Israel is hunting Hamas leader Sinwar
“Osama bin Laden of Gaza” is said to be in Khan Yunis
December 10, 2023, 12:39 p.m
The city of Khan Yunis in the southern part of the Gaza Strip is already surrounded. It is now clear that the Israeli army is apparently targeting Hamas leader Jihia al-Sinwar. As the planner of the massacre in Israel on October 7th, he is at the top of the hit list.
Hamas leader Jihia al-Sinwar has so far been able to evade the Israeli military’s attacks. Sinwar, who was responsible for the October 7 terrorist attack, fled the northern Gaza Strip at the start of the fighting by hiding in a humanitarian convoy. This is reported by the Israeli broadcaster Kan TV, citing an Israeli official familiar with the details. The 61-year-old drove south and is now in Chan Junis.
According to the report, Sinwar is said to be in one of the tunnels under the city. Israeli troops say they have already surrounded Khan Yunis. Residents there reported tank shells and intense firefights between Israeli forces and Hamas overnight, as well as a series of airstrikes.
Army spokesman Daniel Hagari said terrorists and Hamas commanders who surrendered said their fighters were in a “difficult situation” and that the Hamas leadership under Sinwar was “denying reality.” None of this information can be independently verified.
Mastermind of the massacre
Sinwar is compared in Israel with the former leader of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, Osama bin Laden – in reference to the mastermind of the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001. The Hamas leader in Gaza is at the top of the army’s hit list . Sinwar, who was born in 1962 in a refugee camp in Khan Yunis, is considered, together with Mohammed Deif, commander of Hamas’s armed wing, to be the planner of the massacre of October 7, which was unprecedented in Israel’s history, as a result of which around 1,200 Israelis were killed and around 240 people were sent to Gaza were kidnapped.
Sinwar, a wiry, bearded man with close-cropped white hair and deep-set eyes beneath bushy dark eyebrows, is one of the founding generation of Hamas. In the early years of the Islamist movement, he was responsible for the fight against suspected collaborators with Israel within his own ranks. He was so brutal that he became known as the “Butcher of Chan Yunis.” He spent more than two decades in Israeli custody for the murder of four suspected collaborators and two Israeli soldiers. He used this to learn Hebrew and study the enemy.
In 2011, Sinwar was released – as one of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit. That same year, bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by US special forces. Like him, Israel’s government assures us, Sinwar is also a man doomed to die.
Sin wasn’t the only leader
After Israeli soldiers surrounded the Gaza chief’s house in Khan Yunis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday evening: Jihia al-Sinwar could escape, “but it’s only a matter of time before we find him.” But even if the Israeli army tracks down and kills Sinwar, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will bring down Hamas, Harel Chorev of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies at Tel Aviv University told US broadcaster CNN. The reason is that Sinwar plays a key role within Hamas, but is not the only leading figure.
“Hamas can still be overthrown even if Sinwar remains alive,” said Chorev. This would require the destruction of a “critical mass” of power centers. Sinwar is just one of these centers. The daily Yediot Achronot wrote on Friday that Israel had not yet reached the point where Hamas would say “enough.” This could happen with the killing of people like Sinwar or Deif, “but it hasn’t happened yet.” Only by the army maintaining military pressure in Sinwar’s hometown of Khan Yunis could Hamas be persuaded to make another deal to release more hostages, the paper wrote.