Yahya Sinwar (C), Palestinian leader of Hamas in Gaza Strip, greets people during an event marking the 35th anniversary of the establishment of Hamas in Gaza City, Gaza on December 14, 2022.
Ali Jadallah | Anadolu | Getty Images
Hamas on Tuesday appointed Yahya Sinwar as the leader of its political wing following the assassination of its former political chief, Ismail Haniyeh.
This makes Sinwar — a man known for his ruthlessness who is widely seen as having masterminded the Oct. 7 attack — the most powerful person in the organization and its face in international diplomacy.
“The most extreme part of Hamas carried out October 7 … and is now officially in power,” Michael Horowitz, a geopolitical analyst and head of intel at risk management firm Le Beck International, wrote in a post on X.
The Middle East has been on edge following the killing of Haniyeh in Iran on July 31, which Iran and Hamas blamed on Israel. Israel has stayed silent on the matter, while Iran has pledged to carry out some form of retaliatory attack on the Jewish state.
Meanwhile, Haniyeh’s killing has resulted in a much more extreme leader for Hamas, likely setting the Palestinian militant group in a direction that bodes poorly for ceasefire talks aimed at ending the war and freeing the Israeli hostages still captive in Gaza.
Haniyeh, based in Qatar, was Hamas’ lead negotiator in the cease-fire talks with Israel and was described as being more pragmatic and supportive of a deal. While the negotiations have been ongoing for months with no success, Sinwar — who is based inside Gaza and is said to have the last word on Hamas’ major decisions — often stalls or cuts off communications during the talks.
“Sinwar’s nomination for Hamas’ top job – despite his being based in Gaza – prefaces a significant hardening of the movement’s stance, particularly with regard to cease-fire talks,” Victor Tricaud, a senior analyst at consulting firm Control Risks, told CNBC.
The Palestinian leader “already had a very significant say in negotiations with Israel, but the difference now is that there will not be the comparatively pragmatic voice of Ismail Haniyeh to balance Sinwar’s uncompromising maximalist views.”
Still, his nomination is unlikely to change the dynamics of the ground war in Gaza, as killing him remains a top priority for Israel, Tricaud said. But it does deal a blow to the efforts to achieve a lasting halt in fighting and regional de-escalation; the analyst expects “heightened instability in the region to persist for several more months.”
A lifetime of fighting
Sinwar, 61, was born in a refugee camp in Gaza and spent at least 22 years of his adult life in Israeli prisons. He had been sentenced to life in 1989 for directing the killing of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians that he believed to be collaborators, having already made a name for himself as “the Butcher of Khan Yunis” for his hunting down of Palestinians he suspected to be working with Israel.
He was released early, however, in a highly controversial prisoner swap in 2011 that saw more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners exchanged for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who had been abducted by Hamas five years prior.
Sinwar later said in interviews that he used his time in prison to learn to speak, read and write in Hebrew and to understand the psychology and behavior of his Israeli captors. In 2015 he was designated a terrorist by the U.S. government, and in 2017 he was elected the leader of Hamas.
Yahya Sinwar chairs a meeting with leaders of Palestinian factions at his office in Gaza City, April 13, 2022.
Adel Hana | AP
The International Criminal Court in May said it was filing arrest warrant applications for Sinwar and Haniyeh for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It simultaneously filed arrest warrant applications for war crimes and crimes against humanity for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Sinwar’s elevation to Hamas’ highest position and the consequent merging of its political and military wings also complicates any potential plans for a “day after” in Gaza, for which Israel’s government has not presented a plan.
The selection will likely “incapacitate [Hamas’] legitimacy on the international stage,” Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official and regional analyst, said in an emailed note.
“In many ways, the separation of a military and political branch allowed space for Hamas to attempt to negotiate a better hostage settlement for itself with Israel and to secure its future after the current war in a future Palestinian government,” he said. “This move would challenge that tactic.”
A top target of Israel’s military, Sinwar has survived assassination attempts over the years and is believed to have spent much of the current war hiding in Gaza’s intricate network of tunnels.
This makes Hamas’ decision to appoint Sinwar as its head risky, said Ghanem Nuseibeh, who described the group as “clearly taking a gamble with an invisible leader.”
“But even worse for Israel and the mediators,” Nuseibeh, chairman of the London-based Muslims Against Antisemitism and a regional commentator, said. “Good luck negotiating with the most extreme part of Hamas who is also invisible.”