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Yahya Sinwar Helped Start the War in Gaza. Now He’s Key to Its Endgame.

Hamas’s leader in Gaza is considered an architect of the Oct. 7 attacks that prompted Israel to retaliate. As mediators seek a cease-fire, a deal depends on Mr. Sinwar as well as his Israeli foes.

By Patrick Kingsley, Julian E. Barnes and Adam Rasgon, Reporting from Jerusalem and Washington, the reporters spoke to officials from Hamas, Israel and the United States about Mr. Sinwar. | Mother’s Day, May 12, 2024

After Hamas attacked Israel in October, igniting the war in Gaza, Israeli leaders described the group’s most senior official in the territory, Yahya Sinwar, as a “dead man walking.” Considering him an architect of the raid, Israel has portrayed Mr. Sinwar’s assassination as a major goal of its devastating counterattack.

Seven months later, Mr. Sinwar’s survival is emblematic of the failures of Israel’s war, which has ravaged much of Gaza but left Hamas’s top leadership largely intact and failed to free most of the captives taken during the October attack.

Even as Israeli officials seek his killing, they have been forced to negotiate with him, albeit indirectly, to free the remaining hostages. Mr. Sinwar has emerged not only as a strong-willed commander but as a shrewd negotiator who has staved off an Israeli battlefield victory while engaging Israeli envoys at the negotiating table, according to officials from Hamas, Israel and the United States. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence assessments of Mr. Sinwar and diplomatic negotiations.

While the talks are mediated in Egypt and Qatar, it is Mr. Sinwar — believed to be hiding in a tunnel network beneath Gaza — whose consent is required by Hamas’s negotiators before they agree to any concessions, according to some of those officials.

There follows a long article about Mr Sinwar and how clever he is, but, to me, the most important part is several paragraphs down:

Mr. Sinwar joined Hamas in the 1980s. He was later imprisoned for murdering Palestinians whom he accused of apostasy or collaborating with Israel, according to Israeli court records from 1989. Mr. Sinwar spent more than two decades in Israeli detention before being released in 2011, along with more than 1,000 other Palestinians, in exchange for one Israeli soldier captured by Hamas. Six years later, Mr. Sinwar was elected leader of Hamas in Gaza.

In exchange for one Israeli soldier, Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit, Israel released more than a thousand Palestinian terrorists! And now, one of those released murderers and terrorists was the planner and driving force behind the October 7^th terrorist attack in which Hamas used murder, mayhem, and rape to terrorize innocent Israelis.

As an architect of the Oct. 7 attacks, Mr. Sinwar masterminded a strategy that he knew would provoke a ferocious Israeli response. But in Hamas’s calculus, the deaths of many Palestinian civilians — who do not have access to Hamas’s subterranean tunnels — were the necessary cost of upending the status quo with Israel.

American and Israeli intelligence agencies have spent months assessing Mr. Sinwar’s motivations, according to people briefed on the intelligence. Analysts in both the United States and Israel believe that Mr. Sinwar is primarily motivated by a desire to take revenge on Israel and weaken it. The well-being of the Palestinian people or the establishment of a Palestinian state, the intelligence analysts say, appears to be secondary.

The latest estimate of the number of innocent Israelis and foreign citizens killed in the October 7^th terrorist attacks is 1,163, and with some hostages still held by Hamas, that number could still increase. I’m enough of a hard-hearted soul to ask the obvious question: was rescuing Staff Sergeant Shalit really worth it?

The lesson of bargaining for hostages has been taught time and time and time again: it’s always a fool’s exchange. President Reagan, who was never going to negotiate with terrorists, negotiated with Iran, to get Americans seized by their client Hezbollah terrorists released, which was done in exchange for American weapons. Then, once the hostages were released, and the US set a specific value on them, more Westerners were seized by Hezbollah! Iran got the spare parts it needed for its aging American weapons — weapons sold to Iran when Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was ruling the Persian state — and there were still Western hostages held by Hezbollah, simply different ones. Under President Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was negotiating for the release of four American prisoners held in North Korea, and Otto Warmbier was eventually released, but by that time he was in a persistent vegetative state, and he subsequently died. President Carter’s dithering and dallying and negotiations with Iran over American embassy personnel seized as hostages destroyed his presidency — that’s actually a good thing — and elevated Iran at the expense of the United States.

And now? American and Israeli intelligence officials believe that Mr Sinwar is not in Rafah, but hiding in a deep, as in 15 stories deep, tunnel network under Khan Younis:

Hamas’s vast tunnel network is deepest under Khan Younis, going down as many as 15 stories in some places. Mr. Sinwar is also protected by a group of Israeli hostages he uses as human shields to dissuade Israeli forces from raiding or bombing his location, U.S. and Israeli officials have said.

American officials believe that Israeli intelligence agencies have as good, or better, information on Mr. Sinwar’s location but insisted that the United States shares with Israel everything it knows.

U.S. officials have been trying to cajole Israel into curbing its military operation in and around Rafah, worried about the civilian casualties that could be caused by a large-scale attack on the city, where both Palestinian civilians and Hamas fighters have taken refuge.

Mr Sinwar is smart: he knows that the presence of those hostages means that the Israel Defence Force will be reluctant to attack there if Israeli civilians are being held there as well. But at some point, the harsh decision has to be taken: is Israel willing to allow the mastermind of October 7^th to survive and possibly escape just to save the lives of those innocent Israelis?

It goes against the grain of Western civilization to see innocent people die, which is a large part of the collegiate protests against Israel now. But war is not a civilized act; war is a desperate struggle for victory against defeat, and when fighting an enemy who does not share Western civilization values, trying to adhere to those values is a risky act. There is no crime in war save the losing of it!

Even as Israeli officials seek his killing, they have been forced to negotiate with him, albeit indirectly, to free the remaining hostages. Mr. Sinwar has emerged not only as a strong-willed commander but as a shrewd negotiator who has staved off an Israeli battlefield victory while engaging Israeli envoys at the negotiating table.

It ought to be obvious: you do not negotiate your way out of victory! Allowing concern for the hostages, an unknown number of whom are even still alive, to inhibit the IDF’s fighting, is a fool’s game.

Israel needs to go ahead and attack, with everything it has, and drop its concern over the hostages. That’s extremely harsh, but anything other than the total destruction of Hamas simply leaves the Jewish state open for yet another October 7^th.