Who is Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and how did he rise to power?
It's believed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is now living deep underground in the Gaza Strip.
Yahya Sinwar's days are numbered.
After the killing of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon, it may only be a matter of time before Sinwar meets a similar fate.
The leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas is believed to be living deep underground in the Gaza Strip as Israel continues its attacks on the territory.
"I think there's no question that Israel eventually, somehow or other, will kill Yahya Sinwar," CNN senior international correspondent Ben Wedeman tells ABC RN's Take Me To Your Leader.
"When you accept the job as the head of Hamas, you also realise you are a dead man walking."
From his early days as a Hamas "enforcer" to becoming the group's leader in August, Sinwar now sits atop Israel's most-wanted list.
But the 61-year-old Palestinian is also something more than a leader.
"He's a symbol," Wedeman says.
The early life of Sinwar
On October 7, 2023, Hamas-led militants undertook a surprise attack in southern Israel. Israeli authorities say about 250 people were abducted during the attack and 1,200 killed.
Israel responded with a military offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians and injured about 96,000 as of last week, according to Gaza's health ministry.
Israel has labelled Sinwar one of the "masterminds" behind the October 7 attacks and vowed that he will face consequences for his actions.
So how did Sinwar arrive at this point?
Palestinian academic and writer Khaled Hroub says Sinwar's life is tied up with some of the biggest moments in the region's recent history.
"He is the embodiment, if you like, of the Palestinian saga over the decades," says Hroub, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Northwestern University in Qatar.
"He saw the different stages of the Israeli wars and incursions and brutality on the Palestinians. So all this instilled in his personality, his psyche, as it did with millions of Palestinians."
Sinwar's parents were displaced from their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and he was born in Gaza's Khan Yunis refugee camp in 1962.
After the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel greatly expanded its territory, seizing areas including the Gaza Strip. Today, the Gaza Strip is one of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Wedeman has reported from the occupied territories for three decades, which has included many visits to the Khan Yunis refugee camp. He calls it a "shanty town rather than a refugee camp". And that was before the current war.
Khan Yunis — the second largest urban area in Gaza — has been the scene of "widespread destruction" since last year's Israeli invasion, according to the United Nations.
Yahya Sinwar was born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp, pictured here in an undated photo, possibly from the 1960s.
"Things were very rough when Sinwar grew up there. And I think that left a lasting impression on him," Wedeman says.
While imprisoned in later life, Sinwar wrote a novel titled The Thorn and the Carnation about a Gazan boy, which mirrors his own experiences growing up.
The protagonist lives "in a flimsy, ramshackle hut where the rain poured through the roof, and his mother had to carry him around to stop him from getting wet and cold", Wedeman describes.
"He talks about his fear and cringing and hiding as [the 1967 war] was happening."
'The butcher of Khan Yunis'
Sinwar attended the Islamic University of Gaza to study a bachelor's degree in Arabic studies.
During this time, he became involved with student activism, which led to his arrest and first stint in an Israeli prison.
"Apparently he wasn't very good at university, but he was very good at the political side of his student life. This led eventually to [his] becoming part of what became the group we call Hamas," Wedeman says.
In 1985, Sinwar co-founded a group called Munazzamat al Jihad w'al-Dawa, or Majd, which worked to identify and expose Palestinian collaborators with Israel.
"He was the enforcer in Gaza," Wedeman says of Sinwar, earning the nickname "the butcher of Khan Yunis".
In 1987, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and others founded Hamas, as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. And Sinwar's Majd became part of its security apparatus.
Ahmed Yassin was the de facto leader of Hamas from 1987 until his assassination in 2004.
Hamas has played a major role in Palestinian politics over the decades. Since 2007, it has controlled the Gaza Strip after ousting its rival Fatah from the territory in a brief civil war.
Today, Hamas is classed as a terrorist organisation by Australia, the US, the European Union and others.
'Murder' in his eyes
In 1988, Sinwar was arrested by Israel after helping to plan the abduction and murder of two Israeli soldiers. He was also accused of the murder of four Palestinians who he suspected of collaborating with Israel.
"Sinwar ended up in Israeli prisons, largely not because of what he did against the Israelis, but for killing Palestinian collaborators," Wedeman says.
The Israeli government gave Sinwar four life sentences — but not before interrogating him for his crimes.
Michael Koubi, who was the chief interrogator for Israeli intelligence service Shin Bet, interrogated Sinwar for more than 180 hours over two months.
Koubi says he got to know Sinwar "better than his [own] mother", or, in fact, "better than anybody in the world".
"When he entered my room the first time, I saw a man with a murder[er's] eyes," he says.
Koubi says Sinwar's first words were: "If you want to kill me, kill me. I want to be a shahid [martyr]."
Koubi explains that when Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin, who was also in custody, started to cooperate with the Israelis and provide information, Sinwar soon followed.
"Sinwar started opening his mouth, and he told me about Hamas' plans, how they want to enter Israeli kibbutzim, to Israeli settlements, to Israeli cities," Koubi says.
"He told me that they planned to kill many, many Jews."
Koubi says that the Israelis "didn't use any kind of torture" in Sinwar's interrogation or for other Hamas leaders at the time.
A relative of Yahya Sinwar holds pictures of him while he was still in prison.
But CNN's Ben Wedeman has a different view.
"I'd be surprised if [Sinwar] was willing to volunteer these sorts of details," he says.
"Let's not forget, Israeli interrogation is not merely a matter of asking questions. There's often times a lot of force involved … It's widely believed torture [is used] as well."
Human rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch back up this assertion — accusing Israel of using torture in its interrogation practices, specifically during the time of Sinwar's early years in prison.
It was also around this time when the Israeli government set up the Landau Commission, which found that Shin Bet used physical force while interrogating prisoners, and then provided guidelines for a "moderate measure of physical pressure".
A 'transformative' time
Decades in prison shaped who Sinwar was and the kind of leader he'd become.
"Those years were extremely crucial," Professor Hroub says. "[They were] transformative — in his personality, leadership, outlook and education."
Sinwar spent more than two decades in Israeli prisons.
Professor Hroub says Sinwar immersed himself in Israeli politics, culture and history. He learnt Hebrew and translated Hebrew autobiographies of former Israeli intelligence chiefs into Arabic.
And — critically — he had the chance to mingle with other Palestinian groups.
"This created the leader in Sinwar. He learned how to interact with them, how to make compromises, what kind of political outlooks [existed] within every single group," Professor Hroub says.
"Those years gave him the luxury of time to reflect on the Palestinian issue, on the struggle, on the issue of liberation, on what Hamas should do internally and externally."
But Sinwar didn't spend his life behind bars. In 2011, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to a deal where more than 1,000 Palestinian and Israeli-Arab prisoners — including Sinwar — were freed in return for one captured Israeli soldier.
Yahya Sinwar — arms outstretched — appears at a rally in Gaza after he was released from prison in 2011.
"It was a big mistake," Koubi says.
"I was really against freeing even one [person] that had blood on their hands."
Gaza in ruins
After his release, Sinwar rose in the Hamas ranks.
In 2017, he became the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip. Then after Ismail Haniyeh was killed in a suspected Israeli attack in Tehran this year, he became the chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau, or the group's de facto leader.
"This goes back to his personality, his leadership, his reputation," Professor Hroub says.
"He was very close to most of Hamas' leaders, from Ahmed Yassin onwards. And so he had the knowledge, he had the networks, he had the supporters."
As the group's leader, Sinwar has a key role in deciding what happens with the Israeli hostages, along with ceasefire negotiations.
So what is Sinwar's ideology now?
"His tactics change, but his strategy, his long-term goal, remains the same. He does not believe in the legitimacy of the Israeli state, and he will do what is necessary to undermine it," Wedeman says.
"His long-term goal … [is the] destruction of the State of Israel."
Sinwar "is the one who is leading the Palestinians in Gaza, whether they like it or not, into a very dark future", Wedeman says.
After the October 7 attacks and Israel's subsequent invasion, Gaza is now in ruins.
According to the United Nations, around 1.9 million people – which is nine in 10 Gazans – have been displaced at least once in this conflict.
Human rights groups warn that the situation continues to be extremely dangerous for civilians, with Amnesty International saying that "countless lives have been shattered, ripped apart, and upended".
And earlier this month, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted in favour of a Palestinian resolution demanding Israel end its "unlawful presence" in Gaza and the West Bank within a year.
Israel has a history of killing Hamas leaders.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have said that the "destruction" of Hamas has been one of the goals of its invasion — along with the return of the remaining Israeli hostages.
And in May, the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced it was seeking an arrest warrant for Sinwar, along with other Hamas and Israeli leaders, over alleged war crimes.
Of the Hamas actions in Israel on October 7, ICC chief prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan said "these acts demand accountability".
Living deep underground
With much of Gaza reduced to rubble, Sinwar's exact whereabouts are publicly unknown.
"I'm sure that he is around the area of Khan Yunis — very deep underground," Koubi says. "He has all the facilities for [pumping] fresh air inside, even 80 or 90 metres underground."
Koubi believes Sinwar is in hiding with perhaps dozens of Israeli hostages that were taken during the October 7 attacks, saying Sinwar will blow himself and the hostages up if Israel makes a move on him.
Koubi says this information comes from colleagues in the intelligence community.
The silhouette of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar disappears through a gate in a tunnel after October 7.
Wedeman wonders how effective Sinwar can be as a leader for Gazans in his current, precarious position.
"He's directing the military operations against the Israelis in Gaza, but in terms of administering daily life in the Gaza Strip, it's difficult to say what ability [he has] to do it or even can do it."
And not every Gazan is pro-Hamas, with Wedeman saying "there's a price to pay if you actually come out and criticise Hamas in Gaza today".
So will killing Sinwar kill the ideas he believes in?
"No, because Israel has a history of assassinating the leaders of Hamas," Wedeman says.
"Hamas will find fertile ground until this conflict is resolved. [And] I think that the ground is becoming even more fertile for even harder-line men than Yahya Sinwar."
"I quiver to think of the next generation that will come along. You're not going to find [a] Nelson Mandela emerging from the rubble of Gaza," Wedeman says.
"[Hamas] has shown that you can kill whoever you like in the organisation, but the idea behind it clearly cannot be killed."
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