“Butcher of Chan Yunis”: this man is at the top of the Israeli charts. Convicted child murderer executed in Texas

He is at the top of Israel’s wanted list: the head of the terrorist organization Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Jihia al-Sinwar. The 61-year-old and all others responsible for the October 7 massacre are doomed to die, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

Sinwar, along with Mohammed Deif, commander of the armed wing of the terrorist organization Hamas, are believed to be the planners of the surprise attack, which killed approximately 1,200 Israelis. Israel now wants to track them both down during the military operation in the Gaza Strip.

Sinwar, a wiry, bearded man with close-cropped white hair, bushy dark eyebrows and striking facial features, is part of Hamas’s founding generation. He was born in 1962 in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the south of the Gaza Strip. His family comes from the area around the coastal city of Ashkelon, now in Israeli territory.

He was involved in setting up the Kassam Brigades

Hamas was founded in the late 1980s during the first Palestinian uprising, the Intifada, to fight against the Israeli occupation. Sinwar was also involved in setting up Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades. After the peace process between Israel and the Palestinian liberation organization PLO got underway, Hamas carried out bloody suicide bombings in Israel for years in an attempt to torpedo the country.

In the early years of the terrorist organization, Sinwar was responsible for combating suspected collaborators with Israel within its own ranks. He was so cruel that he became known as the ‘Butcher of Khan Yunis’.

In prison he learned Hebrew to study the enemy

Sinwar was convicted by Israel in 1988 for the murder of four suspected collaborators and two Israeli soldiers. He spent more than twenty years in Israeli custody. He used this time to learn Hebrew and study the enemy.

According to media reports, he systematically read books about prominent Zionist and Israeli figures, including former government leaders Menachem Begin and Izchak Rabin. The aim was to gain a deep insight into Israeli society, in the spirit of ‘know your enemy’. Sinwar is also said to have closely followed Israeli media reports.

When Sinwar was interrogated by the domestic Shin Bet intelligence service in 1989, he described how he had killed the four Palestinians with his own hands. After being kidnapped, he took one of them to a cemetery in Khan Yunis. “I blindfolded him, put him in an open grave and strangled him with a cloth,” Sinwar said, according to the interrogation transcript. Then he filled the grave. He also strangled another alleged collaborator with a Palestinian cloth.

In prison he developed into a leader

Musab Hassan Yussef, son of a Hamas co-founder, said of Sinwar: “He beheaded someone in prison because he suspected him of collaborating with Israel, using the bathroom sink. Merciless. And this is the man who is now in charge of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.” Yussef himself was recruited by the Israeli secret service and broke away from Hamas.

During his time in prison, Sinwar had already positioned himself as a leader and had also ordered the killings of other prisoners, said Professor Kobi Michael of the Israel Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). He describes Sinwar as a ‘cruel, psychopathic personality’, but at the same time an intelligent, very charismatic and strong leader. According to media reports, Sinwar was in danger of dying during his captivity due to a brain abscess. That’s why Israeli doctors saved his life with surgery.

Released as part of a prisoner swap with Israel

In 2011, Sinwar was released as one of more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit. Sinwar’s brother is believed to have been involved in the soldier’s kidnapping in 2006. Netanyahu was later repeatedly criticized for the Shalit deal.

After his release, Sinwar was responsible for maintaining contacts between the military and political wings of Hamas. In 2017, he became head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Since then, he has repeatedly tried to end the blockade of the Gaza Strip, which Israel tightened in 2006 and which Egypt has also supported over the years. He based this, among other things, on violent protests at the separation fence.

For a while he was pragmatic

Hamas’s charter is extreme and calls for the destruction of Israel, Palestinian journalist and Hamas expert Mohammed Daraghmeh said. However, Sinwar also relied on more pragmatic positions, at least sometimes.

In 2017, Hamas presented slightly corrected political positions in a policy paper. She indicated her willingness to accept, at least temporarily, a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. At the same time, however, Hamas reaffirmed its desire for armed resistance against Israel, its claim to all of historic Palestine, and its demand for the return of Palestinian refugees. At the time, experts viewed the paper’s publication as an attempt by Hamas to break out of its international isolation.

Sinwar’s strategic plan

Daraghmeh sees the October 7 massacre as an attempt by Sinwar to “turn the tables” using extreme violence. He reached a point “where he thought Israel would never give the Palestinians a state, that the West would never recognize Hamas.” In the face of an economic crisis, population dissatisfaction in the Gaza Strip has been increasing. “Everyone complained: whoever could leave Gaza, left Gaza.”

Hamas was internationally isolated, but at the same time there were talks about Israel’s rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. There were also provocations by members of Israel’s right-wing religious government on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and concerns about the annexation of further areas in the West Bank. This is also why Sinwar tried to ‘break Israel’s will by force’.

His plan didn’t work

Sinwar apparently miscalculated, Daraghmeh said. “Hamas fighters committed atrocities in Israeli cities, the world public was on Israel’s side and the Americans sent aircraft carriers to the region.” Sinwar apparently also expected more support from the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and Iran.

Michael also believes that Sinwar “had a strategic plan to activate all fronts against Israel.” The goal was “a pincer movement that would lead to the collapse of Israel.” The “Axis of Resistance” under Iranian leadership plans to wage a protracted war of attrition that will bring Israel to its knees socially and economically. “They assume that Israel is a Western society that is not resilient enough to deal with it.” Michael also thinks Sinwar was surprised by the strong US response and the rather weak support from Hezbollah and Iran.

Fight to the end

Netanyahu said of Sinwar that he was not interested in the fate of his people and was acting “like a little Hitler in his bunker.” Michael also says that Sinwar “has no problem sacrificing his own people.”

Daraghmeh also believes that Sinwar and the rest of the Hamas leadership are hiding in the tunnel system in the Gaza Strip. “They have been preparing for this for months, if not years,” says Daraghmeh. “They expected the invasion.” Read more about Hamas’ tunnels here.

Both experts believe it is highly unlikely that Sinwar and other Hamas leaders could surrender in the fighting. “They will fight to the end,” Daraghmeh said. “They believe that if they die as martyrs, they will go to heaven.”

Sources

(t-online/dsc)