Hamas has chosen Yahya Sinwar, one of the masterminds of the deadly Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, to lead the militant group’s political wing, it announced on Tuesday, consolidating his power over Hamas as it continues to fight Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Mr. Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza since 2017, has long been considered an architect of Hamas’s military strategy there. Now, he will also replace Ismail Haniyeh, the group’s previous political leader and a key liaison in the indirect cease-fire talks with Israel. Mr. Haniyeh, who had been living in Qatar, was killed in an explosion in Iran last week that has been widely attributed to Israel.
A hard-line figure born in Gaza, Mr. Sinwar, 61, is a prime target for Israeli forces and is widely believed to be hiding out in tunnels underneath the enclave to avoid Israeli attack. Despite that, he is thought to have been dictating the group’s position in the cease-fire talks.
His selection to lead the group’s political office comes as the Middle East braces for Iran and its proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, to strike Israel in response to the killings last week of Mr. Haniyeh and a senior Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr.
Hamas and Iran have blamed Israel for planting the bomb that killed Mr. Haniyeh in the Iranian capital, Tehran, after he attended the inauguration of the country’s new president. Israel has declined to comment on Mr. Haniyeh’s death, but U.S. officials have privately assessed that Israel was behind it.
The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has promised to respond with a “harsh punishment.” And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has said that his country will “exact a heavy price for any act of aggression against us, from whatever quarter.”
Amid frenzied diplomatic efforts to prevent the violence from mushrooming into a wider regional war, the United States has ordered additional combat aircraft and warships that can intercept missiles, rockets and drones, to the Middle East.
For years, the leaders of Hamas’s political wing have usually been based outside Gaza or in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, creating a split power structure; from 2007 until the war began last year, Hamas governed Gaza, and its military strength has been concentrated there.
Mr. Sinwar’s selection to succeed Mr. Haniyeh seems to bridge that divide, but in precarious fashion; it appears unlikely that he could leave Gaza, as the Israeli military continues to hunt for him. In February, Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said, “The hunt for Sinwar will not stop until we catch him, dead or alive.”
Born in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, Mr. Sinwar joined Hamas in the 1980s. He was later imprisoned for murdering Palestinians accused of apostasy or collaborating with Israel, spending over two decades in an Israeli prison. He was freed in 2011, along with over 1,000 other Palestinian prisoners, in exchange for a single Israeli soldier held by Hamas.
In his role as Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Mr. Sinwar was in many ways already more internally influential than Mr. Haniyeh, his nominal boss. Mr. Haniyeh served as Hamas’s diplomatic face abroad, while Mr. Sinwar controlled operations on the ground and has had close ties with Hamas’s military wing, analysts said.
Earlier this week, the Israeli military confirmed that it had killed Muhammad Deif, the elusive commander of Hamas’s military wing, in an airstrike on the outskirts of Khan Younis last month.
Elevating Mr. Sinwar to leadership of the political operation “is a symbolic decision that shows that Hamas is with Sinwar’s line,” said Fouad Khuffash, a Palestinian political analyst close to Hamas. “It is more of an honorific than a practical matter: No one knows where he is, even Hamas.”
Osama Hamdan, a Hamas spokesman, said in an interview with Al Jazeera that Mr. Sinwar had been chosen unanimously and that he was “accepted by everyone in the movement.” He said it was too early to discuss how his selection would affect the cease-fire talks, but suggested that little would change.
“The negotiations were managed by the leadership, and Sinwar was always present,” Mr. Hamdan said.
Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, said in a statement that Mr. Sinwar’s appointment was “yet another compelling reason to swiftly eliminate him and wipe this vile organization off the face of the earth.”
Mr. Sinwar has not spoken publicly since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks prompted Israel’s devastating 10-month campaign in Gaza and led Hezbollah to launch its own attacks on northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas.
On Tuesday, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said in a televised addressed that his group and Iran were “obliged to respond” to the killings of Mr. Shukr and Mr. Haniyeh, “whatever the consequences.”
“What is required is confrontation,” Mr. Nasrallah said in a speech commemorating Mr. Shukr, who was killed in Beirut’s southern suburbs. “Our response will come, God willing, and it will be strong.” He added, “The wait is part of the punishment.”
Just minutes before he spoke, fighter jets — presumably operated by the Israeli military — ripped through the skies above Beirut, breaking the sound barrier, rattling apartment buildings and sending residents running for cover. Mr. Nasrallah mocked the sonic booms, saying they demonstrated how petty Israel had become.
“Hezbollah will respond, Iran will respond, Yemen will respond, and the enemy waits,” he said.
Just hours before Mr. Nasrallah spoke, Hezbollah launched a stream of attack drones into northern Israel in response to an Israeli strike a day earlier that the Israeli military said had killed a Hezbollah field commander.
Seven people in Israel were wounded in the drone attacks, Israeli paramedics said. The Israeli military said some Israeli civilians had also been injured by an Israeli interceptor missile that missed its target.
Earlier on Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon killed five people, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry; Israel said it had hit structures used by Hezbollah.
More than 150,000 people have already been forced from their homes on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border since Hezbollah and Israel began striking each other in October. Israeli officials have openly discussed the possibility of invading Lebanon to push Hezbollah away from the border, as it did in 2006, after the war in Gaza concludes.
Abdallah Bou Habib, the Lebanese foreign minister, said on Tuesday that Lebanese officials had sought to discuss an appropriate response with Hezbollah that would not prompt a wider war. But after Mr. Haniyeh was killed in Tehran, infuriating Iranian leaders, the decision was “bigger than Lebanon,” he said.
“We are working so that any response does not bring us to total war,” Mr. Bou Habib said at a news conference in Egypt. “That would not benefit any states, nor would it benefit Israel.”
Diplomats and analysts have warned that a miscalculation by any of the combatants could set off a wider regional war at a particularly tense moment for the Middle East.
In an effort to contain the tensions, President Biden spoke on Tuesday with Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, and with Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, according to Sean Savett, a spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council.
Mr. Biden discussed efforts to de-escalate regional tensions and to secure a deal to end the fighting in Gaza and to free the remaining hostages seized during the Oct. 7 attack, Mr. Savett said.
Egypt said that Mr. el-Sisi had also spoken to King Abdullah II of Jordan, and that both leaders had emphasized the need for calm and for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.
Tensions have also been escalating in the West Bank, where Israeli forces have killed at least 12 Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy, since Monday, according to the Palestinian Authority’s health officials.
The Israeli military said that its operations in the West Bank, including two airstrikes on the city of Jenin, have been aimed at “terrorists” and that several “wanted suspects” had been arrested.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Israeli forces had fired on their ambulances in Jenin, just days after one of the group’s volunteer paramedics was fatally shot during an Israeli raid in Nablus.
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