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The ruthless killer who spoke Hebrew and wrote a novel

Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, lived by the maxim “know your enemy”.

The alleged mastermind of the 7 October attacks was killed by Israeli troops in an operation in the south of Gaza, according to Israeli officials. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas of his death.

Sinwar was raised in poverty in a refugee camp in the southern Gazan city of Khan Yunis, where his family fled after Israel’s war of independence in 1948, which Palestinians call the Nakba – the catastrophe – when about 800,000 people were displaced.

The young Sinwar was active in paramilitary groups and was arrested twice by Israel before the foundation of Hamas in 1987. He co-founded the group’s internal security force, Majd, and became a confidante of its spiritual father, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

In 1988, Sinwar was arrested again over the killing of two Israeli soldiers and given four life sentences. “I did what I did, and I don’t regret it,” he reportedly said later.

The prisoner devoted himself to the study of Israel during 22 years in a Negev desert jail, mastering the Hebrew language and reading works by and about the architects of modern Zionism from Ze’ev Jabotinsky to Menachem Begin. He gained enough respect for Israeli surveillance capabilities to shun electronic devices.

In an Israeli television interview during his incarceration, conducted in Hebrew, Sinwar appeared to soften his hard-line positions, and raised the prospect of a long-term truce. “We know we don’t have the ability to dismantle Israel,” he said, noting Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

(FILES) Yahya Sinwar (R), leader of the Palestinian Hamas movement, greets supporters during a rally in Gaza City on May 24, 2021. An Israeli security official told AFP on October 17, 2024 that the military was conducting a DNA test on a militant's body to confirm whether it was Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar. (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS / AFP) (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)
Yahya Sinwar hails Hamas troops during a rally in Gaza in 2021 (Photo: Mahmud Hams/AFP)

The future leader wrote a novel behind bars, The Thorns and the Cloves, published in 2004, which combined personal biography with history of the Palestinian struggle. The same year, Israeli medics saved his life operating on a brain tumour.

But Sinwar never abandoned militancy. He was alleged to have plotted with Hamas leaders in Gaza to kidnap Israeli soldiers to use for a prisoner exchange.

That plot was thwarted but another came to fruition when Hamas captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. In 2011, Sinwar was one of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners to be exchanged for Shalit in an unprecedented deal.

Sinwar swiftly rose through the political ranks of Hamas after his release, elected to the politburo in 2012, and replacing Ismail Haniyeh as the group’s leader in Gaza in 2017. He sought to strengthen connections with the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance” against Israel.

The militant leader had a reputation for brutality and ruthlessness toward Palestinians as well as Israelis. His security forces hunted, tortured and killed suspected collaborators and deviants, including Hamas commander Mahmoud Ishtiwi, accused of corruption and homosexuality, in 2016.

But Israeli leaders appeared to see him as a source of stability in Gaza, and a man they could do business with. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, facilitated payments from Qatar to Hamas under his rule. Israeli security agencies were taken by surprise on 7 October, 2023.

“We didn’t understand him at all,” said Michael Milstein, a former Israeli military intelligence officer and Hamas specialist.

Analysts are split over what role he played in the 7 October attacks, with some suggesting that Hamas military wing commander, Mohammed Deif, would have been more central.

Sinwar “would likely have been part of the group that planned and influenced it”, Hugh Lovatt, a Middle East analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told the BBC.

From that moment he was a “dead man walking”, Israeli officials said. A year-long manhunt ensued, and finally concluded on Thursday.

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