Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, the Israeli army and the Mossad have placed him at the top of Hamas’s list since the beginning of the war. His execution was a priority even over that of Ismail Haniya. So how is Yahya Sinuar still alive?
Sinwar, born in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip in 1962, completed his studies at the Islamic University in the Palestinian enclave. For orchestrating the kidnapping and murder of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians he considered collaborators with Tel Aviv in 1989, he was sentenced to four life sentences by Israel. He served 22 years before being released in a 2011 prisoner swap with an Israeli soldier. In 2017, he was elected head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and said he would pursue a “peaceful and popular resistance,” a position he quickly abandoned. He was re-elected to the post in 2021.
He was the second most powerful man in the terrorist organization after Haniya and after the latter’s death he is the new head. Unlike Haniya and other Hamas operatives, who lived a life of luxury in Qatar or Turkey, Sinwar is believed to be permanently based in Gaza. He might well be dead today if it weren’t for a low-tech communications system installed while he was in prison, shielding him from Israel’s intelligence network.
As revealed in a Wall Street Journal report, the Hamas leader largely avoids phone calls, text messages and other electronic communications, which can be monitored by Israel and have led to the deaths of other militants. Instead, he uses a complex system of messengers, codes and handwritten notes that allows him to conduct Hamas operations even while hiding in underground tunnels.
The method of communication – though it could be described as entirely “outdated” – is what has so far kept the Israeli military at bay the architect of the October 7 terrorist attack that triggered the war in Gaza. Killing or capturing him would mark a substantial victory for Israel – one that Benjamin Netanyahu could actually project even to his far-right allies as a success in bringing the 11-month war to a close.
The handwritten notes
One glimpse into how Sinwar stays alive comes from the Arab mediators who relayed messages during cease-fire negotiations between Hamas and Israel. A typical message from Sinwar is handwritten and goes first to a trusted Hamas member, who then forwards it along a chain of messengers, some of whom may be ordinary civilians, intermediaries told the Journal. The messages are often coded, with different codes for different recipients, circumstances and times, based on a system that Sinwar and other prisoners developed while in Israeli jails.
The note could then reach an Arab mediator who has entered Gaza or another Hamas official who uses a telephone or other method to send it to his members. His communications have been less frequent, more cautious and complicated since the assassination of Saleh al-Arouri, Hamas’s deputy political leader and founder of the organization’s military wing.
Aruri’s death followed a series of other assassinations of senior Hamas and Hezbollah officials. In July, Israel launched a massive airstrike that killed him. Mohammed Daif . In the same month Israel killed the then political leader of Hamas Ismail Haniyaduring his visit to Tehran, when he launched an attack on a residential building in Beirut, in which he neutralized Fouad Soukr, a leading Hezbollah member. The Hezbollah commander went to an apartment after receiving a phone call that was likely from someone who had hacked Hezbollah’s internal communications network, according to the Wall Street Journal.
And the sawa’ed
Sinwar’s rudimentary approach to communications is reminiscent of a system used by Hamas in its early years. Before his arrest, Sinwar founded Hamas’s internal security police, called Majd, which hunted down suspected collaborators and operated inside Israeli prisons.
Majd recruited agents inside the prison, called “sawa’ed,” who distributed coded messages from one department to another, according to the book Son of Hamas, by a former Hamas operative turned Israeli spy.