[M]: Dawoud Abo Alkas / ZUMA Wire / IMAGO, Hani Alshaer / Anadolu Agency / picture alliance, Mohammed Abed / AFP, Ashraf Amra / ZUMA Press / IMAGO, Ashraf Amra / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images, Mahmud Hams / AFP, Yahya Hassouna / AFP
DER SPIEGEL 51/2023
The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 51/2023 (December 16th, 2023) of DER SPIEGEL.
SPIEGEL International
A Gaza Conundrum
The Story Behind the Rise of Hamas
Even as all eyes were on the PLO, a small Islamist group slowly took root in the Gaza Strip in the late 1980s. But under the leadership of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas grew and grew, and ultimately became the murderous terror group it is today. This is its story.
It must have been three or four days after October 7 when the Hamas leader visited his hostages in one of the many tunnels under the Gaza Strip. “Hello, I’m Yahya Sinwar,” he said, introducing himself in fluent Hebrew. “Nothing will happen to you.”
DER SPIEGEL 51/2023
The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 51/2023 (December 16th, 2023) of DER SPIEGEL.
SPIEGEL International
Eighty-five-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz was one of the Israeli prisoners present for the meeting with Sinwar. She would be released at the end of October. According to the Israeli media, she asked Sinwar whether he wasn’t ashamed to be doing such a thing to the very people who had supported peace all these years. Together with her husband, she told Sinwar, she had personally helped bring Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Israeli hospitals.
She says Sinwar didn’t answer.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar at a Hamas event in May 2021 Foto: Majdi Fathi / NurPhoto / Getty Images
“Conditions here are unbearable. An explosion is inevitable.”
Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas
The visit to the hostages must have been a great moment in the life of this man, who has spent more than 20 years in Israeli prisons. Some describe him as a butcher and others as a psychopath, but for many, he is seen as a heroic resistance fighter.
The October 7 massacre is the bloody climax of Sinwar’s terrorist career. His men simply overran Israel’s ultra-modern border facilities surrounding the Gaza Strip simply overrun. They took the vaunted Israeli army, which took several hours to respond, completely by surprise and sent the whole of Israel into a state of shock after an attack the likes of which the Jewish state had never seen before: at least 1,200 dead in one day, shot, burned, beheaded – in addition to taking around 240 hostages, many women and children. And Hamas filmed the horror live and broadcast it to the world on social media.
The Palestinian Question Returns To Center Stage
The attack is a turning point in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians; a turning point after which little will be the same again – not only for the Israelis, but also the Palestinians. The massacre and Israel’s military response to it have created new traumas and reopened old ones. For the Israelis, the atrocities committed on October 7 are reminiscent of the bloody pogroms and the Holocaust. For the Palestinians, the Israeli response has evoked memories of the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe, which the Palestinians use to describe their flight and expulsion following the founding of the Jewish state in 1948.
Buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip Foto: Said Khatib / AFP
Since the attack, the Palestinian question has once again been at the center of global attention, while Israel has had to abandon the illusion that it can "manage” the conflict with the Palestinians. Talks on normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia are on hold. Russia and China sense an opportunity to assert their influence in the region. The European Union is struggling with its future role in the conflict. And the United States government faces both headwinds and isolation stemming from its pro-Israeli stance.
And as brutal and repulsive as the attack was, the Palestinians, says Israeli pollster Dahlia Scheindlin, now view Hamas as "number one” in the fight against Israel. The secular Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, has faded into insignificance, she says.
It can be assumed that this is exactly what the Hamas fighters wanted to acheive, in addition to the very specific goal of taking as many hostages as possible in order to leverage the release of prisoners held by the Israelis.
But Sinwar likely had another goal in mind: That of shaking the Israelis’ sense of security and their trust in the state and the army. And of hitting them at their weakest point – the deep-seated fear of annihilation held by a people who have been persecuted for thousands of years.
The Israeli army began calling up reservists on October 7. And since then, the military has been waging a war against Hamas that has also had a far-reaching impact on the Gaza Strip’s civilian population. Thus far, Israel’s army has killed around 18,000 Palestinians, a figure that comes from Hamas sources, but is nevertheless considered realistic by international organizations. More than 100 Israeli soldiers have also been killed in the Gaza Strip. The north of the region, in particularly, has largely been destroyed. The Israeli army reports that 7,000 terrorists have been killed so far, including half of all Hamas commanders.
How was it possible for the terrorists to launch such an attack? Were the atrocities part of the plan from the start? Why did Hamas risk its control over the Gaza Strip, indeed its very existence? And can this war destroy the organization as the Israeli government is hoping, or will Hamas perhaps emerge even stronger than before?
In the search for answers to these questions, it’s impossible to ignore Yahya Sinwar. His story is deeply interwoven with the rise of Hamas, with its many transformations – and with the horrific October 7 massacre, the planning of which he was deeply involved in.
The Founding in Gaza
The history of Hamas began in December 1987, as a Gaza City offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The first intifada, the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation, had just broken out. Ahmed Yassin, who was partially blind and confined to a wheelchair, founded Hamas, an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement. His most eager student was Sinwar, a young man in his mid-20s who had grown up in the Khan Yunis refugee camp. Despite his young age, Sinwar had already spent several months in Israeli custody – and had embarked on a career of murdering alleged Palestinian collaborators.
Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin surrounded by supporters in the Gaza Strip Foto: REUTERS
Previously, Yassin and his comrades-in-arms had not taken part in the armed resistance, which was dominated by secular nationalists at the time. Instead, the group’s main goal was to Islamicize society. Yassin received a license from the Israeli military administration in the 1970s for an Islamic association, and his people ran schools, hospitals and religious centers.
Israel’s primary concern at the time was militant nationalists, and the Muslim zealots were seen as a counterweight – so Israel backed them. "It was a vast, stupid mistake,” an Israeli government official who spent years working in Gaza would later state. It was just the first of many mistakes made in dealing with the Islamists, culminating in disaster 36 years later.
Whereas Yasser Arafat, the head of the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), contemplated negotiations with Israel and a two-state solution while in exile in Tunisia at the beginning of the first intifada and recognized Israel’s right to exist shortly afterward, Hamas took a different path. They believed the moment for armed conflict had arrived.
Its founding charter from 1988 is steeped in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in which Hamas preaches jihad for Palestine and rules out any negotiations with Israel.
Hamas Is Not Islamic State
Unlike the terrorists of the Islamic State (IS) or al-Qaida, Hamas is focused on the establishment of a Palestinian state – not global jihad or the creation of a caliphate inhabited by Muslims from all over the world. The organization was founded by refugees who were driven by the idea of returning to the places from which they or their parents had fled or been expelled during the founding of Israel. They wanted a country, and for them, this country would be "Islamic.” Even if some of the acts they commit are similar, the origins, goals and ideology of IS and Hamas are quite different.
It didn’t take long after its founding for Hamas to begin attacking the Israelis. In 1989, Hamas members kidnapped and killed two soldiers in the Gaza Strip.
Michael Koubi, now 78 years old, was in charge of investigations for the Israeli domestic intelligence service Shin Bet in the Gaza Strip at the end of the 1980s. He decided to take a radical step: On May 9, 1989, he had all members of Hamas arrested, including Yassin – and Yahya Sinwar. Koubi met Sinwar, who was 27 years old at the time, in person.
“It was clear to me even then that Hamas was our biggest enemy,” he says. “What we are doing now in Gaza was long overdue.”
Michael Koubi, Israeli secret service agent
"At first, Sinwar didn’t speak a word,” Koubi recalls. He says Yassin then explained that Sinwar was his most important helper, that he was the founder and commander of the Majd, Hamas’ internal secret service. It was only under pressure from Yassin that Sinwar said anything at all to Koubi. The Palestinian, says Koubi, admitted to having committed 12 murders. He said he strangled one of his victims with a kufiyah, the Palestinian scarf. He had another one buried alive by his brother, who was a member of Hamas. "That’s what Yahya Sinwar was like,” Koubi said.
Koubi says he spent between 150 and 180 hours interrogating Sinwar – and that during that entire time, Sinwar never once smiled, that he seemed like a man without emotions. When he asked Sinwar why, in his late 20s, he still didn’t have a family, he responded: "Hamas is my wife, my son, my daughter, my parents. Hamas is everything to me.” He stressed that the day would come when Hamas men would get out of prison to destroy Israel. "It was clear to me even then that Hamas was our biggest enemy,” says Koubi. "What we’re doing now in Gaza was long overdue,” he adds.
Four Life Sentences
In 1989, an Israeli court convicted Sinwar to four life sentences. According to Koubi, he accepted the verdict impassively. Sinwar spent a total of more than two decades in prison.
"When we met in Shikma prison in Ashkelon in 1996, there were only a few hundred Hamas members there,” recalls Esmat Mansour, 48, who spent time in prison with Sinwar. Mansour served 20 years for the murder of a settler. He now works as a journalist and translator in Ramallah. During the second intifada after the turn of the millennium, the number of prisoners grew. "Hamas became the strongest force in the prisons. That caused Sinwar’s power to grow.” Both inside and outside the prison walls.
Esmat Mansour, who spent time with Sinwar in prison, in Ramallah Foto: Lucas Barioulet / DER SPIEGEL
Israeli security services thought they could keep Hamas under control in prison, says Tel Aviv University analyst Michael Milshtein, the former head of the Palestinian division of Israeli military intelligence. But that was a mistake. "With Hamas, there is no difference between inside and outside.” Sinwar’s role model, Sheikh Yassin, also spent 10 years in prison and emerged stronger than ever, Milshtein says. Sinwar, the analyst adds, was constantly communicating with Hamas people in Gaza during his imprisonment – through his lawyers and other prisoners, including by phone, which is actually forbidden in prison. But it was tolerated because it provided a means to eavesdrop on the prisoners.
Koubi, his former interrogator, says that Sinwar is extremely charismatic and intelligent – that he learned Hebrew within just a few months and was interested in Israeli history and politics. "He read books about Ben-Gurion, Begin and Rabin, and even learned a little about the Jewish Torah.” Sinwar went on hunger strikes three times and campaigned for better treatment for his fellow prisoners. He was later elected the leader of all Hamas inmates in Israel’s prisons.
He often spoke about his childhood and youth in Khan Yunis, fellow inmate Mansour recalls: about his suffering, about the canned fish they had to eat, about the lack of a sewage system. He continually insisted, says Mansour, that Israel had to be defeated so that his family could return to their village near Ashkelon. The Nakba, Mansour emphasizes, is a central element of his worldview.
The Years of the Suicide Bombers
The world changed during Sinwar’s years in prison: Then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Arafat shook hands in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington in 1993 and agreed on a process that boiled down to the formula “land for peace.” The process was to provide the Palestinians with their own state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in return for recognizing Israel and stopping the terror.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat shaking hands after signing a peace deal mediated by U.S. President Bill Clinton Foto: UPI Photo / IMAGO
The Gaza International Airport in 1998 Foto: Ahmed Jadallah / REUTERS
But Hamas tried to sabotage that two-state solution by murdering Israeli soldiers and civilians and carrying out the first bombing attacks. Nonetheless, a better future still seemed possible. The Oslo Accords of 1993 ended the occupation and brought an independent state within reach. Thanks to money from Europe, the U.S. and the Gulf States, the Gaza Strip was thriving. An airport was built, separate Palestinian stamps were issued and Palestine received its own international telephone code.
In 1995, though, Rabin was shot dead by a right-wing extremist Israeli – after months of agitation and death threats. Benjamin Netanyahu and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is now national security minister, were central figures at the time. Two months after Rabin’s assassination, the most important Hamas bombmaker was killed with an explosive device planted in a mobile phone. Hamas took revenge by killing dozens of Israelis in attacks within a few days – and hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu won the election against Rabin’s successor Shimon Peres.
Military chief Mohammed Deif in an old, undated photo Foto: picture-alliance / dpa
Mohammed Daib Ibrahim al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, succeeded the slain bombmaker. Like Sinwar, he was born in Khan Yunis as the son of refugees. The two are said to be friends from childhood. In the coming years, Deif would rise to become the leader of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, escaping at least seven Israeli assassination attempts, losing an arm, a leg and an eye in the process – and planning the gruesome October 7 massacre together with Sinwar. There are only a few decades-old photos of him. He hasn’t appeared in public for 30 years and reportedly sleeps in a different place each day to prevent getting killed by Israel. Hence his name: "Deif” means guest.
Netanyahu was followed by a two-year term in office for Ehud Barak and, in 2001, hardliner Ariel Sharon. In retrospect, it was the beginning of the end of the idea of land for peace. These were the years of the second intifada, the suicide attacks by Hamas and other terrorist groups and targeted killings by Israel. According to Israeli figures, Hamas carried out 425 terrorist attacks and murdered 377 Israelis at bus stops, restaurants and shopping centers between 2000 and 2004. Sharon responded with brutality: More than 3,000 Palestinians were killed through Israeli military operations, including many civilians, during this period.
Hamas Driving Policy
Even as Israeli domestic intelligence agents went about killing Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip, including Ahmed Yassin, doctors in Israel were busy saving Sinwar’s life in prison. He developed a dangerous abscess in his brain and was operated on in 2004.
The journalist Yoram Binur visited him two years later in Be’er Sheva prison and conducted an interview for Israel’s Channel 2. “When Sinwar spoke, the others fell silent. When he sat down, a fellow prisoner placed a prayer mat on his chair. And his Hebrew was perfect,” says Binur, now 69.
Journalist Yoram Binur showing the interview that he conducted with Yahya Sinwar Foto: Jonas Opperskalski / DER SPIEGEL
“Sinwar didn’t come across as someone who wants to please but as someone who has something to offer.”
Yoram Binur, Israeli journalist
Sinwar during his television interview from prison with Yoram Binur, aired on Israeli broadcaster Channel 2
Bild vergrößern
Sinwar during his television interview from prison with Yoram Binur, aired on Israeli broadcaster Channel 2 Foto: Channel 2
The interview was also remarkable because it seemed as if Sinwar were holding court from prison. He looks directly into the face of the reporter sitting just a few inches away from him and says that the Israelis must understand that Hamas can never recognize the state of Israel, but that a long "hudna,” a ceasefire, is possible. He argues that such a suspension of hostilities could lead to peace and prosperity in the region "for at least a generation.” "Sinwar didn’t come across as someone who wants to please but as someone who has something to offer,” Binur says of the interview 17 years later.
Things were going well in those years for Hamas. Arafat died in 2004, leaving a void that his less charismatic successor Mahmoud Abbas was unable to fill. And in 2005, Sharon also unilaterally evacuated the settlements in the Gaza Strip, and Hamas celebrated. The following year, parliamentary elections were held in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with Hamas participating for the first time. It put up candidates and hit the campaign trail.
In the overall result, Hamas received 56 percent of the votes and thus an absolute majority of seats in the de facto parliament in Ramallah. More than anything, it was a vote against the inefficiency and corruption of the Palestinian Authority – and also an expression of disappointment with the stalled peace process. Even some Christians voted for the Islamists.
But a Palestinian government led by the terrorists of Hamas was unpalatable to Israel, the U.S. and the Europeans – and they threatened a boycott. The U.S. government pushed for an armed coup by Fatah, which was arming militias in Gaza Strip in order to force Hamas to back down. But Hamas preempted the attempted coup and drove the Fatah militias out of Gaza in bloody battles in 2007. The Palestinian Authority called on its employees in Gaza to go on strike, but then Hamas simply deployed its own people, thus consolidating its power. Since then, Hamas has held power in the Gaza Strip, and the increasingly autocratic and unpopular Mahmoud Abbas has ruled in the West Bank. Elections are a thing of the past.
1,027 Palestinians for a Single Israeli Hostage
In the turmoil after Hamas came to power, an event took place that would have a major impact on future developments. In June 2006, terrorists abducted the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, a kidnapping that may have been planned inside the Be’er Seva prison. Sinwar’s younger brother Mohammed was also part of the kidnapping squad, and he then spent years guarding Shalit.
It is thought to have been Sinwar who, from prison, had the idea of digging tunnels to kidnap Israeli soldiers. According to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, he reportedly ordered Hamas to dig a tunnel in 1998 and use it to abduct an Israeli soldier, who could then be used to leverage the release of Palestinian prisoners. The tunnel was discovered a few months later, but the idea remained. By the time of the second intifada, tunnels had become part of the standard arsenal for attacking soldiers.
The Israelis spent five years negotiating Gilad Shalit’s release. A deal was close on several occasions, but time and again, Sinwar prevented it from going through from prison because he didn’t agree to the conditions, recalls Yuval Bitton, his former dentist. Bitton treated Sinwar regularly over the course of several years before joining an intelligence agency in 2008.
Yuval Bitton - a former intelligence official and one-time dentist to Sinwar - in the Shoval kibbutz. Foto: Jonas Opperskalski / DER SPIEGEL
Bitton says he warned against Sinwar’s release, but his concerns were ignored. Yet he knew Sinwar better than almost anyone else. "Sinwar didn’t trust any Israeli the way he trusted me. No one negotiated with him as much about the conditions of detention and about the Shalit deal.”
In October 2011, Sinwar, the most prominent of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners – of whom 280 had been serving life sentences – was exchanged for Shalit’s freedom. Thousands of people greeted him with shouts of "Allahu akbar,” shots of joy and a rally in Gaza City.
In the years that followed, Sinwar recruited thousands of new fighters for the Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas. While still in prison, he encouraged cooperation with Iran and later brought Iranian trainers to Gaza. The Iranians also set up a rocket factory, says Sinwar’s former interrogator Koubi. "I still don’t understand why my government allowed this to happen.”
The Shalit deal was approved by Benjamin Netanyahu, who had been back in office since 2009 – and who, with a brief interruption, is still there today.
It was this deal that allowed Sinwar to be released, and it paved the way for him to become the political leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It may also have served as the model for the attack on October 7. If Israel was prepared to release 1,027 prisoners for a single soldier, what would happen if Hamas kidnapped dozens of Israelis?
A Mini-State on the Mediterranean
Hamas has had its own mini-state since 2008, with around 2.3 million citizens today, but it is sealed off from Israel by land, air and sea and, as such, remains occupied territory according to the United Nations.
But the Hamas barely have any funds of their own – and the Autonomous Authority in Ramallah stopped some of its payments. Hamas is also largely cut off from the international banking system. Over the years, much of the money for the fight against Israel has come from Iran. According to Western estimates, the regime in Tehran has been providing Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups with around $100 million a year since the 1990s.
More important for Hamas’ military clout, however, are the direct deliveries of weapons, rocket technology and ammunition. Iran and Hezbollah also share military expertise in the production of drones and missiles.
Hamas fighters at a military parade in the Gaza Strip in July 2023 Foto: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa / REUTERS
In the years since Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas has built up a de facto army. Before October 7, it is thought to have included 30,000 fighters, including cyber warfare units and combat divers. They have increased the range of their rockets from 40 to 230 kilometers. If not for the Israeli Iron Dome defense system, Hamas would be able to strike any place in Israel with them.
Even AK-47 assault rifles and the ammunition that goes along with them are produced in Gaza. Meanwhile, anti-tank missiles, kamikaze drones and heavy machine guns likely reach Gaza aboard fishing boats or via tunnels from Egypt. Despite four major military clashes with Israel since 2008, Hamas’ arsenal just kept on growing.
An Odd Alliance
In 2012, the U.S. government asked the Emir of Qatar to take in the leadership of Hamas, which had previously been based in Damascus. Since then, the political leadership of Hamas has been living in Doha – in addition to a representative in Gaza. The Americans’ goal was to establish a direct line to the terrorist group and to lessen Iranian influence. Qatar also became the most important donor to the Gaza Strip.
People familiar with the transfers in Qatar say that much of the money was wired directly. The rest was ferried from Israel to Gaza in suitcases once a month by Qatari emissary Mohammed Emadi. Upon arrival in Tel Aviv, Emadi would reportedly be met by Israeli secret service agents, and they would then travel together to the Kerem Shalom border crossing, where Emadi would meet up with people from Hamas.
But why? The Hamas fighters were continuing to fire rockets at Israel and Israel continued to bomb Hamas in retaliation. Why would Israel’s prime minister ensure that Hamas had access to money?
It appears as though Netanyahu and Hamas kept each other alive in those years. Netanyahu, elected on the promise of establishing security, regularly cracked down on the terrorist group. At the same time, though, he allowed Qatar to finance construction projects and, later, to even pay the salaries of public servants. According to diplomatic sources, Qatar supplied around $30 million a month to Gaza in 2019.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting the troops in December Foto: Amos Ben Gershom / GPO / Polaris / ddp
“Anyone who wants to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state must support the strengthening of Hamas.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
"One effective way of preventing a two-state solution is to keep Gaza and the West Bank separate,” says former Israeli General Shlomo Brom, who has criticized this policy in the past, as have many other former military and intelligence officials. "Then Netanyahu can reject all peace talks using the excuse that he has no negotiating partner.”
According to media reports, Netanyahu in fact admitted as much at an internal meeting of Likud parliamentarians in 2019: "Anyone who wants to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state needs to support the strengthening Hamas.” But he has never said anything quite that clear in public. But in 2015, his far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said in an interview: "The Palestinian Authority is a burden, and Hamas is an asset.”
The weakening of the Palestinian Authority was the common goal that united the right-wing in Israel with the terrorists in Gaza. And both sides initially benefited. Hamas continued to build up its mini-state, while Netanyahu bought himself peace and continued to expand the settlements in the West Bank, making a two-state solution increasingly unrealistic.
A Model for Coexistence
In a number of different skirmishes and wars against Israel, Hamas was able to emerge as the defenders of all Palestinians. As a consequence, the Gaza Strip over the years became the central theater of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a symbol of Palestinian resistance.
Without anybody to negotiate with on the Palestinian side, Netanyahu meanwhile increasingly pursued a policy that foresaw the normalization of relations with Arab countries without ending the occupation of the Palestinian Territories.
It was almost as though Hamas and Israel had found a model for coexistence.
Sinwar’s Rise
In February 2017, Sinwar was elected leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, marking the radical wing’s takeover of Hamas leadership. But outwardly, Sinwar’s election was followed by a phase of relative moderation.
Former Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal in the Gaza Strip in 2012 Foto: ZUMA Press / IMAGO
Just a few months later, Khaled Meshaal, the outgoing leader of Hamas in Qatari exile, presented a new political program that added a few elements to the group’s 1988 charter. While the new version also did not recognize the right of Israel to exist, it marked the first mention of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.
To the surprise of many, Sinwar also used the occasion to speak with foreign journalists, adopting an unusually flowery and personable tone. "We Palestinians are coming out in droves, looking for compromise,” he said in May 2018. "We believe that if we have a way to potentially resolve the conflict without destruction, we’re OK with that. We want to invest in peace and love.” He said he had spent almost half his life in Israeli prisons, and that such a life was easier than living in the conditions in Gaza. "The first words my son spoke were 'father,’ 'mother’ and 'drone.’”
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But that was just part of Sinwar’s message. The other was far darker and more threatening. The people of Gaza, he said in the same interview, are like a "very hungry tiger, kept in a cage, starved.” An animal, he said, "who the Israelis have been trying to humiliate. Now, it’s on the loose, it’s left its cage, and no one knows where it’s heading or what it’s going to do.” Hamas, he said, could not continue on as before. "Conditions here are unbearable. An explosion is inevitable.”
A few months later, the Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth also published an interview with Sinwar. "The truth is that a new war is in no one’s interest,” he said. "For sure it is not in ours. Who would like to face a nuclear power with slingshots?”
It seemed as though Sinwar was following a two-pronged strategy during this phase. On the one hand, he was expanding Hamas’ military capabilities. Following the last military clash with Israel in 2021, Sinwar spoke of "more than 500 kilometers of tunnels.” And Hamas poured vast quantities of money into building the tunnel system before then reinforcing them with concrete. Before long, they had an underground network that included bases of operations, weapon factories and sleeping quarters. Homes, city quarters and even towns located several kilometers from each other were linked up belowground.
An Israeli soldier in a tunnel below the Al-Shifa Hospital Foto: Victor R. Caivano / AP
On the other hand, Sinwar was also thinking about participating in elections to be held in the Palestinian Territories – elections that never did actually come to pass. In the spirit of coexistence, he also negotiated with the Israeli government over a deal that would have secured Hamas rule in Gaza for the long term and also granted residents the ability to conduct far more trade than before. But that, also, never became reality.
Sinwar No Longer Wants to Talk
In October 2022, Nasser Al Qudwa, now 70, met with the Hamas leader in Gaza. Qudwa, who, like Sinwar, was born in the Gaza Strip, belongs to the Palestinian political elite. A nephew of Yasser Arafat, he served for a time as foreign minister under President Abbas before the two had a falling out. He has lived in France since then but still travels frequently to the Middle East to mediate between different Palestinian factions.
The meeting between Sinwar and Qudwa lasted for around two hours and focused primarily on the latter’s attempts to achieve reunification between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. "We wanted Hamas to give up its claim to sole leadership in Gaza.” Qudwa says that his impression at the time was that Sinwar had been open to the idea. Indeed, Qudwa believed in fall 2022 that the Hamas leadership in Gaza was still looking for a possible return to the PLO and the Palestinian National Authority.
Just over two months later, Qudwa made yet another trip to Gaza and explored the possibility of holding another meeting with Sinwar. "But he was no longer receiving anyone.” To this day, Qudwa continues to wonder about Sinwar’s sudden withdrawal. Had the insular leadership circle of Hamas already decided by then to abandon the political route? Or was everything that had come before merely a charade, and the terror attack was already being planned? "It is possible,” says Qudwa, "that the previous talks merely served as camouflage.”
But Israel’s government apparently continued to believe that Sinwar was interested in a deal. Which led them to ignore the warning signs.
A Vicious Plan
More than a year before October 7, the Israeli secret service obtained a detailed Hamas attack plan, codenamed Jericho Wall, as reported by Israeli media and the New York Times following the attack. The plan called for a barrage of rockets combined with drone attacks on the security cameras and remote-controlled machine guns affixed to the Israeli border fence surrounding the Gaza Strip. In the next stage of the onslaught, fighters on motorcycles and paragliders, along with others on foot, were to break through the border fortifications at 60 different sites.
But senior Israeli military leaders and secret service agents felt the plan was unrealistic, a Hamas pipedream. And that assessment didn’t change, despite the fact that soldiers from a surveillance unit responsible for keeping an eye on the border fence later realized that Hamas was flying drones near the barricade on a daily basis. Hamas had even built a replica of an army observation post and attacked it with drones, and fighters were practicing attacks on models of Israeli Merkava tanks. Warnings from the surveillance unit, though, weren’t taken seriously.
When around 3,000 terrorists did, in fact, break through the border fence on the morning of October 7 and attack army posts, towns and kibbutzim, several hours passed before the army was able to relocate units to the south. And it was several days before the army killed the last terrorists on Israeli soil. By then, of course, Hamas had produced a bloodbath – and abducted more than 240 people.
Festivalgoers fleeing Hamas terrorists on October 7 in Israel Foto: REUTERS
Was the size of the attack part of the plan? Or was Hamas surprised by how little military resistance they encountered? The answer depends on who you talk to.
"Sinwar likely just wanted to take enough hostages to force the release of the 7,000 prisoners,” says Yuval Diskin, who was head of Shin Bet from 2005 to 2011. Leveraging the freedom of all the Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons would have been a huge boost to Hamas’ popularity. "The fact that he would ultimately end up with far more than 200 hostages and kill so many civilians on Israeli territory – he can’t have anticipated that.”
Other experts believe the plan was so sophisticated that Sinwar may indeed have been envisioning a massacre of this size – together with the harsh Israeli reaction.
Kill as Many as Possible
If you look at Sinwar’s background and examine the detailed Hamas plans for murdering Israeli civilians on October 7, it seems likely that the extreme violence was pre-programmed. Israelis found notes on the bodies of dead terrorists with orders to "kill and take hostage as many people as possible.” Some of the terrorists were equipped with zip ties, rocket-propelled grenades and incendiaries. And the attackers were also carrying provisions and ammunition for several days, along with plans for assaulting targets far deeper into Israel.
It could be, however, that the attack was not coordinated with the Hamas leadership in Doha – or at least not in its entirety. Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas in exile, has lived in the capital of Qatar since 2019 – a pleasant existence far away from the suffering of the Gaza Strip. Even before the attack on Israel on October 7, relations between Haniyeh and Sinwar were said to be strained. The Qatari faction was apparently dissatisfied with the political process, and Haniyeh’s influence over decisions made in Gaza seemed to be shrinking. At the time of the terrorist attack, Haniyeh was apparently in Istanbul, where he also has a home. The Hamas offensive likely took him by surprise. High-ranking Qatari officials are certain that he hadn’t been informed prior to the attack, as are the Americans.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian together with Hamas political leader Haniyeh in Doha Foto: Iranian Foreign Ministry / AP
But since October 7, Haniyeh has been the direct point of contact between Israel, the U.S. and the Hamas leaders in Gaza, who are thought to be hiding out in tunnels beneath the city of Khan Yunis. "Haniyeh can pick of the phone and reach Deif or Sinwar,” says a Western diplomat in Qatar. This connection proved instrumental in the deal for the release of the 110 hostages and for the seven-day cease-fire.
Currently, discussions are underway for a larger hostage deal and a lasting cease-fire. Majed al-Ansari, the Qatari prime minister’s foreign affairs adviser, believes that the terrorist organization is hoping for a cease-fire. Even if the political leadership of Hamas says they will fight to the death, al-Ansari says, it’s just rhetoric. "Hamas isn’t suicidal. They want to survive.”
Rising Support
Many Palestinians celebrated in late November when prisoners were released in exchange for some of the Israeli hostages, just as they had cheered the images of Palestinian fighters breaking through the border fence around the Gaza Strip on October 7 – even those who are not Hamas supporters. They have also sought to play down the massacre, with many believing that the dead civilians were merely collateral damage resulting from the fighting. There is also a widespread unwillingness to believe that rapes occurred.
In a public opinion poll carried out by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), which is considered to be largely reliable, 90 percent of Palestinians surveyed said that Hamas did not commit atrocities in Israel. The survey also found that 44 percent of people in the West Bank support Hamas – against just 12 percent in September. Backing for Hamas also rose in the Gaza Strip, if only slightly – from 38 percent to 42 percent. An overwhelming majority of those surveyed are in favor of Abbas’ resignation.
On the question as to whether the Hamas attack on Israel was the right move, opinions diverge between Palestinians in the West Bank, of whom 82 percent endorse the attack, and residents of the Gaza Strip, only 57 percent of whom express support. Almost two-thirds of those surveyed believe that Hamas will remain in control of the Gaza Strip in the future.
"It's more than just Hamas becoming more popular – it is armed resistance that gained popularity,” says the Israeli Middle East expert Ofer Zalzbeg of the Herbert C. Kelman Institute in Vienna. Surveys have shown, he says, that people do not want to be governed by Hamas. "They want to inflict pain on Israel so that it changes its policies, but most don’t want to live in a Shariah state. They want neither the repressive rule of Hamas nor do they want the Palestinian Authority. They want a new kind of governance.”
Despite the growing support for Hamas, there has yet to be a coordinated uprising against the Israeli occupation in the West Bank.
And there is also plenty of anger with Hamas. "No resistance movement sacrifices its people for party interests. You can’t kill thousands of people and then call it liberation,” complains a refugee in the southern Gaza Strip who requested that his name not be published. He says he first fled from the northern part of Gaza to the city of Khan Yunis, and now, with the new Israeli offensive, he says he had to spend the night in the desert. Food is difficult to come by, he says, as is water. "We don’t have anything to do with these maniacs who behave like Islamic State!” he rages. "Yahya Sinwar is a psychopath. He should go into therapy instead of acting like a representative of his people.”
Can Hamas Be Defeated?
In the last two months, the Israeli military has transformed Gaza into a sea of rubble and driven the majority of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million residents from their homes. The humanitarian situation is a disaster. Allied nations like the U.S. are also pushing for a rapid end to the war. But the big question is whether Israel can achieve its primary aim – destroying Hamas.
"What exactly does destroying Hamas actually mean?” wonders a source in Doha who is familiar with the negotiations. When Sinwar and Deif are dead? What happens if they are liquidated, but a new leader takes over control? Does the entire command structure need to be annihilated? Do all Hamas fighters have to be killed? The Israeli government, the source says, has thus far been avoiding all of these questions. Along with that of who should rule the Gaza Strip in the future. Netanyahu recently said that he will not allow Gaza to become a "Hamastan or a Fatahstan” once the war has ended.
Israel says that its military has killed 7,000 terrorists since the start of the fighting and smashed Hamas' command structure. But does that translate to a military defeat of Hamas? And is a military defeat sufficient?
Eight-Hundred Tunnel Shafts Discovered and 500 Destroyed
Israel says that it has so far discovered 800 tunnel shafts during its offensive and destroyed 500 of them. But the vast tunnel network where the Hamas leadership is hiding and where the hostages are likely being held – where weapons, food, drinking water, generators and fuel are being stored – has thus far barely been touched.
During a press briefing in early December at a military base in southern Israel, a lieutenant colonel described operations targeting tunnels in the city of Beit Hanun, in the northeastern corner of the Gaza Strip. On October 7, said the officer, who may not be named, the terrorists fired 350 rockets within just a few hours from the city. The Israelis found weapons in almost every house, he added.
He said he doesn’t know what kind of underground infrastructure Hamas may still have. There are orders to refrain from entering the tunnels, because there are explosives everywhere. And the army doesn’t have any effective technological means to find the tunnels, the officer said, adding that numerous underground connections remain useable despite the fact that their entrance shafts have been destroyed.
Partly for that reason, the Israeli army has begun pumping seawater into the tunnels, according to reports that emerged last week. The procedure is apparently still just a test, and there are doubts as to whether it would be sufficient to destroy the wide-ranging tunnel network, not to mention the unpredictable consequences for the environment and Gazan infrastructure.
"The idea that Israel can defeat Hamas or that it can militarily decimate Hamas is unachievable,” said Hamas expert Tareq Baconi in a recent interview with the New York Times. "The movement is also a political body. It’s also a social infrastructure. And so, even if Hamas were to be removed, that ideology of commitment to armed resistance for liberation would manifest in a different movement.”
It could be that after the war, Hamas might not be able to carry out military operations for an extended period, Baconi believes. "But what we’ve learned from the past 16 years (…) is that Hamas is playing the long game.”
Even Israeli hardliners like the military analyst Kobi Michael recognize that Hamas isn’t just a terror network, but also a deeply rooted force in society. More than anything, he says, Israel’s war aim is that of destroying Hamas’ military capabilities. That doesn’t mean "that we will dismantle the entire Hamas ideology. Ideology is rooted in people’s heads and hearts, so that would be a completely different process, comparable to the denazification of Germany after World War II. That would take decades.”
Hamas Has Built Up a Network of Companies
It also isn’t easy to weaken Hamas economically. The group’s primary sources of income are overseas, and the millions of dollars the group receives from Tehran are likely to keep flowing, or even increase. The same can be said for the income the group earns from the 30 to 40 companies it controls, most of them thought to be active in the construction and real estate sectors in Turkey, Qatar, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan. According to estimates, the terror organization’s business activities bring in some $500 million each year.
The Israeli Hamas expert Milshtein also believes that even if Israel were to succeed in defeating Hamas militarily, the group would continue to exist underground and overseas. "Hamas cannot be destroyed,” he says.
Prior to October 7, he warned in vain that Hamas was continuing to pursue the destruction of the Jewish state. After the terror attack, he wrote an op-ed for the Financial Times in which he argued against bombarding and occupying the Gaza Strip. The economic costs of doing so, he wrote, would be enormous and the system installed by Hamas could hardly be quickly replaced because the Palestinian Authority is too weak. A large-scale attack, he wrote, "risks turning the Gaza Strip into a Somalia or Afghanistan.”
A Future with Hamas?
Moderate Palestinians like former Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Arafat’s nephew, Nasser Al Qudwa, have begun thinking intensively about what the postwar order should look like. For Fayyad, such an order would be impossible without Hamas involvement. "The first step must be the immediate and unconditional expansion of the PLO to include all major factions and political forces, including Hamas,” he wrote in a widely cited essay for Foreign Affairs in late October.
Al Qudwa also believes that cooperation with Hamas is fundamentally a possibility, but he has no illusions about how challenging and complicated that would be. The current war, though, "could lead to a different, military and politically weakened Hamas,” he says, especially if "Palestinian public opinion turns against the organization.”
Islamist movements play a central role in almost every country in the Middle East: either as part of the government, like in Turkey and Iran; as an extremist organization held in check by an authoritarian government, like in Egypt and Tunisia; or as a powerful militia, as in Lebanon and Iraq. The idea that in a future Palestinian state, the Islamist element could simply be kept out of politics is unrealistic. But the question is whether it could be involved without an armed group like Hamas, which is focused on the destruction of Israel.
According to recent reports, Sinwar is "furious” that the Hamas leadership in Doha and representatives from Palestinian President Abbas have begun discussing possible future cooperation. He had apparently demanded that such contacts come to an end.
“Hamas has to be destroyed!”
Yuval Bitton, secret service agent and Sinwar's former dentist
Future developments now depend primarily on what happens in the coming weeks – whether a hostage deal and a lasting cease-fire take shape, or whether significantly more civilians in the Gaza Strip are killed. Should the latter come to pass, support for Hamas may increase and the images of dead children from the Gaza Strip could produce a new generation of terrorists.
Indeed, Hamas could ultimately emerge from this war strategically more powerful despite being militarily weakened.
For Yuval Bitton, the Israeli secret service official and former dentist to Sinwar, the answer remains clear. "Hamas has to be destroyed!” Every time he spoke to Sinwar, he says, he could sense "that he hates Israelis and wants to kill them.” He was just waiting for the right opportunity, the dentist says.
Bitton also has personal reasons for his severity. He swivels around on his kitchen stool in his house in the Shoval kibbutz and points to the sofa, where there is a cardboard sign bearing a photo of his nephew. On October 7, he was kidnapped together with his grandmother Yaffa Adar and taken to Gaza, says Bitton. The elderly woman has since been released. But Bitton’s nephew has not.
With additional reporting by Michal Marmary
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