last week, and in this context, President Joe Biden formulated his sharpest criticism of the Israeli policy since the start of the war. Biden said he would stop some future weapons deliveries if the Israeli military begins a full-scale invasion of the city’s urban center.

U.S. officials say Sinwar is most likely in the tunnels beneath Khan Younis, the next major city to the north – intelligence that could undercut Israel’s justification for military operations in Rafah.

Project an image of unity

Hamas and its allies deny that Sinwar or the movement are trying to further exploit Palestinian suffering.

“Hamas’ strategy is to stop the war now,” said Ahmed Yousef, a Hamas veteran based in Rafah. “To stop the genocide and massacre of the Palestinian people.”

U.S. officials say Sinwar showed contempt toward his colleagues outside Gaza, who were not informed of the precise plans for the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. U.S. officials also believe Sinwar approves of military operations carried out by Hamas, although Israeli intelligence officials say they are unsure of the extent of his involvement.

A senior Western official familiar with the ceasefire negotiations believes that Sinwar appears to make decisions in concert with his brother, Muhammad, a senior Hamas military official, and that throughout the war he has at times been in disagreement with Hamas leaders outside Gaza. While outside leaders have sometimes been more willing to compromise, Sinwar is less willing to cede ground to Israeli negotiators, in part because he knows he risks being killed whether the war ends or not. , said the official.

Even if negotiators reach a ceasefire deal, Israel will likely pursue Sinwar for the rest of his life, the official said.

Hamas members have projected an image of unity, downplaying Sinwar’s personal role in decision-making and asserting that Hamas’ elected leaders collectively determine the movement’s trajectory.

Some say that Sinwar has played a more prominent role in this war mainly because of his position: as leader of Hamas in Gaza, Sinwar has more of a say, even if he doesn’t is not the last choice, according to Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official. civil servant based in Qatar.

“Sinwar’s opinion is very important because he is on the ground and he is leading the movement inside,” said Abu Marzouk, the first head of Hamas’ political bureau in the 1990s.

But Haniyeh has the “final say” on key decisions, Abu Marzouk said, adding that all Hamas political leaders were “of one mind.” Haniyeh could not immediately be reached for comment.

Yet there is something unusual about Sinwar’s force of personality, according to al-Awawdeh, his prison friend. Other leaders might not have instigated the October 7 attack, preferring to focus on technocratic issues of governance, al-Awawdeh said.

“If someone else had been in his place, things might have gone more calmly,” he said.

Sinwar could not be reached for comment and has rarely been heard from since October. U.S. and Israeli officials said Sinwar hid near the hostages, using them as human shields. An Israeli hostage freed during a truce in November said she met Sinwar during her captivity.

In February, the Israeli military released a video that soldiers allegedly took from a security camera found in a Hamas tunnel under Gaza. The video showed a man rushing into the tunnel, accompanied by a woman and children.

The army said it was Sinwar, fleeing with his family.

The claim was impossible to verify: the man’s face was turned away from the camera.

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