Fluttering down from the skies over Gaza on a current day had been clouds of fliers dropped by the Israeli army asking for tips about the whereabouts of prime Hamas leaders.
“The top of Hamas is close to,” the fliers proclaimed in Arabic, promising hefty bounties to anybody who helped deliver in regards to the arrest of those that had “introduced destruction and wreck to the Gaza Strip.”
The Hamas chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, headed the record in alternate for a reward of $400,000 — greater than 1,500 instances Gaza’s common month-to-month wage.
Israel’s said aim within the battle is to destroy Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that guidelines Gaza and set off the battle there by attacking Israel on Oct. 7. However regardless of a army marketing campaign that has brought on almost 20,000 deaths in Gaza and diminished complete neighborhoods to rubble, Israel has but to find Mr. Sinwar and different senior Hamas figures thought-about key plotters of the assault 10 weeks in the past.
Israel considers Mr. Sinwar central to the Oct. 7 assault, which killed roughly 1,200 folks, with some 240 others taken again to Gaza as captives, Israeli officers say. Now in his 50s, he was a founding member of Hamas within the late Eighties and developed a harsh repute for punishing Palestinians suspected of spying for Israel.
“He’s a really robust man, a brutal man,” mentioned Mkhaimar Abusada, an affiliate professor of political science at Al-Azhar College in Gaza who’s now in Cairo.
Mr. Sinwar’s die-hard dedication to his group’s Islamist ideology makes it unlikely he’ll go down simply.
“If he’s killed, he’s going to go to heaven. He doesn’t actually care a lot about his life,” Mr. Abusada mentioned, describing Mr. Sinwar’s mentality. “Israel could be mistaken if it thought that he was going to give up or that Sinwar was going to lift a white flag.”
Israel can be in search of Mr. Sinwar’s brother and confidante, Mohammed. He has not been seen for the reason that battle started, though the Israeli army this week launched a Hamas video captured in Gaza that it mentioned confirmed him driving in a automobile by means of an underground tunnel in Gaza.
The fliers dropped over Gaza provided $300,000 for data resulting in his seize.
Additionally named within the fliers had been Rafi Salameh, a Hamas army commander, and Mohammed Deif, the chief of the Hamas armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, who’s believed to have misplaced an eye fixed and been severely wounded in earlier Israeli makes an attempt to assassinate him.
Israel provided $200,000 for details about Mr. Salameh and $100,000 for Mr. Deif.
However the best symbolic and operational blow Israel might deal to Hamas could be to kill Mr. Sinwar, analysts and Israeli officers mentioned. Regardless of the destruction of a lot of Hamas’s infrastructure in Gaza, Mr. Sinwar nonetheless has some management over the group’s operations and was capable of ship on swaps of captives with Israel final month that had been negotiated by Hamas leaders in exile.
In contrast to most Hamas army figures, who remained within the shadows even earlier than this battle started, Mr. Sinwar usually attended occasions and gave speeches, which raised his profile amongst Palestinians and Israelis. His killing wouldn’t solely problem Hamas operations however virtually actually dampen morale, whereas cheering Israelis.
The elusiveness of those prime Hamas figures is depriving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s authorities of tangible proof to indicate each his home viewers and a rising refrain of overseas leaders calling for a cease-fire that Israel is progressing towards its aim of wiping out Hamas.
Within the final 10 days, about two-thirds of the United Nations Normal Meeting authorised a nonbinding decision calling for a direct cease-fire; Britain, France and Germany urged a truce; and the Biden administration dispatched senior officers to press Israel to reduce the depth of the battle within the coming weeks in favor of a tactical marketing campaign centered on Hamas.
However Mr. Netanyahu has vowed to maintain preventing, and Israeli officers have urged an extended timeline that would see intensive bombing and floor maneuvers nicely into subsequent 12 months.
Israeli officers insist that they’ve made progress in degrading Hamas by killing hundreds of its fighters, together with vital commanders, and destroying elements of an unlimited tunnel community the group constructed to secretly shuttle fighters and weapons across the territory.
The truth that probably the most senior Hamas leaders in Gaza have up to now bedeviled Israel’s makes an attempt to seek out them leaves open the likelihood that they might survive the battle and work to revive the group’s capabilities after the weapons fall silent.
Israel had already missed a number of alternatives through the years to take away Mr. Sinwar from the battlefield.
He was arrested in 1988 and placed on trial for the murders of 4 Palestinians suspected of spying for Israel, in line with Israeli courtroom information. He spent greater than twenty years in jail in Israel, the place he later mentioned he handed his time attending to know his enemy: He discovered Hebrew, learn extensively and have become a pacesetter amongst Palestinian prisoners.
“There is no such thing as a doubt that he’s cussed and a great negotiator,” mentioned Sofyan Abu Zaydeh, a former Palestinian official within the West Financial institution who met Mr. Sinwar close to the tip of his personal 12-year jail stint within the late Eighties.
He described Mr. Sinwar as deeply ideological. In 1993, different Palestinian factions signed interim peace agreements with Israel often known as the Oslo Accords, recognizing Israel’s proper to exist and creating the Palestinian Authority, a type of government-in-waiting. Hamas rejected these agreements, sticking to its dedication to destroying Israel, and Mr. Sinwar refused to satisfy with representatives of the extra average Palestinian Authority.
“He mentioned that those that are merchandise of Oslo, I don’t acknowledge them,” Mr. Abu Zaydeh mentioned.
Mr. Sinwar was serving a number of life sentences, however in 2011 he was launched in a swap of 1,026 Palestinians for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, captured by Hamas 5 years earlier.
Mr. Sinwar returned to Gaza dedicated to liberating the remaining Palestinian prisoners, thought-about by many Palestinians to be unjustly held.
“He promised his colleagues when he left that their freedom was his burden,” mentioned Mr. Abu Zaydeh, who was himself was launched in 1993 and served as a minister for prisoner affairs within the Palestinian Authority. “Oct. 7, on a primary degree, was about liberating prisoners.”
Because the October assault, different Hamas leaders have mentioned this was a central aim of the assault, and final month Hamas managed to get 240 Palestinians launched by Israel in alternate for 105 Israelis. About 120 hostages stay in Gaza, a few of them troopers Hamas want to commerce for extra and better profile prisoners.
Yuval Bitton, a former head of the Israeli Jail Providers Intelligence Division, mentioned that Israel had determined to launch Mr. Sinwar as a substitute of different prisoners as a result of he didn’t have Israeli blood on his arms. Exchanging Palestinian prisoners who’ve killed Israelis is a extremely charged subject for the Israeli public and barely occurs.
Mr. Bitton, who was within the service on the time however not but its head, mentioned he had seen Mr. Sinwar’s capability to have an effect on different prisoners and even occasions exterior the jail and so had argued in opposition to Mr. Sinwar’s launch.
“I instructed them that the truth that he could be launched would affect the sphere very, very a lot — that he was an incredible hazard and that inside a 12 months he could be the top of Hamas.”
He was overruled.
Six years later, in 2017, Mr. Sinwar grew to become the top of Hamas in Gaza. He gave fiery speeches calling on Palestinians to organize rifles, cleavers, axes and knives to combat Israel, and had a flare for the dramatic.
After the final Israel-Hamas battle in 2021, Mr. Sinwar introduced on the finish of a dwell, televised speech that he was going to stroll residence and dared Israel to assassinate him. Then he strolled by means of the streets of Gaza, waving at shopkeepers and pausing for photographs with admirers.
Maybe his best tactical success, nevertheless, was deceiving Israel in recent times into considering that he wished to keep away from battle and enhance life for Gazans.
He pushed for the entry of assist from Qatar into Gaza and a rise within the variety of Gazans allowed to work in Israel, each drastically wanted within the impoverished territory. He even saved Hamas fighters out of clashes between Israel and different militant teams.
“He was capable of deceive Israel,” mentioned Akram Attaallah, a columnist on the West Financial institution-based newspaper Al-Ayyam. “The complete picture was that he wished stability and growth in Gaza.”
Within the meantime, Hamas was making ready for the Oct. 7 assaults, which had been the deadliest day in Israel’s trendy historical past and sparked the battle in Gaza that has killed about 20,000 Palestinians in 10 weeks.
Mr. Sinwar’s location stays a thriller, as are his ideas in regards to the battle and the way forward for Hamas. However individuals who have met him mentioned that any hope he would give up to cease the battle was in useless, no matter what that meant for Gaza’s civilians.
“He’s going to combat till the tip of it,” mentioned Mr. Abusada, the affiliate professor. “Sadly, the extra this goes on, the extra the Palestinian civilian inhabitants loses.”
Jo Becker and Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting.
