BEIRUT (AP) — Hamas on Tuesday named Yahya Sinwarits top official in Gaza who orchestrated the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, as its new leader, in a dramatic sign of the strength of the Palestinian militant group’s hardline wing after his predecessor was killed in a suspected Israeli strike in Iran.
The choice of Sinwar, a secretive figure close to Iran who has worked for years to bolster Hamas’ military strength, was a defiant signal that the group is ready to continue fighting after 10 months of destruction from Israel’s campaign in Gaza and the assassination of Sinwar’s predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh.
He is also likely to provoke Israel, which put him at the top of its hit list after the October 7 attack in which militants killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and took about 250 hostage.
The announcement comes at a particularly tense time. Fears of an escalation into a broader regional war are high, with Iran vowing revenge on Israel for Haniyeh’s assassination and Lebanon’s Hezbollah threatening to retaliate for Israel’s killing of one of its top commanders in an airstrike in Beirut last week. American, Egyptian and Qatari mediators are trying to salvage negotiations on a ceasefire and a deal to release hostages in Gaza, which have been shaken by Haniyeh’s assassination.
Hamas said in a statement that it had appointed Sinwar as its political bureau chief, replacing Haniyeh, who was killed in an attack that Iran and Hamas blamed on Israel. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility. Last week, Israel also said it had confirmed the death of Hamas’ military wing chief Mohammed Deif in a July airstrike in Gaza. Hamas has not confirmed his death.
Reacting to the appointment, Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV: “There is only one place for Yahya Sinwar, and that is next to Mohammed Deif and the rest of the October 7 terrorists. This is the only place we are preparing and have planned for him.”
After the assassinations of several senior Hamas officials in recent months, Sinwar has emerged as the group’s most prominent figure. His choice signals that leaders on the ground in Gaza — particularly the armed wing known as the Qassam Brigades — have taken over from exiled leaders, who have traditionally retained the position of supreme leader to manage relations with foreign allies and diplomacy.
Haniyeh, who has been living in self-imposed exile in Qatar since 2019, had played a direct role in negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza through American, Qatari and Egyptian negotiators – although he and other Hamas officials consistently presented Sinwar’s proposals and positions.
Speaking on Al-Jazeera television after the announcement, Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan said Sinwar would continue ceasefire negotiations.
“The problem in the negotiations is not the change within Hamas,” he said, blaming Israel and its ally the United States for the failure of the talks.
But he added that Sinwar’s selection was a sign that the group’s will had not been broken. Hamas “remains steadfast on the battlefield and in politics,” he said. “The person who leads today is the one who has led the fighting for more than 305 days and is still steadfast on the ground.”
Iran and Hezbollah, allies of Hamas, issued statements welcoming Sinwar’s appointment.
Hamas’s representative to Iran, Khaled Kaddoumi, called Sinwar a “consensus choice” who was popular among all factions and involved in the group’s decision-making throughout the process, including in negotiations. In a voicemail message to the AP, he said Sinwar knew the Palestinians’ political aspirations for statehood and the return of refugees, but was also a “fierce fighter on the battlefield.”
Mediators are struggling to push through a U.S.-backed draft deal, but talks have hit snags, particularly over its central terms: the release of all remaining Hamas hostages in exchange for an end to the war and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
Hamas has demanded that mediators guarantee that an initial ceasefire will hold until the terms of such an exchange are worked out. Israeli leaders have threatened to resume fighting to eliminate Hamas after an initial partial release of the hostages.
“Escalation is in no one’s interest, it will only lead to more conflict, more violence, more insecurity… It is also essential that we break this cycle by reaching a ceasefire in Gaza. That will pave the way for a more lasting calm, not only in Gaza itself, but in other areas where the conflict could spread,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at a briefing Tuesday that she had no comment on Sinwar’s nomination announcement.
As Hamas’ leader in Gaza since 2017, Sinwar rarely appears in public but maintains Hamas’ control over the territory with an iron fist. Close to the Deif and Qassam Brigades, he has worked to strengthen the group’s military capabilities.
In one of his rare appearances, Sinwar concluded a public speech in Gaza by calling on Israel to assassinate him, declaring: “I will walk home after this meeting.” He later did so, shaking hands and taking selfies with people in the streets.
He has been in hiding since the October 7 attacks, which sparked Israel’s campaign of bombings and offensives aimed at destroying Hamas. The Palestinian death toll now approaches 40,000, with most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents driven from their homes and large swathes of towns and villages destroyed. In May, prosecutors at the International Criminal Court sought an arrest warrant for Sinwar on war crimes charges over the October 7 attack, as well as for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli defense minister on war crimes charges.
Hugh Lovatt, an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the elimination of other prominent figures paved the way for Sinwar. “Two weeks ago, few would have thought that Sinwar would be the next leader of the group, despite the considerable influence he wields from Gaza,” he said.
The killing of Haniyeh, a relative moderate, “not only paved the way for Sinwar to claim full control of Hamas, but also appears to have shifted the group in a harder direction,” he said.
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AP correspondents Kareem Chehayeb and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.
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