Hamas announced on Tuesday night that Yahya Sinwar is the new leader of the Islamist movement, following the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31.
Earlier today, the Saudi news television network Al Arabiya reported that Mohammad Ismail Darwish had temporarily taken over the leadership of the movement until a new leader was appointed.
Hardliner Yahya Sinwar was elected as the head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in February 2017. He spent 23 years in Israeli prisons before being released in 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange.
Hamas’s choice to appoint him as the leader sends a message that regarding negotiations and ceasefire, he is the one making the decisions.
Any decisions or negotiations made outside of Gaza must reach him for final approval.
This could complicate and prolong any negotiation process.
Born in Khan Younis, a city in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, Sinwar joined Hamas from its inception in 1987, the year of the first Intifada (uprising).
A former commander of the al-Qassam Brigades and considered the “mastermind” of the October 7 attack, he is wanted by Israel and is listed by the United States as an “international terrorist.”
What a friend revealed about the October 7 attacks
Yahya Sinwar largely planned the October 7 attack on Israel but did not expect the consequences to become “so dangerous.”
This was revealed by his friend Esmat Mansour in an interview with Sky News.
Speaking from Ramallah in the West Bank, Mansour said, “I think he was one of the main people behind this operation.”
He claimed that if Sinwar had known what the consequences of the attack would be, “he would never have planned an operation in this way.”
Mansour, who was imprisoned with Sinwar, said that the Hamas leader “wanted to make a change.”
According to his former cellmate, Sinwar “tried several times to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority, to establish good relations with Egypt, and tried to provoke Israel to lift the siege of Gaza.”
As explained, because he failed to achieve these goals, he carried out this attack.
It should be noted that Sinwar is very fluent in Hebrew due to his stay in Israeli prisons, from which he was released in 2011 as part of the deal to free Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
