Hamas this week appointed Yahya Sinwar, the group’s top official in Gaza, as the new leader of its political bloc following the assassination last week of political chief Ismail Haniyeh. The assassination is widely believed to have been carried out by Israel and has brought tensions in the Middle East to their highest point since October.
The news of the appointment came as a surprise, considering that Sinwar – unlike Haniyeh, who was based in Qatar and the diplomatic face in the negotiations to secure a ceasefire in Gaza – has been operating from tunnels since October 7, when the group launched an operation during which an estimated 1,139 people were killed and more than 200 were taken captive.
Since then, nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israel, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. That figure is likely much higher when factoring in deaths by disease, starvation and other consequences of the war.
Haniyeh’s assassination, alongside the killing of Gaza’s children, women, youth, and elders, “underscores that the resistance and its leaders are at the heart of the battle alongside their people”, Hamas said in a statement.
Hamas “remains steadfast in the battlefield and in politics,” Osama Hamdan, spokesperson for the group, told Al Jazeera. “The person leading today is the one who led the fighting for more than 305 days and is still steadfast in the field.”
Sinwar has topped Israel’s hit list since October 7, with political figures in the country repeatedly promising to assassinate him.
“The appointment of arch-terrorist Yahya Sinwar as the new leader of Hamas, replacing Ismail Haniyeh, is yet another compelling reason to swiftly eliminate him and wipe this vile organisation off the face of the Earth,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“[Sinwar] has been and remains the primary decider when it comes to concluding the ceasefire,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said from Washington, DC. “[He will] decide whether to move forward with a ceasefire that manifestly will help so many Palestinians in desperate need, women, children, men who are caught in a crossfire … It really is on him.”
Consolidation of control
In 2013, Sinwar was elected to Hamas’s politburo in the Gaza Strip, before replacing Haniyeh as the movement’s leader in the enclave in 2017.
His influence and stature in Hamas grew to the point that Israeli security officials began to notice him. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu allegedly rejected plans to kill Sinwar on more than one occasion, according to a report published in Israel’s Maariv newspaper. Netanyahu’s office has denied this.
In the capacity of Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Sinwar focused on building up the group’s military capabilities and foreign relations. He restored ties with Egypt and rebuilt relations with Iran, which had taken an opposing side to Hamas in the Syrian civil war in 2011.
Sinwar’s elevation may have come because he is more visible than other Hamas leaders. For example, some analysts believe Mohammad Deif, the head of Hamas’s armed wing the Qassam Brigades, was one of the true masterminds – along with Sinwar – of the October 7 attack. Israel claimed it assassinated Deif during an attack on July 13, but Hamas has yet to announce his death. Unlike Sinwar, who, before October, appeared in public and addressed Palestinians in Gaza with his speeches, Deif has not been seen publicly in years and photos of him are few.
Analysts believe that, since the start of the conflict, Sinwar has had a strong influence over Hamas’s position in ceasefire negotiations and the exchange of captives between Hamas and Israel.
“It is both a message of defiance for the organisation and a consolidation of his control over the movement,” said Omar Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council, of Sinwar’s appointment. “Israel has tried desperately to kill both Sinwar and Hamas, and here they are 10 months later and he is now head of the movement.”
The choice of Sinwar after Haniyeh’s assassination is “symbolic”, said Hani Awad, a researcher at the Doha Institute’s Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies. It shows “that all Hamas leadership is behind Gaza and its resistance”, he said.
Future of ceasefire negotiations
Hamas’s political bloc manages policy while its military wing, the Qassam Brigades, engages in armed resistance against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land.
Questions remain about how Sinwar will fulfil the role, considering he’s living under siege in Gaza. It had been Haniyeh leading Hamas’s negotiations with intermediaries before he was assassinated in Tehran.
Khaled Meshaal, who preceded Haniyeh as Hamas’s political bloc leader from 1996 to 2017, was initially seen as a possible replacement, but his power has “ebbed and flowed” and he does not hold the sway he once had, Rahman said.
Compared with the moderation of Haniyeh and Meshaal, Sinwar is perceived as an uncompromising figure.
“Meshaal and Sinwar represent two different directions within Hamas. Meshaal is more cautious and pragmatic in his relationship with Iran and its allies, while Sinwar believes that there is no alternative to an alliance with Iran and Hezbollah,” said Awad.
“Organisationally speaking, Sinwar represents continuity rather than change,” he said, with Sinwar and Haniyeh sharing the “same foreign policy and positions towards Iran and its proxies”.
Ceasefire negotiations could still progress with Sinwar at the helm, even though the main roadblock in recent months, according to analysts, has been the Israeli side.
Israel’s repeated escalations, most notably the assassination of Haniyeh, have made ceasefire negotiations increasingly difficult.
“In some sense, negotiations were already a farce,” Rahman said. “Netanyahu has put obstacles to a deal at every turn, including, of course, assassinating Haniyeh who was leading the negotiations. That being said, the hostages were not being held by Haniyeh, but by those [Hamas] in Gaza. So I think there is a way that negotiations can still take place, either through emissaries in contact with the leaders in Gaza, or by empowering a negotiator outside the territory.”
While Israeli officials still have Sinwar on their kill list, his appointment to Hamas chief may not change much for the negotiation process.
“At least officially, Israel does not negotiate directly with Hamas, claiming there should be no direct negotiations with a terror organisation,” Eyal Lurie-Pardes, a visiting fellow in the Program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute, told Al Jazeera. “In the past, any agreements reached with Hamas were always conducted with the help of a third party … it is unlikely that Sinwar’s nomination would change Israel’s stance.”
And as the war reaches its 11th month, Israel’s continued campaign of devastation on Gaza and assassination of Haniyeh has done little to diminish Sinwar’s influence on Hamas or in the region.
“We can see in the wake of October 7 and all that has happened, it is Sinwar and the hardliners who are ascendant,” Rahman said.
