A week after the late Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran, which has escalated tensions in the region, Hamas named Gaza Strip chief Yahya Sinwar as its new political leader on Tuesday, several media reported.
“The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas announces the selection of leader Yahya Sinwar as the head of the political bureau of the movement,” a statement from the group said, as Gulf News reported.
Sinwar has led the group’s operations in the Gaza Strip since 2017. He will now lead the political wing.
Sinwar is believed to be in the Gaza Strip, while his current whereabouts is unknown.
The decision comes at a time when tensions in the Middle East are high, with Iran and its supporters threatening vengeance for Haniyeh’s assassination, which they blame on Israel. Israel has not responded.
Sinwar is presently number one on Israel’s most wanted list. Israel’s security forces think he masterminded the planning of October 7 attack.
Sinwar hasn’t been seen in public since the October attacks and is thought to be hidden “10 storeys underground” in Gaza, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Sinwar was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp to parents who had been displaced from Ashkelon during the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.
In the early 1980s, he studied at the Islamic University of Gaza, where his Arabic studies influenced his charismatic self-presentation.
Israel jailed Sinwar for several weeks after discovering that the network possessed weapons in 1988.
The next year, he was convicted of the murder of Palestinians accused of working with Israel and sentenced to four life terms in jail.
Sinwar was released in 2011, after the door to peace had opened and closed, and he had seen none of the optimism of the Oslo era firsthand.
Sinwar was elected to Hamas’ political bureau in the Gaza Strip in April 2012, barely a few months after his release.
At a 2022 event commemorating Hamas’ birth anniversary, he urged attendees to “be ready to rise up as a gale to defend Al-Aqsa” if Israel does not reach an agreement to release Palestinian captives.
In rhyming Arabic, he continued to rally the crowd: “We will come to you in a roaring flood, in rockets without end, and in an infinite flood of soldiers.” “We will come to you with millions of our people (ummah), one after the other.”