Doha, 7 August 2024 (TDI): After two days of lengthy negotiations in Doha, Hamas has named Yahya Sinwar as its new overall chief, replacing Ismail Haniyeh who was killed in Tehran last week.
Since 2017, Sinwar has served as the movement’s leader inside the Gaza strip. He will now become head of its political wing.
The announcement comes at a moment of increasing tensions in the Middle East, as Iran and its allies threaten retaliation for the assassination of Haniyeh, which they blame on Israel. Israel has not commented.
Over the course of two days in Doha, intensive meetings involving Hamas’s leading figures hammered out the options for the movement’s next chief.
Many scenarios were discussed, but ultimately, just two names were presented: Yahya Sinwar, and Mohammed Hassan Darwish, a shadowy figure who heads the General Shura Council, a body that elects Hamas’s Politburo.
The council voted unanimously to choose Sinwar.
Prior to his death, Haniyeh was viewed by regional diplomats as a pragmatic figure compared to others in the goup – a key driver of the Hamas’s political outreach.
Yahya Sinwar, on the other side, is viewed as one of Hamas’s most extreme figures.
He currently tops Israel’s most-wanted list. Thesecurity agencies of Israel believe he masterminded the planning and execution of the 7 October 2023 attacks, which left more than 1,200 people dead and 251 taken back into Gaza as hostages.
Also Read More: Israel Kills Ismail Haniyah in Iran, says Hamas
Sinwar has not been seen in public since the attacks in October, and is believed to be hiding ten storeys underground in Gaza, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in June.
Who is Sinwar?
Sinwar was born in Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza in 1962.
In the late 1980s, he founded the Hamas security service known as Majd, which among other things targeted alleged Palestinian collaborators with Israel.
Sinwar has spent much of his life in Israeli prisons – and after his third arrest in 1988 he was sentenced to four life terms in jail.
However, he was among 1,027 Palestinian and Israeli Arab prisoners released by Israel in the 2011 exchange for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive for over 5 years by Hamas.
He was appointed head of the group’s political bureau in the Gaza Strip in 2017, a position he served in until now.
The United States includes Sinwar on its blacklist of “international terrorists”.
