Decades before he orchestrated the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, Yahya Sinwar was jailed by an Israeli military court for multiple murders. His answer was to learn Hebrew.
"(Vladimir) Jabotinsky and (Menahem) Begin and (Yitzhak) Rabin - he read all the books that came out about prominent Israeli figures," said Miha Kobi, who interrogated Sinvar for the Shin Bet intelligence service. "He studied us, from the bottom to the top."
Then, in the fifteenth year of his sentence, in an interview for Israeli television, he presented his perfect Hebrew. Instead of war, he urged the Israeli public to support a hudna, or truce, with the militant group Hamas.
"It is clear to us that Israel has 200 nuclear warheads and has the most advanced ... air force in the region. We know we don't have the ability to destroy Israel," said the Palestinian.
Nevertheless, despite all that, Sinvar (61) is today the most wanted man in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls him "the walking dead." The leader of the Hamas militant group in Gaza is believed to be most responsible for the October 7 surprise attack that killed more than 1.400 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly.
His elimination is the primary goal of Israel's escalating campaign to "destroy" Hamas. Palestinian officials say more than ten thousand people have been killed in Gaza since Israel began retaliating against the attack, destroying large swathes of the Hamas-controlled territory in land, air and sea attacks.
Misreading Sinwar's character was the prelude to Israel's biggest intelligence lapse
Before the Hamas incursion, Israel had almost 40 years of experience with Sinwar, a fierce and violent man of tough build. Yet that accumulated knowledge has only lulled Israel's security chiefs into a false sense of complacency in recent years.
On the eve of the war, Israel saw Sinwar as a dangerous extremist who could still be tamed, and who was more preoccupied with consolidating Hamas's rule in Gaza and extracting economic concessions than with the group's proclaimed goal of destroying the Jewish state.
That misinterpretation of Sinvar's character was the prelude to Israel's biggest intelligence lapse. Some believe that Sinvar succeeded in the ultimate deception.
"We didn't understand him at all, in a crazy way. Zero,” said Michael Milstein, a former Israeli military intelligence officer and expert on Palestinian affairs.
The portrait of Sinvar given by several people who spent time with him, decades ago, presents a charismatic man of few words, quick-tempered and dominant appearance.
Kobi recalls interrogating Sinvar in 1989 when he confessed to the murder. It was the height of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, and Kobi was a Shin Bet officer who persecuted members of Hamas, then a small Islamist militant group that rose to prominence in Gaza.
Forced the "informant" to bury his brother alive
Sinwar, known as Abu Ibrahim, helped form Hamas's military wing, the Qassam Brigades. However, when he was arrested in the late 1980s, it was for his particular role in Hamas: hunting down Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel.
Kobi said Sinwar bragged about the sentence handed down to a suspected informer from a rival faction. Sinwar called the man's brother, a member of Hamas, and "made him bury his own brother alive," giving him a shovel to finish the job. “He made his brother pour, and pour, and pour.
It's Jahja Sinvar,” Kobi said. A secret Israeli military court convicted Sinwar of killing 12 Palestinians, including a man who was buried alive, according to two people familiar with the case. He rose to become the leader of all Hamas prisoners in Israeli prisons, an influential position in the group's hierarchy. At one point in 2004, Israeli doctors removed a brain abscess and saved his life, according to the Israeli authorities.
An Israeli intelligence assessment of Sinvar during his time in prison tried to penetrate his character: “cruel ... authoritative, influential, accepted by friends and with unusual powers of endurance, cunning and manipulative, content with small ... keeps secrets even inside prison among the other prisoners ... he has the ability to rally the masses”.
Raised in a slum in southern Gaza's Khan Yunis, Sinwar emerged on the Gaza political scene in the early 1980s as a "whisperer" advising the wheelchair-bound founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who enjoyed a reputation within the movement.
Sinwar's neighbor in Khan Yunis was Muhammad Deif, who is now the military chief of Hamas.
In addition to helping establish the group's military wing, Sinvar was placed in charge of its internal security apparatus, the Majd Force (fame), tasked with eliminating suspected collaborators. This earned him the nickname "the butcher of Khan Yunis", which some Palestinians still use today.
A mythical figure for the Palestinians
Sinwar has become an almost mythical figure for Palestinians, especially inside Gaza. "Many Palestinians feel pride, and Sinwar is very popular on the Palestinian streets," said one prominent Palestinian activist in East Jerusalem. "But the moderate Palestinians understand that he has returned us to the Stone Age (because of October 7 and its aftermath)".
Above all, those who know him say his rise within Hamas has relied on cultivating a reputation for ruthlessness and violence, which has an influence even in the highest ranks of Hamas.
"The difference is between how (Hamas officials) behave when they are alone and when they are with him," said one non-Israeli who has years of experience in direct contact with Sinwar. "It is fear, they are afraid of it".
“None of them opposed him before he decided to commit this barbarity (on October 7). It was a perfect military operation, but the consequences will be biblical".
Moderate Palestinians realize that he has sent us back to the Stone Age because of the October 7th attack and its aftermath
Sinvar was released in 2011 after serving 22 years in an Israeli prison. He was part of an exchange in which more than 1.000 Palestinians were freed for an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who was being held by Hamas in Gaza.
He was elected the group's Gaza-wide leader until 2017, replacing Ismail Haniyeh, who, according to multiple people familiar with the relationship between the two, became Hamas's political leader and then left for Qatar.
Now dressed as a politician, Sinwar hosted foreign diplomats and held rallies with fiery speeches.
Under his leadership, Hamas adapted the use of force - protests along the border, incendiary balloons, and especially rocket attacks - to force Israel to resume indirect talks through Egyptian, Qatari and UN mediators.
"The rockets are their ability to have a conversation with me," a senior Israeli security official said earlier this year. In recent years, Israel has made concessions to Gaza unthinkable just a few years ago, including greater financial support from Qatar and thousands of Israeli work permits.
The motives behind Sinvaro's explosive U-turn on October 7 remain a mystery.
“He is not a humble man. He has a huge ego and thinks he has some kind of mission in this world," said a non-Israeli who has many years of experience with Sinvar. “He's a sociopath. I don't mean this as an insult”.
"It would not be a problem for him to sacrifice tens of thousands of lives and more to achieve his goals," he added.
Sinwar needed a 2021 runoff in Hamas' non-transparent internal elections against an old rival to retain office, which some analysts see as a potential turning point. A few months later, Israel and Hamas fought an 11-day war, after which Sinwar - sitting on a chair among the ruins of his home - declared "victory".
A pragmatic facade
Over the past year, a Palestinian official with close ties to Gaza has traveled to the territory several times in an attempt to negotiate a broader national agreement with Hamas. He often met with Sinvar, insisting that there was "mutual respect".
However, during the official's last visit to Gaza earlier this year, Sinvar "completely disappeared". "There were signals we needed to read," he said. "Masking the military way with a diplomatic way".
However, the official Israeli assessment was that Hamas led by Sinwar was deterred from another war and interested in a broader agreement with Israel.
According to Israeli intelligence, Hamas needed at least a year to plan the attack. Sinvar's outwardly pragmatic facade, Israeli officials and analysts argue, was pure deception to buy time.
"We have to face it: he is motivated by hatred, slaughter and destruction of Israel," said Milstein, the Israeli military intelligence officer.
Gaza may now be facing a devastating attack, with Sinwar as the main target. But Israel is humiliated and the fate of the region hangs in the balance. That alone can be enough of a victory for Sinvar. “He will not surrender. He will die there in Gaza," Kobi said.
Prepared by: A. Šofranac
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