Sinwar's disappearance marks a change of cycle

4 min read EUGENIO GARCIA GASCON 0 comments

EUGENIO GARCIA GASCON

More than a year into the conflict, when Yahya Sinwar's whereabouts were perhaps the biggest mystery of the war, we learn that the Israeli army has killed him. Most assumed that the Hamas leader was somewhere remote in the Gaza Strip, probably hiding in a tunnel, and well surrounded by Israeli hostages who protected him as human shields.

Israel's reports, however, indicate that he died in combat, a circumstance that will only add to his legend. The same Israelis who portrayed Sinwar as a coward who was in hiding now acknowledge his death while fighting against Israeli troops occupying the Gaza Strip.

Until now we only had a few brief images of him, just a few seconds, with his back turned, in black and white and moving through a tunnel with his family, a backlit video, without any specific features of Sinwar, which the army released many months ago and which must have been recorded a few hours or days after the start of the war.

Sinwar sent messages to Arab leaders a few weeks ago, but these were one-off events that were made through indirect communications and not through recordings of his person. Since those messages, there has been no news of him, a circumstance that some in Israel interpreted to mean that he could have died in the indiscriminate air strikes, as some hostages have in fact died.

Yahiya Sinwar was born in 1962 in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip to a family that was expelled from their land in the city of Ashkelon in 1948, when the state of Israel was established. Sentenced to prison for the deaths of two soldiers and four Palestinians suspected of collaborating, he was released from prison in 2011, when Hamas exchanged an Israeli soldier for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

Sinwar was elected top Hamas leader following the death of Ismail Hanniya, who was eliminated by Israel in Tehran in August. Sinwar himself is said to have volunteered for the post and given his influence he was appointed without any major problems.

His long stay in prison allowed him to study Hebrew, a language he spoke fluently, and to boast of knowing the psychology of the Israeli authorities. He regularly kept his information through the Israeli media and was very attentive to the daily internal politics of that country.

After months of negotiations on the hostages, Sinwar had broken off contacts. The result: nothing had been heard from him for several weeks. Israel was told that his disappearance was due to his refusal to accept Benjamin Netanyahu's delaying game and that he had decided to wait for the prime minister to show a real willingness to negotiate.

A year of imprisonment suggests that he must have had a character very resistant to adversity, a character that was probably formed in the prisons in which he spent 22 years. According to some media, his contacts with the outside world were scarce and for this he relied on a small group of people he completely trusted who took his messages outside and returned his answers with the utmost discretion.

In September, some media outlets reported that Netanyahu had offered to let him leave the Gaza Strip alive if he agreed to exile in Sudan. Logically, an agreement between Hamas and Israel, which never came, would have to address the burning question of Sinwar's future, and it seemed highly unlikely that Netanyahu, or any other leader who succeeds him, would spare the life of someone who ordered the killing of more than a thousand Israelis.

Israeli officials said that under no circumstances would his life be spared. They said he was probably surrounded by Israeli hostages, making his elimination very difficult. After some unpleasant experiences, the army had decided not to risk the lives of any more hostages. The exact number of hostages held by the Islamist organisation is not known, although the army estimates that it is 101.

The resolution of the conflict and the exchange of prisoners are in Netanyahu's hands. The Israeli leader is weighing his personal political considerations and calculations, and seems determined not to give in until public opinion gives him unconditional support. Sinwar therefore had to hide as best he could, since his life would be in immediate danger if he appeared in public.

The future of the Gaza Strip is far from clear. Netanyahu is deliberately prolonging the conflict. Before making any major decisions, he will probably check who wins the US elections in November. The prime minister is toying with the idea of expelling all or a large part of the population of the Strip, a proposal that some of his allies have put forward. If this plan goes ahead, it would indeed be the posthumous defeat of Sinwar and the Palestinians.

In any case, the important thing now is to see who will take over at the head of Hamas. We cannot rule out the possibility that it will be a collegial leadership, as happened on one occasion when Israel killed several leaders of the organisation. Furthermore, we do not know whether his successor or the collegial leadership will stick to the lines clearly outlined by Sinwar regarding the exchange of prisoners that should precede a ceasefire agreement and a complete withdrawal of Israel from the Gaza Strip.