Who is Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and what does he want? 

Over the weekend, the Israeli military continued its operations in and around the southern city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, as fighting also spread into parts of northern Gaza.  

After months of multilateral negotiations, the talks to end this war are at an impasse. Many factors still stand in the way of a ceasefire deal. 

The top Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar would need to sign off on any negotiated agreement to release the remaining hostages held in Gaza and secure a truce. 

Sinwar is considered to be the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians and ended with more than 250 people taken hostage.

Since 2007, Hamas has ruled the Gaza Strip. The Islamist group claims to have both a political branch and a military wing. Hamas leaders are active within the Gaza Strip, as well as in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria and Turkey. 

“Sinwar is a true believer and a hardliner, who first went to jail for killing fellow Palestinians and is willing to pursue his agenda now, even at the cost of more Palestinian lives. That was his calculation going into this in October,” said Matthew Levitt, who directs the counterterrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Levitt was referring to Sinwar’s conviction for killing four Palestinians in Gaza who were accused of collaborating with Israel. According to the Washington Post, Sinwar confessed to killing 12 people and also described to Israeli interrogators how he strangled his victims to death. 

Levitt said the conflict playing out in Gaza right now — with an estimated 35,000 Palestinians dead — was actually part of Sinwar’s plan.

“This was the entire strategy of Oct. 7, to do something so over-the-top — so gruesome — that it would have to engender a massive Israeli response. And that massive Israeli response would lead to many Palestinians dead.” 

Levitt, author of “Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad,” also pointed out that “Hamas built bunkers for its soldiers, but not a single bomb shelter for its civilians. And yet, Sinwar seems very comfortable to pursue this.”  

Ultimately, Levitt said, the goal of Yahya Sinwar and the other top leaders of Hamas is to destroy Israel and replace it with Islamic rule.   

According to the Wall Street Journal, Arab mediators who are in contact with Hamas said that Sinwar believes he’s already won the war, even if he ends up being killed by Israel. That’s because the deaths of Palestinians have put the issue of the conflict back on the international agenda. 

About a week ago, Israel’s national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said that Sinwar is “living on borrowed time.” He said the Israeli military has come close to killing Sinwar in recent months, and that Sinwar will not come out of this confrontation alive.

“Israelis gunning for Sinwar is like America gunning for Osama bin Laden,” Levitt said.  But eliminating Sinwar would not necessarily end the war, Levitt added. “If you want to give him martyrdom, he’ll take it.” 

Levitt also said that what ends this war is securing the release of the hostages. “That is what opens the door toward something new coming in Gaza, the Israelis pulling out, etcetera.” 

Meanwhile, Yahya Sinwar is assumed to be hiding somewhere in Gaza, in an underground bunker.   

Sinwar spent more than 20 years in Israeli prisons. He speaks fluent Hebrew, and he was released in a 2011 prisoner swap, along with about 1,000 other Palestinians, in exchange for a single kidnapped Israeli soldier. Sinwar has a reputation as being ruthless and ideologically driven.

Sinwar was once in charge of Hamas’s internal security. And he remains in control of the war-torn Gaza Strip today. 

Bassam Naim, a leader with the political bureau of Hamas in Doha, Qatar, said they have “continuous contact with the leadership inside Gaza on a daily basis.” 

Mati Abdulhadi, a Palestinian political expert with the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA), a think tank in Jerusalem, said it’s important to consider Hamas’s leadership within a broader context — not just the most recent conflict. 

“It’s a question of the people themselves who have been living in the present and continuous control of Israeli Palestinian occupation for many years,” he said. 

Abdulhadi also cautioned that people should focus less on Yahya Sinwar and more on the death and destruction in Gaza — and work to end it as soon as possible.