U.S. attempts to pressure Hamas to agree to a cease-fire proposal newly backed by the U.N. Security Council have put a spotlight on the armed group’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, who is believed to have remained in hiding in the enclave throughout the war and is a pivotal voice in the group’s decision-making.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Tuesday in Tel Aviv, during a visit to several countries in the Middle East, that the onus was now on Mr. Sinwar to accept the new cease-fire proposal, which the United States brought to a successful Security Council vote on Monday. Rejecting the deal, Mr. Blinken said, would put Mr. Sinwar’s political interests ahead of those of civilians.
Hamas could be “looking after one guy,” Mr. Blinken said, referring to Mr. Sinwar.
Mr. Sinwar was an architect of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, in which around 1,200 people were killed and around 240 taken hostage. American and Israeli officials who spent months assessing his motivations say that Mr. Sinwar knew the incursion would provoke an Israeli military response that would kill many civilians, but he reasoned that was a price worth paying to upend the status quo with Israel.
After Hamas agreed to a brief cease-fire late last year, during which more than 100 hostages in Gaza and many more Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons were exchanged, Mr. Sinwar has held out against any further cease-fire deals. More than 36,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the eight months of war, and around 80,000 people have been injured, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which says that the majority of the dead are women, children and older people.
Mr. Sinwar’s position is not the only question mark in the negotiations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel also has not said in public that he accepted the proposal the Security Council has endorsed and is under pressure from his far-right coalition partners not to end the war until Hamas is destroyed. Mr. Blinken said on Tuesday that Mr. Netanyahu had “reaffirmed” his commitment to the plan in private talks in Jerusalem.
U.S. officials said last month that Mr. Sinwar was most likely living in tunnels beneath Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza that has been devastated by Israeli airstrikes and fighting. Hamas has constructed a network of tunnels beneath Gaza to shield the group from Israeli surveillance and attack.
Israeli officials have said that killing Mr. Sinwar is a top priority, no matter how long it takes; he has not been seen in public since Oct. 7. He has also not released audio and video messages.
That public silence has made it difficult to determine his thinking and the extent to which he retains control of Hamas, some of whose political leaders are based in Qatar. But Israeli and American officials say Mr. Sinwar remains central to the group’s decision making.
The American and Israeli intelligence agencies that have assessed Mr. Sinwar’s motivations, according to people briefed on the intelligence, have concluded that he is primarily motivated by a desire to take revenge on Israel and to weaken it. The well-being of the Palestinian people or the establishment of a Palestinian state, the intelligence analysts say, appears to be secondary.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Mr. Sinwar had resisted pressure to agree to a deal in recent months, calculating that a continuation of the war would work to his political advantage even at the cost of rising casualties among Palestinian civilians.
The article cited dozens of messages reviewed by the Journal that it said Mr. Sinwar had transmitted to cease-fire negotiators, Hamas compatriots outside Gaza and others. It was not possible to authenticate the messages independently.
“We have the Israelis right where we want them,” Mr. Sinwar said in one of the messages, identified as a recent one to Hamas officials who were seeking to broker an agreement with Qatari and Egyptian officials.
In another message cited by The Journal, Mr. Sinwar referred to a past war in which a weaker force prevailed over a more powerful adversary: an uprising in Algeria, which secured Algeria’s independence in 1962 at the cost of at least 400,000 Algerian and 35,000 French lives. That message called the losses “necessary sacrifices.”
The Journal report quoted what it said was a Sinwar letter, dated April 11, to the overall political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, after three of Mr. Haniyeh’s adult sons were killed by an Israeli airstrike, in which he said that their deaths and those of other Palestinians would “infuse life into the veins of this nation.”
Mr. Sinwar was imprisoned for murdering Palestinians whom he accused of apostasy or collaborating with Israel, according to Israeli court records from 1989. He was released in 2011, along with more than 1,000 other Palestinians, in exchange for one Israeli soldier captured by Hamas. Six years later, Mr. Sinwar was elected leader of Hamas in Gaza.
The post New Gaza Cease-Fire Proposal Puts Spotlight on Hamas Leader Yahya Sinwar appeared first on New York Times.
