Yahya Sinuar, the political leader of Hamas, is a radical and pragmatic militant believed to be the mastermind of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Authorities in Tel Aviv refer to him as the "walking dead."
His entire career was spent in the shadows: in Israeli prisons, where he spent 23 years, and then in the security apparatus of the Palestinian Islamist movement, where he was in charge of the purges.
As head of the Palestinian Islamist movement in Gaza since 2017, at 61, he is the architect of 7 October: on that day, hundreds of militants attacked kibbutzim, military bases and rave parties in Israel, which experienced the worst attack on civilians since its creation in 1948. According to Israel, 1,198 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.
"It was his strategy, he was the one who prepared the operation," probably for a year or two," Leila Seurat, a researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (CAREP) in Paris, told AFP.
She said the ascetic man, with white hair but thick black eyebrows, "imposed his pace to change the balance of power on the ground and surprise everyone". The man, who is now "the face of the devil" or the "walking dead", according to the Israeli army, has not appeared in public since October.
"This is the No. 1 man in security" who, with the "charisma of a leader," "makes decisions with the utmost calm," Abu Abdallah, a former jailed Hamas member, told AFP in 2017.
In 1987, the first intifada (uprising against the Israeli occupation) broke out in a refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. Yahya Sinuar, born in Khan Younis, a camp in the south of the territory, joined the newly founded Hamas.
At the age of 25, he was already head of the Jihad and Preaching Organization, Hamas's intelligence unit that punishes "collaborators" - Palestinians punished for conspiring with Israel's enemy.
In 1988, he founded the IDF, Hamas's internal security service.
In 1989, he was imprisoned and became leader of the prisoners. Sentenced several times to life imprisonment, he was released in 2011 along with a thousand prisoners released by Israel in exchange for soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held hostage by Hamas for five years.
Yahya Sinuar has seen his mentors liquidated by Israel, in particular Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, and Salah Shehadeh, the founder of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the movement of which he is considered the right-hand man.
Listed as an "international terrorist" by the US, he has been the target of numerous assassination attempts.
Elected to lead Hamas in Gaza in 2017, he has adopted a strategy that is "radical militarily and pragmatic politically," explains Leila Seurat. "He is not advocating force for force's sake," but "to bring (Israelis) to the negotiating table."
Israeli media published excerpts from his interrogation. In them, he describes kidnapping a traitor and taking him to the cemetery in Khan Yunis: "I put him in a grave and strangled him with a keffiyeh (...). I was sure he knew he deserved to die".
Politically, he advocates a unified Palestinian leadership of all the occupied territories: the Gaza Strip ruled by Hamas, the West Bank ruled by Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah, and East Jerusalem.
"He has made it clear that he will punish anyone who tries to prevent reconciliation with Fatah," the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) said.
When it was elected to lead Hamas in Gaza, the movement accepted the principle of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, but retained as its ultimate goal the "liberation" of all 1948 Palestinian territory, including what is now Israeli territory.
At whatever cost, it intends to force Israel and the world to take an interest in the fate of the Palestinians. Hamas's strategy of political integrity is failing: it will choose violence.
Against the backdrop of global disinterest in the Palestinian cause and the emerging normalization of relations between Arab states and Israel, it is pushing for "Marches of Return" in 2018-19. Clashes along the separation barrier with Israel in Gaza have resulted in nearly 300 deaths.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out its attack - blowing up the checkpoint guarding the border with the Gaza Strip, which has been under blockade since 2007. According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, the Israeli response has already caused the deaths of nearly 40,000 people. | BGNES
