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Yahya Sinwar


Yahya Sinwar left next to a Hamas terrorist of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades

Yahya Sinwar (born 29 October 1962), also spelled Yehya Sinwar, is a Palestinian politician who has been leader of Hamas, the Sunni Islamist political and military organization that rules the Gaza Strip, since 2017.

He was born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Egyptian-ruled Gaza in 1962 to a family who had been expelled or fled from Ashkelon during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. He finished his studies at the Islamic University of Gaza where he received a bachelor's degree in Arabic Studies.

For orchestrating the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians he considered to be collaborators in 1989, he was sentenced to four life sentences by Israel, of which he served 22 years until his release among 1,026 others in a 2011 prisoner exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Sinwar was one of the co-founders of the security apparatus of Hamas. In 2017, he was elected the leader of Hamas, and claimed to pursue "peaceful, popular resistance" to the Israeli occupation the following year, a position which was later abandoned. He was re-elected as the leader of Hamas in 2021, and was subject to an assassination attempt by Israel that year. Sinwar is regarded as the mastermind behind the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.


The Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh (whom lives im Qatar), the chief political leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas Gaza branch, and Mahmoud Zahar, co-founder of Hamas and a member of the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip.

In September 2015, Sinwar was designated a terrorist by the United States government, and Hamas and the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades have also been designated terrorist organisations by the United States, the European Union and other countries. In May 2024, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) applied for arrest warrants for Sinwar and several other Hamas and Israeli leaders as part of the ICC investigation in Palestine, citing charges of "extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape, and sexual assault in detention."



Early life and education

Sinwar was born Yahya Ibrahim Hassan al-Sinwar in 1962, in the Khan Yunis refugee camp, when the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian rule, where he spent his early years. His family were expelled or fled from Al-Majdal Asqalan (Ashkelon) during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and sought refuge in the Gaza Strip. After he graduated from high school at Khan Yunis Secondary School for Boys, he went on to the Islamic University of Gaza where he received a bachelor's degree in Arabic Studies. His younger brother is Mohammed Sinwar, who is a military leader in Hamas.



Early career

Sinwar was first arrested in 1982 for subversive activities and he served several months in the Far'a prison where he met other Palestinian activists, including Salah Shehade, and dedicated himself to the Palestinian cause. Arrested again in 1985, upon his release he co-founded with Rawhi Mushtaha the Munazzamat al Jihad w’al-Dawa (Majd), an organization that worked, among others, to identify collaborators with Israel among the Palestinian population, which in 1987 became the Hamas "police".

Sinwar's killing of suspected collaborators with Israel gained him the nickname "The Butcher of Khan Yunis".

In 1988, Sinwar planned the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and the murder of four Palestinians whom he suspected of cooperating with Israel. He was arrested on February that year; during questioning he admitted to strangling two of the victims, inadvertently killing another during a violent interrogation, and accidentally shooting the fourth during an attempted abduction, and showed investigators an orchard where the four bodies were buried. He was sentenced to four life sentences in 1989. He tried to escape several times but was always caught.

In 2008, while serving a prison sentence, he was operated on by Israeli doctors to remove a tumor in his brain to save his life. Sinwar served 22 years of his sentence, and was the most senior Palestinian prisoner freed among 1,026 others in a 2011 prisoner exchange for IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held hostage by Hamas for five years.



In November 2012, during the 2012 Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip, Sinwar met Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani in Tehran and after his 2017 election as the group's leader in Gaza he cultivated closer cooperation between Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. In 2015, he is believed to have overseen the torture and execution of fellow Hamas commander Mahmoud Ishtiwi, who was accused of embezzlement and homosexuality. Ishtwi was reportedly whipped, suspended from a ceiling for hours across multiple days, and ultimately killed by being shot with three bullets to the chest.


Hamas's Gaza Strip leader Yahya Sinwar in a tunnel in southern Gaza's Khan Younis, October 10, 2023 (IDF Spokesman)

Leadership of Hamas in the Gaza Strip (2017–present)

In February 2017, Sinwar was secretly elected the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, taking over from Ismail Haniyeh. In March, he established a Hamas-controlled administrative committee for the Gaza Strip, opposing power sharing with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Sinwar rejects any reconciliation with Israel. He has called on militants to capture more Israeli soldiers. In September 2017, a new round of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority began in Egypt, and Sinwar agreed to dissolve the Hamas administrative committee for Gaza. More recently he has silenced hard-line voices in Gaza, ordering against the use of tunnels that Muhammad Deif wanted to use to sneak fighters into Israel before they were shut down by new classified Israeli technology in 2017.

On 16 May 2018, in an unexpected announcement on Al Jazeera, Sinwar stated that Hamas would pursue "peaceful, popular resistance" to the Israeli occupation, opening the possibility that Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organisation by many countries, may play a role in negotiations with Israel. A week earlier he had encouraged Gazans to breach the Israeli siege, saying "We would rather die as martyrs than die out of oppression and humiliation", and adding, "We are ready to die, and tens of thousands will die with us."



On 1 December 2020, Sinwar tested positive for COVID-19 and was reportedly following the advice of health authorities and taking precautionary measures. A spokesman for the group also said that he was in "good health and [...] pursuing his duties as usual."

In March 2021, he was elected to a second four-year term as the head of Hamas Gaza branch in an election held in secret. He is the highest-ranking Hamas official in Gaza and Gaza's de facto ruler, as well as the second most powerful member of Hamas after Haniyeh.

On 15 May 2021, an Israeli airstrike was reported to have hit the home of the Hamas leader; there were no immediate details of any deaths or injured. The strike took place in the Khan Yunis region of southern Gaza in the midst of evergrowing tension between Israelis and Palestinians. However, in the week that followed, he appeared publicly at least four times. The most obvious and daring thereof was in a press conference on 27 May 2021, when he mentioned (on air) that he will go home after the press conference (on foot), and invited the Israeli Minister of defense to take the decision to assassinate him in the following 60 minutes, until he reaches his home. Sinwar spent the next hour wandering in Gaza streets and having selfie photos with the public.



2023 Israel–Hamas war

Sinwar—along with Mohammed Deif—is regarded as the mastermind behind the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, the deadliest attack in Israeli history. The attack left around 1,200 people dead and about 240 taken as hostages in Gaza. Following the attack, Sinwar was put under EU terrorist sanctions and became a top target for assassination by the Israeli military. Israeli intelligence presumes Sinwar is hiding in a complex system of tunnels beneath Gaza and is surrounded by hostages acting as human shields.

After three weeks of conflict in the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, Sinwar proposed the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli confinement in exchange for the release of all the hostages kidnapped in the conflict. Sinwar reportedly visited the hostages in the early days of the war promising they would not be harmed. When one of the hostages, Yocheved Lifshitz, said Sinwar should be ashamed of himself, he was silent.



On November 7, after Israel had surrounded Gaza City, it claimed it had "trapped" Sinwar in a bunker there. Israeli military authorities later claimed he was in Khan Yunis in an underground bunker. Leaflets allegedly dropped by Israel into Gaza proclaimed a bounty of $400,000 for providing information on Sinwar's location. According to Reuters, Israel is demanding the exile of Sinwar, Deif, and four other Hamas leaders from Gaza as a condition for a ceasefire.

By February 2024 the IDF believed that Sinwar had moved to Rafah from Khan Younis. According to the IDF, Sinwar is constantly on the move and thus is unable to personally command Hamas forces. On 13 February IDF released CCTV footage dated 10 October showing Sinwar and his wife and children as well as his brother Ibrahim in a Hamas tunnel complex in Khan Younis. IDF stated that they are collecting intelligence and interrogating Hamas commanders and their relatives to find Sinwar.

On 20 May 2024, an arrest warrant was launched against Sinwar by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on several counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.