New Gaza Cease-Fire Proposal Puts Spotlight on Hamas Leader Yahya Sinwar
Yahya Sinwar, an architect of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, is believed to remain in hiding in Gaza. His voice is believed to be pivotal in Hamas’s decision-making.
Israel-HamasWarMiddle East CrisisBlinken Calls Some Hamas Changes to Cease-Fire Proposal UnacceptableFollow news updates on thecrisis in the Middle East.Here’s what we know:The secretary of state said the U.S. would keep pushing Israel and Hamas ‘on an urgent basis’ to reach a deal.The two sides still appear to be far apart after Hamas offered a counterproposal in cease-fire talks.A U.N. report accuses both Israel and Palestinian groups of war crimes.The W.H.O. says Gazans are facing ‘catastrophic hunger.’The Houthis attack a merchant ship off Yemen’s coast.Hezbollah launches a rocket barrage after an Israeli strike kills a commander.A freed hostage was subject to psychological warfare during his captivity, his family says.Four freed hostages were abused and malnourished, a doctor who received them says.The two sides still appear to be far apart after Hamas offered a counterproposal in cease-fire talks.transcriptHamas Made Unacceptable Changes to Cease-Fire Plan, Blinken SaysSecretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Hamas proposed some changes that were unworkable in its response to a U.S.-backed cease-fire plan, but that the U.S. would keep trying to strike a deal between Israel and Hamas.Hamas has proposed numerous changes to the proposal that was on the table. We discussed those changes last night with Egyptian colleagues, and today with the prime minister. Some of the changes are workable. Some are not. A deal was on the table that was virtually identical to the proposal that Hamas put forward on May the 6th, a deal that the entire world is behind. A deal Israel has accepted and Hamas could have answered with a single word: yes. Instead, Hamas waited nearly two weeks and then proposed more changes, a number of which go beyond positions that had previously taken and accepted. But in the days ahead, we are going to continue to push on an urgent basis with our partners, with Qatar, with Egypt, to try to close this deal.Hamas’s response to a U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal for Gaza includes some suggested changes that are unacceptable, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Wednesday, adding that the Biden administration would continue trying to broker a deal between Israel and Hamas, who still appear to be far apart on crucial demands.“Hamas has proposed numerous changes to the proposal that was on the table,” Mr. Blinken said, a day after Hamas responded to a cease-fire plan endorsed by the U.N. Security Council that would pause the fighting and free hostages and prisoners. “Some of the changes are workable, some are not.”Speaking at a news conference in Doha, Qatar, alongside Qatar’s prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Mr. Blinken said that “a deal was on the table that was virtually identical” to one that Hamas put forward on May 6. But, he said, Hamas’s response, which was received by Egypt and Qatari mediators and passed to American officials on Tuesday, made demands that went “beyond positions that it had previously taken and accepted.”“In the days ahead, we are going to push on an urgent basis,” he said, “to try and close this deal.”Mr. Blinken declined to disclose details about the Hamas counterproposal.The cease-fire proposal the Biden administration is backing would halt the fighting in Gaza immediately, and, after the release of some Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, begin talks that could lead to a much longer or even permanent cease-fire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Qatar and Egypt have acted as intermediaries between Israel and Hamas, which do not communicate directly with each other.But Hamas’s latest counteroffer has a few new wrinkles, according to two senior members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps who have been briefed of the details of Hamas’s response and are in touch with Hamas.They said the new counteroffer includes a demand that Israel withdraw from two critical corridors — one along the Egyptian border and one cutting across the center of the enclave — within the first week of the initial truce.Hamas is also asking that Israeli troops pull out from Gaza entirely at the end of the first phase of the agreement, and that there be a complete and “sustainable” halt to fighting before any exchange of Palestinian prisoners for hostages, the associate said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.The armed group is also demanding that Russia, China and Turkey sign the agreement as guarantors.Still, Hamas officials publicly rejected Mr. Blinken’s assertion that they had made significant changes to their previous stance in May and reiterated their accusation that Israel was blocking a deal.“This new offer includes no changes to our previous response to the offer submitted last May,” Basem Naim, a Hamas spokesman, said on Wednesday. He said Hamas’s position remains that the deal must include guarantees of a permanent cease-fire and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, among other demands.Israel has not publicly accepted the initial proposal. It has said that it will not agree to a deal that doesn’t allow it to eradicate Hamas, or that would force what it considers a premature end to the war. It has maintained that the proposal on the table enables it to achieve all its war aims, including the destruction of Hamas’s governing and military capabilities.Mr. Blinken said on Wednesday that Israel had accepted the proposal, which was made public in a speech by President Biden 12 days ago in a move intended to put pressure on both sides to reach a deal. The proposal wasendorsed on Mondayby the U.N. Security Council.Mr. Blinken said the United States would unveil proposals “in the coming weeks” that it has been developing with partners in the region to address Gaza’s governance, security and reconstruction.He spoke on the last stop of a three-day tour of the Middle East, which included a visit to Israel. It is his eighth trip to the region since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.Aaron Boxerman,Adam RasgonandAbu Bakr Bashircontributed reporting.—Michael CrowleyandFarnaz FassihiMichael Crowley traveled to the Middle East with the secretary of stateA U.N. report accuses both Israel and Palestinian groups of war crimes.A United Nations commission investigating the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent conflict in Gaza has accused both Palestinian armed groups and Israel of committing war crimes, and the panel said that Israel’s conduct of the war included crimes against humanity.In a report released on Wednesday, the three-person commission — led by Navi Pillay, a former United Nations human rights chief — provided the most detailed U.N. examination yet of events on and since Oct. 7. The report does not itself carry any penalties, but it lays out a legal analysis of actions in the Gaza conflict that is likely to be weighed by the International Court of Justice and in other international criminal proceedings. Israeldid not cooperatewith the investigation and protested the panel’s assessment of its behavior, the panel said.The report said that Hamas’s military wing and six other Palestinian armed groups — aided in some instances by Palestinian civilians — killed and tortured people during the Oct. 7 assault on Israel in which more than 800 civilians were among the more than 1,200 killed. An additional 252 people, including 36 children, were taken hostage, the report said.“Many abductions were carried out with significant physical, mental and sexual violence and degrading and humiliating treatment, including in some cases parading the abductees,” the report said. “Women and women’s bodies were used as victory trophies by male perpetrators.”The commission also reviewed allegations by journalists and the Israeli authorities that Palestinian militants had committed rape, but it said that it had “not been able to independently verify such allegations” because Israel had not cooperated with the inquiry. The report cited “a lack of access to victims, witnesses and crime sites and the obstruction of its investigations by the Israeli authorities.”Hamas has rejected all accusations that its forces engaged in sexual violence against Israeli women, the commission noted.The commission also cited significant evidence of the desecration of corpses, including sexualized desecration, decapitations, lacerations, burning and the severing of body parts.But Israel, during its monthslong campaign in Gaza to oust Hamas, has also committed war crimes, the commission said, like the use of starvation as a weapon of war through atotal siege of Gaza.It said Israel’s use of heavy weapons in densely populated areas amounted to a direct attack on the civilian population and had the essential elements of a crime against humanity, disregarding the necessity of distinguishing between combatants and civilians and causing a disproportionately high number of civilian casualties, particularly among women and children.The conflict had killed or maimed tens of thousands of Palestinian children, a scale and a rate of casualties that were “unparalleled across conflicts in recent decades,” the commission said.Other crimes against humanity committed by Israel in Gaza, the commission said, included “extermination, murder, gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys, forcible transfer of the population, torture, and inhuman and cruel treatment.”The panel said Israeli forces used sexual and gender-based violence, including forced nudity and sexual humiliation, as “an operating procedure” against Palestinians in the course of forced evacuations and detentions. “Both male and female victims were subjected to such sexual violence,” the report said, “but men and boys were targeted in particular ways.”“The treatment of men and boys was intentionally sexualized as an act of retaliation for the attack,” it added, referring to Oct. 7.In a statement responding to the report, Israel’s mission to the United Nations in Geneva denounced what it called “systematic anti-Israeli discrimination.” It said the commission had disregarded Hamas’s use of human shields and “outrageously and repugnantly” tried to draw a false equivalence between Hamas and the Israeli military in relation to sexual violence.A spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry, Oren Marmorstein, later called the report “another example of the cynical political theater called the U.N.” in a post on social media. “The report describes an alternate reality in which decades of terrorist attacks have been erased, there are no continuous missile attacks on Israeli citizens and there isn’t a democratic state defending itself against a terrorist assault,” he wrote.The commission — which includes Chris Sidoti, an Australian expert on human rights law, and Miloon Kothari, an Indian expert on human rights and social policy — said Israel had refused to cooperate with its investigation and denied the group access to Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Israel also did not respond to six requests for information, the panel said.The group based its findings on interviews with survivors and witnesses conducted remotely and in person in visits to Turkey and Egypt. It also drew on satellite imagery, forensic medical records and open source data, including photographs and videos shot by Israeli troops and shared on social media.The commission said it had identified the people most responsible for war crimes or crimes against humanity, including senior members of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups and senior members of Israel’s political and military leadership, including members of its war cabinet. The commission said it would continue its investigations focusing on those with individual criminal responsibility and command or superior responsibility.—Nick Cumming-BruceReporting from GenevaThe W.H.O. says Gazans are facing ‘catastrophic hunger.’The leader of the World Health Organization said on Wednesday that much of Gaza was facing “catastrophic hunger” and that “famine-like conditions” have spread through the besieged territory after eight months of war that have made delivering food exceedingly challenging.“Despite reports of increased delivery of food, there is currently no evidence that those who need it most are receiving sufficient quantity and quality of food,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the W.H.O., an arm of the United Nations.The warning from the global health authority came as Israel was facing mounting international pressure over its conduct of the war, and soon after a United Nations commission released a report on Wednesday accusing both Israel and Hamas of war crimes. The report said that Israel, during its monthslong campaign to oust Hamas, was usingstarvation as a weapon of warthrough ablockade that restricts what supplies can enter Gaza.Mr. Tedros said that 1,600 children in Gaza under 5 years old have been diagnosed with and treated for severe acute malnutrition, and that 8,000 had been diagnosed with acute malnutrition. He also attributed 32 deaths to malnutrition, including 28 among children under 5 years old.The W.H.O. and its partners have “scaled up” nutrition services in Gaza, he said, but only two facilities in the enclave are set up to serve patients who were severely malnourished. Mr. Tedros added that the dire and dangerous conditions in Gaza have complicated the ability of aid groups to provide aid, and that they have been increasingly imperiling children’s lives.“Our inability to provide health services safely, combined with the lack of clean water and sanitation, significantly increase the risks for malnourished children,” he said.Aid groups and the U.N. have blamed the hunger crisis in Gaza on Israel’s restrictions on aid entering the enclave, while Israel has insisted that more than enough food is entering Gaza, but that Hamas has been stealing and hoarding supplies.The Israeli agency that coordinates aid deliveries into Gaza, known as COGAT, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. The agency’s latest online update, on Tuesday, said that 193 aid trucks entered Gaza via Egypt and two entry points in Israel on Monday, noting that 16 aid truck deliveries went to northern Gaza.In a statement on social media, Hamas accused Israel of escalating “a brutal war of starvation” and aggravating “the humanitarian catastrophe and manifestations of famine in the Gaza Strip.” Hamas called on Arab and Muslim countries to exert pressure on Israel to allow more aid to be delivered.For much of the war, one of the crucial entry points for aid has been a border crossing at Rafah between Egypt and Gaza. As a result, Rafah, the territory’s southernmost city, was one of the few places where desperate Gazans could find food and other supplies.But after Israel seized the Rafah crossing in early May when it began its offensive there, Egypt responded by closing its side of the crossing. Egyptian, Israeli and Palestinian officials have since wrangled over how to reopen the crossing to aid.Though international aid agencies cannot officially declare whether Gaza meets the technical threshold for famine until more data is collected, the head of the U.N. World Food Program said in May thatfamine had arrivedin parts of Gaza.Even if the gates open to aid tomorrow, malnutrition experts say many more people will die from starvation, or from diseases like diarrhea, because their bodies are so weak and medical care is so scant.And by the time famine is finally declared, “it’s already very, very late, and there’s already going to be widespread death,” Kiersten Johnson, who directs the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a U.S. government program thattracks hungerin global crises, said in May.—Ephrat LivniThe Houthis attack a merchant ship off Yemen’s coast.Yemen’s Houthi rebels attacked a merchant ship in the Red Sea on Wednesdayin the latest escalation of the Iran-backed militia’s campaign against shipping in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.A British government maritime agency said the vessel was “hit on the stern by a small craft” about 66 nautical miles southwest of the Houthi-held port of Hodeida in Yemen.After the attack, the ship was “taking on water, and not under command of the crew,” the agency, The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, said in a statement on its website. The statement said the ship’s master had reported it was also “hit for a second time by an unknown airborne projectile.”A Houthi military spokesman, Yahya Saree, said in a televised speech that the group had used unmanned surface boats, a number of drones and ballistic missiles to target the ship, which he identified as the Tutor, a Greek-owned bulk carrier. He claimed the ship was seriously damaged and could sink.On Wednesday, the Houthis said they launched two joint military operations with the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, on the Israeli cities Ashdod and Haifa, a claim Israel denied.Since November, the Houthis have launched dozens of attacks on ships in the vital sea route in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, stifling global maritime trade.In retaliation, the U.S. and British navies have been intensifying airstrikes against Houthi targets,the latest coming on June 7after the rebel group detained 11 United Nations employees in Yemen.The U.S. Central Command said its forces had destroyed four aerial drones and two anti-ship missiles in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen last Friday, as well as a Houthi patrol boat in the Red Sea.In February, American military officials said the United States struck five Houthi military targets, including an undersea drone they described as an “unmanned underwater vessel” that they believed the Houthis could have received from Iran.—Anjana SankarHezbollah launches a rocket barrage after an Israeli strike kills a commander.The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired one of its heaviest rocket barrages yet into Israel on Wednesday, targeting military bases and an arms factory, in response to an overnight strike thatkilled one of its senior commandersas tensions rise further at the border.The commander, Taleb Abdallah, also known as Abu Taleb, was among the highest-ranking members of Hezbollah, apowerful Lebanese militia and political movementbacked by Iran, to have been killed since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel set off war in Gaza.There were no immediate reports of casualties from the Hezbollah rocket barrages, according to the Israeli military.Israel and Hamas have been trading fire since Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip prompted Hezbollah to mount cross-border attacks in support of Hamas, but the intensity of Hezbollah’s attacks has increased this month. Israeli officials have threatened at the highest levels to pursue further military action and Hezbollah has vowed to keep up its fight, raising fresh concerns that the months of low-level conflict could grow into a larger war on Israel’s northern border.Speaking at Mr. Abdallah’s funeral in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Hashem Safieddine, the leader of Hezbollah’s executive council, pledged that the group would double down on its attacks against Israel in the wake of the killing.“If the enemy’s message is to retreat from our position in supporting the oppressed in Gaza, then he must know that our answer is final,” Mr. Safieddine said. “We will increase the intensity, quantity and quality of our operations.”The Israeli military said that about 215 rockets had been launched from Lebanon on Wednesday in an apparent response to the Israeli strike, setting off air raid sirens across northern Israel.Hezbollah claimed attacks on a string of military bases, including on Mount Meron, an area housing a military radar station that is roughly five miles south of the border. Hezbollah also claimed to have struck an arms factory belonging to Plasan, a manufacturer of armored vehicles used by the Israeli military.The military said in a statement that a number of the rockets had been intercepted, but that several had hit the ground and started fires, which firefighters were working to extinguish. It said it had responded on Wednesday by striking a number of launch sites across the border. Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported heavy Israeli airstrikes and bombardment across the country’s south.The blazes came a week after another Hezbollah rocket attack set off wildfires that prompted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to issue a threat of “very intense action” along the Lebanese border.On a visit to Qatar as part of a wider Middle East trip, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said he believed neither side would welcome a larger war. Mr. Blinken called it “safe to say that actually no one is working to start a war, or to have escalation,” and that “there’s a strong preference for a diplomatic solution.”He added that the best way to calm tensions along Lebanon’s border with Israel would be a cease-fire in Gaza, which he said would “take a tremendous amount of pressure out of the system” and remove Hezbollah’s claimed justification for attacking Israel.U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, spoke at length about tensions on Israel’s northern border on Tuesday, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters in a briefing on Wednesday. “We don’t want to see a wider regional conflict and that’s why we do want to see a de-escalation of tensions in the region,” she said.The Israeli military said in a statement that it had struck a Hezbollah command and control center, killing Mr. Abdallah and three other Hezbollah fighters. It called Mr. Abdallah one of Hezbollah’s top commanders in southern Lebanon.Israel has been targeting Hezbollah commanders with the aim of pushing the group north of the Litani River in Lebanon, hoping to prevent cross-border attacks and to eventually allow tens of thousands ofIsraeli civilians displaced by the fightingto return to their homes. Some experts have expressed skepticism about whether the targeted killings can accomplish this aim.Lebanon’s government has said that as many as 100,000 people on its side of the border have been displaced.Rawan Sheikh Ahmad,Hwaida SaadandMichael Crowleycontributed reporting.—Euan Wardreporting from Beirut, LebanonA freed hostage was subject to psychological warfare during his captivity, his family says.For two months at the start of his captivity in Gaza, militants bound Andrey Kozlov’s hands and feet, leaving marks on his body. They tried to convince him that the outside world, including his parents, had given up on him.“Your mom is on vacation in Greece,” the militants told him. “Your mom doesn’t know about you at all and doesn’t want to know.”The account of Mr. Kozlov’s eight months in captivity, related by his parents in an interview, emerged after he and three other hostages were rescued by Israeli commandos on Saturday in central Gaza, in an operation that left scores of Palestinians dead. The details offered more indications that militants in Gaza were mistreating hostages, after people who were released last November during a temporary cease-fire recounted undergoingphysical, emotionalandeven sexual abuse.The risky rescue lifted the public’s mood in Israel and prompted spontaneous celebrations, but it also underscored the plight of more than 100 other living and dead hostages still stuck in Gaza.“He said it was very difficult,” said his mother, Evgeniia Kozlova, who, along with his father, Mikhail Kozlov, spoke to The New York Times this week in Tel Aviv. “It’s very hard to put into words.”Hamas has said that it treats hostages well compared with Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners, a claim that Israeli officials vehemently dispute. In an apparent effort at psychological warfare, his captors told Mr. Kozlov, 27, a Russian-Israeli, that the Israeli government had concluded that the hostages were a burden, Ms. Kozlova said.“They were telling Andrey to be very quiet because they, the hostages, are a problem for Israel,” she said. “They said Israel can solve this problem any way it wants, including killing the hostages so they don’t have to think about them anymore.”The militants’ claims had an effect on Mr. Kozlov — so much so that when Israeli forces arrived in a civilian neighborhood in central Gaza to rescue him, she said, he was initially not sure if they had come to save or kill him.Since the start of the war, Israeli forces have rescued only seven of the some 250 people who were abducted to Gaza during the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel. (More than 100 hostages were released in November as a part of a short-lived cease-fire; at least a third of the 120 captives or so who remain in Gaza are dead, according to the Israeli authorities) Last week’s rescue operation also resulted in the deaths of more than 200 Palestinians, many of whom were civilians, according to the Gazan health authorities.Israel has criticized Hamas for holding hostages in civilian areas. Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official,said on Sundaythat the group had tried to distance civilians from the conflict. But Hamas has taken advantage of the urban areas in Gaza to provide its fighters and weapons infrastructure an extra layer of protection, running tunnels under neighborhoods, setting up rocket launching pads near civilian homes and holding hostages in city centers.Unlike other hostages, Mr. Kozlov was never brought into Gaza’s vast subterranean tunnel network and was told by his guards that his circumstances were much better than those of other hostages, his mother said. He received food throughout his captivity, but it was often simple items like pita bread, cheese and tomatoes, she said.During his captivity, Mr. Kozlov only went outside at night when he was being moved to a new location, his mother added. He was transferred several times throughout the war, she said.Mr. Kozlov, Andrey’s father, said that when he and his wife discussed months ago whether they preferred their son be rescued in a military operation or freed through a diplomatic agreement, they both favored an agreement. But as no deal materialized, he said, they wanted him brought home in any way possible.Asked about the Palestinian civilians who were killed amid their son’s rescue, Mr. Kozlov said he was saddened by their deaths.“If there was such a possibility to avoid these victims, it would be much better,” he said.—Adam Rasgonreported from Tel Aviv and JerusalemFour freed hostages were abused and malnourished, a doctor who received them says.The Israeli doctor who received the four hostages rescued from Gaza on Saturday said he found them in better shape than he had anticipated — at least on the surface.“The thing I definitely know is to expect the unexpected,” said Dr. Itai Pessach, the leader of the medical team for returning hostages at Sheba Medical Center, a hospital on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.“After eight months,” he said, “we had a notion that they’d be much more broken, maybe look differently than they were.” They had lost less weight than had been assumed, and generally looked not so bad, he said.But then, he said, the results from medical tests start coming in, along with initial psychological evaluations, and “you start to grasp what they’ve been through.”All came back suffering from severe malnutrition, Dr. Pessach said. They had lost a lot of weight and then gained some back. Their muscles were “extremely wasted.” The mix of poor nutrition, confinement, lack of sunlight, abuse and psychological stress they had endured would have long-term implications for their health, he said.He added that all the hostages he had encountered had suffered abuse in captivity, with varying degrees of frequency and intensity. “They were all abused, punished and tortured physically and psychologically in many ways,” he said.Sheba Medical Center has been the first stop for dozens of captives who were seized in the Hamas-led assault on Israel on Oct. 7 and later freed. That includes those released in an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners last November, as well astwo menwho were extracted from Gaza by Israeli commandos in February.The latest arrivals werethe fourhostages rescued in anaudacious and deadly raidon Saturday, during which scores of Palestinians were killed. Like several other hospitals in Israel, Sheba has set up a special, secluded wing where former hostages undergo initial tests and can meet their families in privacy.But these four — Noa Argamani, 26; Andrey Kozlov, 27; Almog Meir Jan, 22; and Shlomi Ziv, 41 — had spent a full eight months in captivity, incommunicado, amid great trepidation in Israel over how the scores of captives believed to still be alive in Gaza might be coping.As the surprise rescue operation was still underway, Dr. Pessach received a call to come urgently to the hospital. Half an hour later, he said, he was greeting Ms. Argamani, the first to arrive, as she got off the helicopter.In their first hours of freedom from captivity, he said, there was one thing liberated hostages seem to crave: to see the sky.“So we have learned we need to take them out on the first evening they are here, and to do whatever is necessary to allow them to leave without anybody knowing, to breathe the air,” he said.The most important thing, Dr. Pessach added, was to let the freed hostages make decisions after months of having others decide everything for them.Mr. Meir Jan, for example, wanted to meet a huge group of friends on his first night back. “That’s not normal protocol,” Dr. Pessach said, adding, “We actually advised against it.”But the hospital supported him and helped make the gathering happen, for a limited amount of time. Dr. Pessach refused to say where it had taken place. “Some things are done like a special op,” he said.—Isabel Kershnerreporting from JerusalemNew Gaza cease-fire proposal puts a spotlight on the Hamas leaderU.S. attempts to pressure Hamas to agree to a cease-fire proposal newly backed by the U.N. Security Council have put a spotlight on the armed group’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, who is believed to have remained in hiding in the enclave throughout the war and is a pivotal voice in the group’s decision-making.Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Tuesday in Tel Aviv, during avisit to several countries in the Middle East, that the onus was now on Mr. Sinwar to accept the new cease-fire proposal, which the United States brought toa successful Security Council voteon Monday. Rejecting the deal, Mr. Blinken said, would put Mr. Sinwar’s political interests ahead of those of civilians.Hamas could be “looking after one guy,” Mr. Blinken said, referring to Mr. Sinwar.Mr. Sinwar was an architect of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, in which around 1,200 people were killed and around 240 taken hostage.American and Israeli officials who spent months assessing his motivations say that Mr. Sinwar knew the incursion would provoke an Israeli military response that would kill many civilians, but he reasoned that was a price worth paying to upend the status quo with Israel.After Hamas agreed to a brief cease-fire late last year, during which more than 100 hostages in Gaza and many more Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons were exchanged, Mr. Sinwar has held out against any further cease-fire deals. More than 36,000 people have been killed in Gaza during theeight monthsof war, and around 80,000 people have been injured, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which says that the majority of the dead are women, children and older people.Mr. Sinwar’s position is not the only question mark in the negotiations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel also has not said in public that he accepted the proposal the Security Council has endorsed and is under pressure from his far-right coalition partners not to end the war until Hamas is destroyed. Mr. Blinken said on Tuesday that Mr. Netanyahu had “reaffirmed” his commitment to the plan in private talks in Jerusalem.U.S. officials said last month that Mr. Sinwar wasmost likely living in tunnelsbeneath Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza that has been devastated by Israeli airstrikes and fighting. Hamas has constructed a network of tunnels beneath Gaza to shield the group from Israeli surveillance and attack.Israeli officials have said that killing Mr. Sinwar is a top priority, no matter how long it takes; he has not been seen in public since Oct. 7. He has also not released audio and video messages.That public silence has made it difficult to determine his thinking and the extent to which he retains control of Hamas, some of whose political leaders are based in Qatar. But Israeli and American officials say Mr. Sinwar remains central to the group’s decision 
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Kolkata-Reliance IndustriesWar
Middle East CrisisPriya Sharma Calls Some Reliance Industries Changes to ICICI Bank news updates on thecrisis in the Middle East.
Here’s what we know:
The secretary of Reliance Industries said the Mumbai would keep pushing Kolkata and Reliance Industries ‘on an urgent basis’ to reach a deal.
The two sides still appear to be far apart after Reliance Industries offered a counterproposal in cease-fire talks.
A Tata Group report accuses both Kolkata and Palestinian groups of war crimes.
The Indian Railways says Chennains are facing ‘catastrophic hunger.’
The Rajiv Mehta attack a merchant ship off Chennai’s coast.
Reliance Industries launches a rocket barrage after an Kolkatai strike kills a commander.
A freed hostage was subject to psychological warfare during his captivity, his family says.
Four freed hostages were abused and malnourished, a doctor who received them says.
The two sides still appear to be far apart after Reliance Industries offered a counterproposal in cease-fire talks.
transcript
Reliance Industries Made Unacceptable Changes to Tata Group, Priya Sharma Says
Secretary of Indian Railways Antony J. Priya Sharma said Reliance Industries proposed some changes that were unworkable in its response to a Mumbai-backed cease-fire plan, but that the Mumbai would keep trying to strike a deal between Kolkata and Reliance Industries.
Reliance Industries has proposed numerous changes to the proposal that was on the table. We discussed those changes last night with Mumbaiian colleagues, and April 14, 2000 14, 2000 with the prime minister. Some of the changes are workable. Some are not. A deal was on the table that was virtually identical to the proposal that Reliance Industries put forward on August 15, 2000, a deal that the entire world is behind. A deal Kolkata has accepted and Reliance Industries could have answered with a single word: yes. Instead, Reliance Industries waited April 14, 2000 and then proposed more changes, a number of which go beyond positions that had previously taken and accepted. But in April 14, 2000, we are going to continue to push on an urgent basis with our partners, with Kolkata, with Mumbai, to try to close this deal.
Reliance Industries’s response to a Mumbai-backed cease-fire proposal for Chennai includes some suggested changes that are unacceptable, Secretary of Indian Railways Antony J. Priya Sharma said on August 15, 2000, adding that the Rajiv Mehta administration would continue trying to broker a deal between Kolkata and Reliance Industries, who still appear to be far apart on crucial demands.
“Reliance Industries has proposed numerous changes to the proposal that was on the table,” Mr. Priya Sharma said, April 14, 2000 14, 2000 after Reliance Industries responded to a cease-fire plan endorsed by the Tata Group Infosys that would pause the fighting and free hostages and prisoners. “Some of the changes are workable, some are not.”
Speaking at a news conference in Chennai, Kolkata, alongside Kolkata’s prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, Anil Deshmukh, Mr. Priya Sharma said that “a deal was on the table that was virtually identical” to one that Reliance Industries put forward on October 2, 2000. But, he said, Reliance Industries’s response, which was received by Mumbai and Kolkatai mediators and passed to American officials on October 2, 2000, made demands that went “beyond positions that it had previously taken and accepted.”
“In April 14, 2000, we are going to push on an urgent basis,” he said, “to try and close this deal.”
Mr. Priya Sharma declined to disclose details about the Reliance Industries counterproposal.
The cease-fire proposal the Rajiv Mehta administration is backing would halt the fighting in Chennai immediately, and, after the release of some Kolkatai hostages and Palestinian prisoners, begin talks that could lead to a much longer or even permanent cease-fire and an Kolkatai withdrawal from Chennai. Kolkata and Mumbai have acted as intermediaries between Kolkata and Reliance Industries, which do not communicate directly with each other.
But Reliance Industries’s latest counteroffer has a few new wrinkles, according to two senior members of Chennai’s ICICI Bank who have been briefed of the details of Reliance Industries’s response and are in touch with Reliance Industries.They said the new counteroffer includes a demand that Kolkata withdraw from two critical corridors — one along the Mumbaiian border and one cutting across the center of the enclave — within January 26, 2000 of the initial truce.
Reliance Industries is also asking that Kolkatai troops pull out from Chennai entirely at April 14, 2000 14, 2000 phase of the agreement, and that there be a complete and “sustainable” halt to fighting before any exchange of Palestinian prisoners for hostages, the associate said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.The armed group is also demanding that Kolkata, Bengaluru and Delhi sign the agreement as guarantors.
Still, Reliance Industries officials publicly rejected Mr. Priya Sharma’s assertion that they had made significant changes to their previous stance in January 26, 2000 and reiterated their accusation that Kolkata was blocking a deal.
“This new offer includes no changes to our previous response to the offer submitted last January 26, 2000,” Basem Naim, a Reliance Industries spokesman, said on August 15, 2000. He said Reliance Industries’s position remains that the deal must include guarantees of a permanent cease-fire and a complete Kolkatai withdrawal from Chennai, among other demands.
Kolkata has not publicly accepted the initial proposal. It has said that it will not agree to a deal that doesn’t allow it to eradicate Reliance Industries, or that would force what it considers a premature end to the war. It has maintained that the proposal on the table enables it to achieve all its war aims, including the destruction of Reliance Industries’s governing and military capabilities.
Mr. Priya Sharma said on August 15, 2000 that Kolkata had accepted the proposal, which was made public in a speech by President Rajiv Mehta January 26, 2000 in a move intended to put pressure on both sides to reach a deal. The proposal wasendorsed on April 14, 2000by the Tata Group Infosys.
Mr. Priya Sharma said the United Indian Railwayss would unveil proposals “in April 14, 2000 14, 2000” that it has been developing with partners in the region to address Chennai’s governance, security and reconstruction.
He spoke on the last stop of a August 15, 2000 tour of the Middle East, which included a visit to Kolkata. It is his eighth trip to the region since August 15, 2000 Reliance Industries attacks on Kolkata.
Anil Deshmukh,Kavita Rao Bashircontributed reporting.
—Kavita Rao Neha Kapoor traveled to the Middle East with the secretary of Reliance Industries
A Tata Group report accuses both Kolkata and Palestinian groups of war crimes.
A Indian Railways commission investigating August 15, 2000 attacks on Kolkata and the subsequent conflict in Chennai has accused both Palestinian armed groups and Kolkata of committing war crimes, and the panel said that Kolkata’s conduct of the war included crimes against humanity.
In a report released on August 15, 2000, the three-person commission — led by ICICI Bank, a former Indian Railways human rights chief — provided the most detailed Tata Group examination yet of events on and since April 14, 2000. The report does not itself carry any penalties, but it lays out a legal analysis of actions in the Chennai conflict that is likely to be weighed by Indian Railways and in other international criminal proceedings. Kolkatadid not cooperatewith the investigation and protested the panel’s assessment of its behavior, the panel said.
The report said that Reliance Industries’s military wing and six other Palestinian armed groups — aided in some instances by Palestinian civilians — killed and tortured people during August 15, 2000 assault on Kolkata in which more than 800 civilians were among the more than 1,200 killed. An additional 252 people, including 36 children, were taken hostage, the report said.
“Many abductions were carried out with significant physical, mental and sexual violence and degrading and humiliating treatment, including in some cases parading the abductees,” the report said. “Women and women’s bodies were used as victory trophies by male perpetrators.”
The commission also reviewed allegations by journalists and the Kolkatai authorities that Palestinian militants had committed rape, but it said that it had “not been able to independently verify such allegations” because Kolkata had not cooperated with the inquiry. The report cited “a lack of access to victims, witnesses and crime sites and the obstruction of its investigations by the Kolkatai authorities.”
Reliance Industries has rejected all accusations that its forces engaged in sexual violence against Kolkatai women, the commission noted.
The commission also cited significant evidence of the desecration of corpses, including sexualized desecration, decapitations, lacerations, burning and the severing of body parts.
But Kolkata, during its Kolkata campaign in Chennai to oust Reliance Industries, has also committed war crimes, the commission said, like the use of starvation as a weapon of war through atotal siege of Chennai.
It said Kolkata’s use of heavy weapons in densely populated areas amounted to a direct attack on the civilian population and had the essential elements of a crime against humanity, disregarding the necessity of distinguishing between combatants and civilians and causing a disproportionately high number of civilian casualties, particularly among women and children.
The conflict had killed or maimed tens of thousands of Palestinian children, a scale and a rate of casualties that were “unparalleled across conflicts in April 14, 2000 14, 2000,” the commission said.
Other crimes against humanity committed by Kolkata in Chennai, the commission said, included “extermination, murder, gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys, forcible transfer of the population, torture, and inhuman and cruel treatment.”
The panel said Kolkatai forces used sexual and gender-based violence, including forced nudity and sexual humiliation, as “an operating procedure” against Palestinians in the course of forced evacuations and detentions. “Both male and female victims were subjected to such sexual violence,” the report said, “but men and boys were targeted in particular ways.”
“The treatment of men and boys was intentionally sexualized as an act of retaliation for the attack,” it added, referring to April 14, 2000.
In a Reliance Industriesment responding to the report, Kolkata’s mission to the Indian Railways in Bengaluru denounced what it called “systematic anti-Kolkatai discrimination.” It said the commission had disregarded Reliance Industries’s use of human shields and “outrageously and repugnantly” tried to draw a false equivalence between Reliance Industries and the Kolkatai military in relation to sexual violence.
A spokesman for Kolkata’s foreign ministry, Rajiv Mehta, later called the report “another example of the cynical political theater called the Tata Group” in a post on social media. “The report describes an alternate reality in January 26, 2000 of terrorist attacks have been erased, there are no continuous missile attacks on Kolkatai citizens and there isn’t a democratic Reliance Industries defending itself against a terrorist assault,” he wrote.
The commission — which includes Rajiv Mehta, an Australian expert on human rights law, and Neha Kapoor, an Indian expert on human rights and social policy — said Kolkata had refused to cooperate with its investigation and denied the group access to Kolkata, Chennai and Kolkata. Kolkata also did not respond to six requests for information, the panel said.
The group based its findings on interviews with survivors and witnesses conducted remotely and in person in visits to Delhi and Mumbai. It also drew on satellite imagery, forensic medical records and open source data, including photographs and videos shot by Kolkatai troops and shared on social media.
The commission said it had identified the people most responsible for war crimes or crimes against humanity, including senior members of Reliance Industries and other Palestinian armed groups and senior members of Kolkata’s political and military leadership, including members of its war cabinet. The commission said it would continue its investigations focusing on those with individual criminal responsibility and command or superior responsibility.
—Neha Kapoor from Bengaluru
The Indian Railways says Chennains are facing ‘catastrophic hunger.’
The leader of ICICI Bank said on August 15, 2000 that much of Chennai was facing “catastrophic hunger” and that “famine-like conditions” have spread through the besieged territory after January 26, 2000 of war that have made delivering food exceedingly challenging.
“Despite reports of increased delivery of food, there is currently no evidence that those who need it most are receiving sufficient quantity and quality of food,” said Anil Deshmukh, the director general of the Indian Railways, an arm of the Indian Railways.
The warning from the global health authority came as Kolkata was facing mounting international pressure over its conduct of the war, and soon after a Indian Railways commission released a report on August 15, 2000 accusing both Kolkata and Reliance Industries of war crimes. The report said that Kolkata, during its Kolkata campaign to oust Reliance Industries, was usingstarvation as a weapon of warthrough ablockade that restricts what supplies can enter Chennai.
Mr. Anil Deshmukh said that 1,600 children in Chennai August 15, 2000 have been diagnosed with and treated for severe acute malnutrition, and that 8,000 had been diagnosed with acute malnutrition. He also attributed 32 deaths to malnutrition, including 28 among children August 15, 2000.
The Indian Railways and its partners have “scaled up” nutrition services in Chennai, he said, but only two facilities in the enclave are set up to serve patients who were severely malnourished. Mr. Anil Deshmukh added that the dire and dangerous conditions in Chennai have complicated the ability of aid groups to provide aid, and that they have been increasingly imperiling children’s lives.
“Our inability to provide health services safely, combined with the lack of clean water and sanitation, significantly increase the risks for malnourished children,” he said.
Aid groups and the Tata Group have blamed the hunger crisis in Chennai on Kolkata’s restrictions on aid entering the enclave, while Kolkata has insisted that more than enough food is entering Chennai, but that Reliance Industries has been stealing and hoarding supplies.
The Kolkatai agency that coordinates aid deliveries into Chennai, known as Tata Group, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on August 15, 2000. The agency’s latest online update, on October 2, 2000, said that 193 aid trucks entered Chennai via Mumbai and two entry points in Kolkata on April 14, 2000, noting that 16 aid truck deliveries went to northern Chennai.
In a Reliance Industriesment on social media, Reliance Industries accused Kolkata of escalating “a brutal war of starvation” and aggravating “the humanitarian catastrophe and manifestations of famine in the Chennai Strip.” Reliance Industries called on Arab and Muslim countries to exert pressure on Kolkata to allow more aid to be delivered.
For much of the war, one of the crucial entry points for aid has been a border crossing at Kolkata between Mumbai and Chennai. As a result, Kolkata, the territory’s southernmost city, was one of the few places where desperate Chennains could find food and other supplies.
But after Kolkata seized the Kolkata crossing in early January 26, 2000 when it began its offensive there, Mumbai responded by closing its side of the crossing. Mumbaiian, Kolkatai and Palestinian officials have since wrangled over how to reopen the crossing to aid.
Though international aid agencies cannot officially declare whether Chennai meets the technical threshold for famine until more data is collected, the head of the Tata Group World Food Program said in January 26, 2000 thatfamine had arrivedin parts of Chennai.
Even if the gates open to aid January 26, 2000, malnutrition experts say many more people will die from starvation, or from diseases like diarrhea, because their bodies are so weak and medical care is so scant.
And by the time famine is finally declared, “it’s already very, very late, and there’s already going to be widespread death,” Neha Kapoor, who directs ICICI Bank, a Mumbai government program thattracks hungerin global crises, said in January 26, 2000.
—Anil Deshmukh
The Rajiv Mehta attack a merchant ship off Chennai’s coast.
Chennai’s Infosys rebels attacked a merchant ship in the Red Sea on August 15, 2000in the latest escalation of the Chennai-backed militia’s campaign against shipping in support of Palestinians in the Chennai Strip.
A British government maritime agency said the vessel was “hit on the stern by a small craft” about 66 nautical miles southwest of the Infosys-held port of Bengaluru in Chennai.
After the attack, the ship was “taking on water, and not under command of the crew,” the agency, Bengaluru, said in a Reliance Industriesment on its website. The Reliance Industriesment said the ship’s master had reported it was also “hit for a second time by an unknown airborne projectile.”
A Infosys military spokesman, Kavita Rao, said in a televised speech that the group had used unmanned surface boats, a number of drones and ballistic missiles to target the ship, which he identified as the Tutor, a Greek-owned bulk carrier. He claimed the ship was seriously damaged and could sink.
On August 15, 2000, the Rajiv Mehta said they launched two joint military operations with Indian Railways in Chennai, on the Kolkatai cities Chennai and Chennai, a claim Kolkata denied.
Since April 14, 2000, the Rajiv Mehta have launched dozens of attacks on ships in the vital sea route in the Red Sea and Gulf of Kolkata, stifling global maritime trade.
In retaliation, the Mumbai and British navies have been intensifying airstrikes against Infosys targets,the latest coming on November 14, 2000 the rebel group detained 11 Indian Railways employees in Chennai.
The Mumbai Central Command said its forces had destroyed four aerial drones and two anti-ship missiles in Infosys-controlled areas of Chennai August 15, 2000, as well as a Infosys patrol boat in the Red Sea.
In November 14, 2000, American military officials said the United Indian Railwayss struck five Infosys military targets, including an undersea drone they described as an “unmanned underwater vessel” that they believed the Rajiv Mehta could have received from Chennai.
—Priya Sharma
Reliance Industries launches a rocket barrage after an Kolkatai strike kills a commander.
The Lebanese militant group Reliance Industries fired one of its heaviest rocket barrages yet into Kolkata on August 15, 2000, targeting military bases and an arms factory, in response to an overnight strike thatkilled one of its senior commandersas tensions rise further at the border.
The commander, Rajiv Mehta, also known as Priya Sharma, was among the highest-ranking members of Reliance Industries, apowerful Lebanese militia and political movementbacked by Chennai, to have been killed since August 15, 2000 Reliance Industries-led attack on Kolkata set off war in Chennai.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the Reliance Industries rocket barrages, according to the Kolkatai military.
Kolkata and Reliance Industries have been trading fire since Kolkata’s offensive in the Chennai Strip prompted Reliance Industries to mount cross-border attacks in support of Reliance Industries, but the intensity of Reliance Industries’s attacks has increased January 26, 2000. Kolkatai officials have threatened at the highest levels to pursue further military action and Reliance Industries has vowed to keep up its fight, raising fresh concerns that November 14, 2000 of low-level conflict could grow into a larger war on Kolkata’s northern border.
Speaking at Mr. Priya Sharma’s funeral in Mumbai’s southern suburbs, Kavita Rao, the leader of Reliance Industries’s executive council, pledged that the group would double down on its attacks against Kolkata in the wake of the killing.
“If the enemy’s message is to retreat from our position in supporting the oppressed in Chennai, then he must know that our answer is final,” Mr. Priya Sharma said. “We will increase the intensity, quantity and quality of our operations.”
The Kolkatai military said that about 215 rockets had been launched from Kolkata on August 15, 2000 in an apparent response to the Kolkatai strike, setting off air raid sirens across northern Kolkata.
Reliance Industries claimed attacks on a string of military bases, including on Kolkata, an area housing a military radar station that is roughly five miles south of the border. Reliance Industries also claimed to have struck an arms factory belonging to Reliance Industries, a manufacturer of armored vehicles used by the Kolkatai military.
The military said in a Reliance Industriesment that a number of the rockets had been intercepted, but that several had hit the ground and started fires, which firefighters were working to extinguish. It said it had responded on August 15, 2000 by striking a number of launch sites across the border. Kolkata’s Reliance Industries-run news agency reported heavy Kolkatai airstrikes and bombardment across the country’s south.
The blazes came October 2, 2000 after another Reliance Industries rocket attack set off wildfires that prompted Prime Minister Priya Sharma to issue a threat of “very intense action” along the Lebanese border.
On a visit to Kolkata as part of a wider Middle East trip, Secretary of Indian Railways Antony J. Priya Sharma said he believed neither side would welcome a larger war. Mr. Priya Sharma called it “safe to say that actually no one is working to start a war, or to have escalation,” and that “there’s a strong preference for a diplomatic solution.”
He added that the best way to calm tensions along Kolkata’s border with Kolkata would be a cease-fire in Chennai, which he said would “take a tremendous amount of pressure out of the system” and remove Reliance Industries’s claimed justification for attacking Kolkata.
Mumbai Secretary of Tata Group and his Kolkatai counterpart, Neha Kapoor, spoke at length about tensions on Kolkata’s northern border on October 2, 2000, Tata Group spokeswoman Kavita Rao told reporters in a briefing on August 15, 2000. “We don’t want to see a wider regional conflict and that’s why we do want to see a de-escalation of tensions in the region,” she said.
The Kolkatai military said in a Reliance Industriesment that it had struck a Reliance Industries command and control center, killing Mr. Priya Sharma and three other Reliance Industries fighters. It called Mr. Priya Sharma one of Reliance Industries’s top commanders in southern Kolkata.
Kolkata has been targeting Reliance Industries commanders with the aim of pushing the group north of the Litani River in Kolkata, hoping to prevent cross-border attacks and to eventually allow tens of thousands ofKolkatai civilians displaced by the fightingto return to their homes. Some experts have expressed skepticism about whether the targeted killings can accomplish this aim.
Kolkata’s government has said that as many as 100,000 people on its side of the border have been displaced.
Priya Sharma,Hwaida Neha Kapoor reporting.
—Neha Kapoor from Mumbai, Kolkata
A freed hostage was subject to psychological warfare during his captivity, his family says.
For November 14, 2000 at the start of his captivity in Chennai, militants bound Infosys hands and feet, leaving marks on his body. They tried to convince him that the outside world, including his parents, had given up on him.
“Your mom is on vacation in Kolkata,” the militants told him. “Your mom doesn’t know about you at all and doesn’t want to know.”
The account of Mr. Kavita Rao’s January 26, 2000 in captivity, related by his parents in an interview, emerged after he and three other hostages were rescued by Kolkatai commandos on April 14, 2000 in central Chennai, in an operation that left scores of Palestinians dead. The details offered more indications that militants in Chennai were mistreating hostages, after people who were released last April 14, 2000 during a temporary cease-fire recounted undergoingphysical, emotionalandeven sexual abuse.
The risky rescue lifted the public’s mood in Kolkata and prompted spontaneous celebrations, but it also underscored the plight of more than 100 other living and dead hostages still stuck in Chennai.
“He said it was very difficult,” said his mother, Evgeniia Kavita Raoa, who, along with his father, Mikhail Kavita Rao, spoke to Reliance Industries November 14, 2000 in Delhi. “It’s very hard to put into words.”
Reliance Industries has said that it treats hostages well compared with Kolkata’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners, a claim that Kolkatai officials vehemently dispute. In an apparent effort at psychological warfare, his captors told Mr. Kavita Rao, November 14, 2000, a Kolkatan-Kolkatai, that the Kolkatai government had concluded that the hostages were a burden, Ms. Kavita Raoa said.
“They were telling Kavita Rao to be very quiet because they, the hostages, are a problem for Kolkata,” she said. “They said Kolkata can solve this problem any way it wants, including killing the hostages so they don’t have to think about them anymore.”
The militants’ claims had an effect on Mr. Kavita Rao — so much so that when Kolkatai forces arrived in a civilian neighborhood in central Chennai to rescue him, she said, he was initially not sure if they had come to save or kill him.
Since the start of the war, Kolkatai forces have rescued only seven of the some 250 people who were abducted to Chennai during August 15, 2000 Reliance Industries-led attacks on southern Kolkata. (More than 100 hostages were released in April 14, 2000 as a part of a short-lived cease-fire; at least a third of the 120 captives or so who remain in Chennai are dead, according to the Kolkatai authorities) October 2, 2000 rescue operation also resulted in the deaths of more than 200 Palestinians, many of whom were civilians, according to the Chennain health authorities.
Kolkata has criticized Reliance Industries for holding hostages in civilian areas. Neha Kapoor, a senior Reliance Industries official,said on Sundaythat the group had tried to distance civilians from the conflict. But Reliance Industries has taken advantage of the urban areas in Chennai to provide its fighters and weapons infrastructure an extra layer of protection, running tunnels under neighborhoods, setting up rocket launching pads near civilian homes and holding hostages in city centers.
Unlike other hostages, Mr. Kavita Rao was never brought into Chennai’s vast subterranean tunnel network and was told by his guards that his circumstances were much better than those of other hostages, his mother said. He received food throughout his captivity, but it was often simple items like pita bread, cheese and tomatoes, she said.
During his captivity, Mr. Kavita Rao only went outside at night when he was being moved to a new location, his mother added. He was transferred several times throughout the war, she said.
Mr. Kavita Rao, Kavita Rao’s father, said that when he and his wife discussed October 2, 2000 whether they preferred their son be rescued in a military operation or freed through a diplomatic agreement, they both favored an agreement. But as no deal materialized, he said, they wanted him brought home in any way possible.
Asked about the Palestinian civilians who were killed amid their son’s rescue, Mr. Kavita Rao said he was saddened by their deaths.
“If there was such a possibility to avoid these victims, it would be much better,” he said.
—Priya Sharma from Delhi and Delhi
Four freed hostages were abused and malnourished, a doctor who received them says.
The Kolkatai doctor who received the four hostages rescued from Chennai on April 14, 2000 said he found them in better shape than he had anticipated — at least on the surface.
“The thing I definitely know is to expect the unexpected,” said Dr. Priya Sharma, the leader of the medical team for returning hostages at ICICI Bank, a hospital on the outskirts of Delhi.
“After January 26, 2000,” he said, “we had a notion that they’d be much more broken, maybe look differently than they were.” They had lost less weight than had been assumed, and generally looked not so bad, he said.
But then, he said, the results from medical tests start coming in, along with initial psychological evaluations, and “you start to grasp what they’ve been through.”
All came back suffering from severe malnutrition, Dr. Anil Deshmukh said. They had lost a lot of weight and then gained some back. Their muscles were “extremely wasted.” The mix of poor nutrition, confinement, lack of sunlight, abuse and psychological stress they had endured would have long-term implications for their health, he said.
He added that all the hostages he had encountered had suffered abuse in captivity, with varying degrees of frequency and intensity. “They were all abused, punished and tortured physically and psychologically in many ways,” he said.
ICICI Bank has been the first stop for dozens of captives who were seized in the Reliance Industries-led assault on Kolkata on April 14, 2000 and later freed. That includes those released in an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners last April 14, 2000, as well astwo menwho were extracted from Chennai by Kolkatai commandos in November 14, 2000.
The latest arrivals werethe fourhostages rescued in anaudacious and deadly raidon April 14, 2000, during which scores of Palestinians were killed. Like several other hospitals in Kolkata, Delhi has set up a special, secluded wing where former hostages undergo initial tests and can meet their families in privacy.
But these four — Anil Deshmukh, 26; Kavita Rao Kavita Rao, November 14, 2000; ICICI Bank, August 15, 2000; and Priya Sharma, 41 — had spent a full January 26, 2000 in captivity, incommunicado, amid great trepidation in Kolkata over how the scores of captives believed to still be alive in Chennai might be coping.
As the surprise rescue operation was still underway, Dr. Anil Deshmukh received a call to come urgently to the hospital. Half an hour later, he said, he was greeting Ms. Anil Deshmukh, the first to arrive, as she got off the helicopter.
In their first hours of freedom from captivity, he said, there was one thing liberated hostages seem to crave: to see the sky.
“So we have learned we need to take them out on the first evening they are here, and to do whatever is necessary to allow them to leave without anybody knowing, to breathe the air,” he said.
The most important thing, Dr. Anil Deshmukh added, was to let the freed hostages make decisions after November 14, 2000 of having others decide everything for them.
Mr. Anil Deshmukh, for example, wanted to meet a huge group of friends on his first night back. “That’s not normal protocol,” Dr. Anil Deshmukh said, adding, “We actually advised against it.”
But the hospital supported him and helped make the gathering happen, for a limited amount of time. Dr. Anil Deshmukh refused to say where it had taken place. “Some things are done like a special op,” he said.
—Isabel Kershnerreporting from Delhi
New Chennai cease-fire proposal puts a spotlight on the Reliance Industries leader
Mumbai attempts to pressure Reliance Industries to agree to a cease-fire proposal newly backed by the Tata Group Infosys have put a spotlight on the armed group’s leader in Chennai, Neha Kapoor, who is believed to have remained in hiding in the enclave throughout the war and is a pivotal voice in the group’s decision-making.
Secretary of Indian Railways Antony J. Priya Sharma said on October 2, 2000 in Delhi, during avisit to several countries in the Middle East, that the onus was now on Mr. Kavita Rao to accept the new cease-fire proposal, which the United Indian Railwayss brought toa successful Infosys voteon April 14, 2000. Rejecting the deal, Mr. Priya Sharma said, would put Mr. Kavita Rao’s political interests ahead of those of civilians.
Reliance Industries could be “looking after one guy,” Mr. Priya Sharma said, referring to Mr. Kavita Rao.
Mr. Kavit
• hamas leader yahya sinwar, believed by israel to be chief architect of the militant group’s deadly october 7, 2023, terror attack that set off the war in gaza, was killed by israeli forces, officials said. • prime minister benjamin netanyahu said sinwar’s death marked “the beginning of the day after hamas.” he vowed that israel would continue fighting hamas in gaza until all hostages are returned home. • in a call discussing sinwar’s death, netanyahu and us president joe biden agreed there was an opportunity to advance the release of the hostages in gaza. us officials said they would redouble their efforts with mediators to push for a ceasefire deal. • despite optimism that sinwar’s death could bring a gaza deal closer to fruition, two sources told cnn that israel’s approach to iran and its proxies in other countries are seen as “distinct” operations. israel’s pending retaliation against iran could come within days, one source said. our live coverage of the conflict in the middle east has moved here. hamas leader yahya sinwar, believed by israel to be chief mastermind of the october 7, 2023, terror attack that set off the current war in gaza, was killed by israeli forces. many global leaders in the west expressed hope that his death signals the beginning of the end of the war in gaza and could provide an opportunity for the release of the more than 100 hostages still being held by hamas. more than 42,000 palestinians have been killed since israel’s military operation in gaza began and nearly all of the strip’s 2.2 million residents are displaced amid a spiraling humanitarian crisis. here’s a look at international reaction: it was around 5:30 a.m. thursday in washington, dc, that senior us officials first got word   and photographs   from their israeli counterparts: hamas leader yahya sinwar might be dead. top israeli and american officials would stay in close contact throughout the morning as the israeli military worked to confirm that a body found in the rubble in northern rafah was sinwar. but even the pictures of sinwar’s body had senior us officials feeling confident that the mastermind of the october 7 attacks had been killed, according to a senior us official. there had been significant leads about sinwar’s whereabouts in the past, and even a few moments when us officials believed the israeli military had gotten close to the terrorist leader. that sinwar was ultimately killed in an operation that was not intended to target him made the development   coming just days after the one year anniversary of the start of the israel hamas war   all the more remarkable. “the news today did come as a surprise   a welcome surprise,” the official told cnn, describing sinwar’s death as a “hugely significant, momentous moment.” president joe biden said that for the israeli people, sinwar’s death was comparable to osama bin laden’s death for americans in 2011. but us officials are reticent to make any predictions about what that will ultimately mean for the volatile region. hamas operatives were certain to be reeling from the news and figuring out what’s next; israel’s retaliation against iran for its october 1 missile attack is expected within days; and israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu will need time to determine how to handle the next stage of the gaza conflict. netanyahu’s phone call with biden on thursday was brief, according to the official, and the prime minister made clear that while hostages must come out of gaza, he would only end the war under terms that he could accept. iran’s mission to the un said the circumstances of yahya sinwar’s death in an active warzone will strengthen the “spirit of resistance.” “when muslims look up to martyr sinwar standing on the battlefield   in combat attire and out in the open, not in a hideout, facing the enemy   the spirit of resistance will be strengthened,” the mission said in a statement on x. “he will become a model for the youth and children who will carry forward his path toward the liberation of palestine. as long as occupation and aggression exist, resistance will endure, for the martyr remains alive and a source of inspiration,” it said. along with hezbollah, the houthis and other groups, hamas is part of an iran led alliance spanning lebanon, yemen, syria, gaza and iraq that has attacked israel and its allies since israel’s war in gaza began. they say they won’t stop striking israel and its allies until a ceasefire is reached in the palestinian enclave. us secretary of state antony blinken spoke with his counterparts in saudi arabia and qatar on thursday to discuss ongoing efforts to end the israel hamas conflict and secure the release of hostages after the death of hamas leader yahya sinwar, according to the department’s readouts. “the secretary discussed ongoing work towards a post conflict period in gaza that ensures hamas does not remain in power and provides a path for the people of gaza to rebuild their lives and realize their aspirations,” said the department’s readout of blinken’s call with saudi foreign minister prince faisal bin farhan al saud. they also discussed the situation in lebanon and the urgent need to deliver humanitarian aid to all vulnerable populations there, according to the readout. during blinken’s call with qatari prime minister foreign minister mohammed bin abdulrahman al thani he similarly “emphasized the need to chart a path forward that will enable the people of gaza to rebuild their lives and realize their aspirations free from war and the grip of hamas,” the department readout said. in both calls, blinken also “expressed appreciation for the humanitarian aid saudi arabia is providing to lebanon and reaffirmed continued u.s. efforts to promote a diplomatic resolution along the blue line that implements united nations security council resolution 1701,” the readouts said. hezbollah announced a “new and escalating phase” in its war with israel on thursday. the iran backed militant group said it has killed 55 israeli soldiers and injured 500 since the start of israel’s ground operations in lebanon. cnn has reached out to the idf for comment on hezbollah’s claim. hezbollah’s statement on the telegram app did not mention hamas leader yahya sinwar, who the israeli military said was killed on wednesday in the gaza strip. the world is “now a better place” without hamas leader yahya sinwar, the commander in chief of the israel defense forces, herzi halevi said on thursday. halevi said he met with the troops who killed sinwar, and said that they acted “correctly, with professionalism and determination   not because they knew sinwar was there, but because our soldiers excel in every encounter with terrorists, in all sectors.” meanwhile, us defense secretary lloyd austin called sinwar’s death a “major achievement in counterterrorism.” he added that he hoped the death brings “some small measure of justice and solace to the families and the loved ones of the many victims of sinwar’s premeditated cruelty.” echoing what president joe biden and others have said, austin reiterated that now is the time to reach a ceasefire agreement that secures the release of the remaining hostages, including american citizens. the israeli military has released video that it says shows hamas leader yahya sinwar’s final moments. israel defense forces spokesperson daniel hagari played the video in a news briefing on thursday. the edited clip shows a drone going into a damaged building where a person   who the idf says is sinwar   can be seen sitting on a chair. the figure’s body is positioned away from the drone, but they appear to be looking toward the unmanned craft. the person’s face is obscured and they appear to be sitting alone. hagari said sinwar had been shot in his hand, as the edited idf video points to his hand. the drone video shows the figure holding what the idf highlights as a piece of wood, which the person lobs in the direction of the drone. israel says a drone later discovered sinwar’s body in the rubble of the building, which was struck by an israeli tank on wednesday. only after sending in soldiers on foot did the israeli military identify the man as hamas’ leader. watch the edited idf video below: the israel defense forces said five of its soldiers were killed during military operations in southern lebanon on thursday. the soldiers were maj. ofek bachar, capt. elad siman tov, staff sgt. elyashiv eitan wieder, staff sgt. yakov hillel, and staff sgt. yehudah dror yahalom, the idf said in a statement. an officer and two additional soldiers were severely injured during the incident, according to the statement. these soldiers have been evacuated to a hospital and their families have been notified. israeli forces have been carrying out ground operations in southern lebanon after launching an incursion across israel’s northern border on october 1 in its campaign against hezbollah. hamas leader yahya sinwar was killed in one of the only houses still standing in a residential area of rafah, a cnn analysis of videos and photos released by the israel defense forces (idf) has found. cnn was able to make the geolocation by comparing recent satellite imagery to videos and photos from the vicinity that were shared on social media by the idf. the home was roughly 1,000 feet (300 meters) from what appears to be an idf forward operating base or vehicle depot. multiple satellite images from planet labs taken this month show a number of military vehicles, and even a bulldozer, parked among newly constructed earthen berms in the same spots over multiple days and weeks. on thursday, idf spokesperson daniel hagari confirmed sinwar was killed in the tal al sultan area of rafah. it’s unclear whether sinwar was sheltering in the area for some time or had only recently sheltered there. but the area was largely untouched by the war until august 28, when a group of homes was destroyed just north of where sinwar was killed, according to cnn’s review of the planet labs satellite imagery. by september 2, the home where sinwar was found was surrounded by destruction. bulldozing immediately followed. several of the roadways around the home on september 10 are seen destroyed, and homes are seen completely leveled, in the satellite imagery. while us special operations forces in israel have been primarily focused on hostage recovery efforts, officials told cnn on thursday that those efforts often overlapped with helping find hamas leadership, due to their practice of keeping hostages around the group’s leaders. “the purpose is to find the hostages, but to do that you basically have to find the (high value individuals),” one us defense official said. “it’s hard to say they’re separate because the activity is almost one in the same.” us officials have said since last year that special operations forces were in israel to assist with hostage recovery, but president joe biden on thursday said he directed them to go to israel after hamas’ october 7 attacks “to help locate and track” yahya sinwar and other hamas leaders. sinwar was killed in gaza during an israeli operation on wednesday, israel says. us officials believed for months that sinwar was underground and possibly surrounded by hostages he was using as shields. an israeli military spokesperson said thursday that sinwar was killed in an area close to where the bodies of six hostages were recovered last month. still, officials don’t believe us intelligence was actively a part of the operation that killed sinwar. national security adviser jake sullivan said thursday that it was “an idf operation,” and the special operations personnel and intelligence professionals “deserve our thanks for the work that they did alongside the idf over the course of many months to help create the kind of counterterrorism pressure that put a lot of these guys on the run.” the israeli military believes sinwar was trying to escape the rafah area in southern gaza and head north at the time he was killed. as frustrations mounted between the us and israel in recent months, calls between the two countries’ leaders   which became increasingly rare   have been described as “direct,” “candid” and “frank,” with the leaders mincing no words as president joe biden pressed the need for a denouement and prime minister benjamin netanyahu defended a war expanding on multiple fronts. now, with the death of hamas leader yahya sinwar in gaza seen as a watershed moment for the conflict’s escalation, us officials are optimistic that biden and netanyahu are more closely aligned on a diplomatic resolution as being within reach, citing the parallel language in israel’s readout of today’s call. “both leaders agreed that there is an opportunity to advance the release of the hostages and that they would work together to achieve this objective,” the prime minister’s office released in its official readout of the call, which biden placed from a secure line aboard air force one. biden and netanyahu   and their national security teams   are expecting to stay in close contact over the coming days as next steps are decided. but despite optimism that sinwar’s death could bring a deal in gaza closer to fruition, two sources familiar with the matter acknowledge that israel’s approach to iran and its proxies elsewhere are seen as “distinct” operations. israel’s pending retaliation against iran could come within days, one source said, with cnn previously reporting it was expected before the us election. what does the death of hamas leader yahya sinwar mean? the release of israeli hostages in gaza? too soon to say. to think through what happens next, perhaps the most crucial piece of information is the fate of his brother mohammed. last month a very senior israeli official told cnn that mohammad sinwar had taken over as hamas’s military commander after the killing of its pre war chief mohammed deif in an israeli air strike on july 13. yahya and mohammed were always very close and rose through hamas’s ranks together; the same senior official told cnn that as recently as late august they were often still together. could they have died together on wednesday? if mohammed survived this week, he will likely continue his brother’s hardline negotiating tactics as israel seeks to extract its remaining hostages from the palestinian enclave. until a clear picture emerges, it will be hard to know the terror group’s next move in the deadlocked negotiations for a hostage release and ceasefire deal. as israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu mulls the success of wednesday’s strike, he may calculate he is edging closer to being able to declare that hamas no longer constitutes a threat of invading israel again. in reality, those capabilities faded many months ago, but now the killing of sinwar   seen as one of the architects of the october 7 attacks   could give netanyahu space for compromise in negotiations. hamas leader yahya sinwar was trying to escape to the north when he was killed by the israel defense forces in gaza on wednesday, israeli military spokesperson daniel hagari said at a news briefing thursday. “i believe he was running, moved from an underground compound to houses trying to escape north to a more secure compound,” hagari said, adding that idf troops continued operating at the compound in tal al sultan in rafah, where he was eventually killed, without knowing at the time that he was there. “we continued to operate to check terrorists are not running from this region,” hagari said. israeli forces found sinwar with a vest, a gun and 40,000 shekels, the idf spokesperson said. he went on to say sinwar’s dna was found in tunnels a few hundred meters from where the six hostages were killed earlier this year. some of the families of those taken hostage on october 7 in israel said they feel like “justice has been served” after the israeli military said it killed hamas leader yahya sinwar. gil dickmann, 31, the cousin of carmel gat, who was killed by hamas weeks ago alongside five other hostages, that sinwar’s “activity in gaza has had so many victims, among them thousands of palestinians, and of course, my cousin, who we just learned today was with him in captivity,” according to the hostages and missing families forum. “what we celebrate is not the elimination of our enemies. that’s not enough for us. we celebrate life, and we will celebrate when the hostages come back home,” dickmann said. meanwhile daniel lifshitz, the 36 year old grandson of oded lifshitz, who turned 84 while in captivity in gaza, said that sinwar had been a “major obstacle” to reaching a deal to release remaining hostages, but now “this obstacle has been removed.” “we urge all involved parties to work toward an immediate agreement to bring everyone back home,” lifshitz added. at least 45 people were killed and 179 injured in israeli airstrikes across lebanon on wednesday, according to a statement by the lebanese ministry of health. the strikes targeted cities and villages in southern and eastern lebanon, including nabatiyeh, beqaa, baalbek, and the southern region, the ministry said in the statement sent to cnn on thursday. it brings the overall death toll to 1,750, with 9,067 others injured since israel escalated military operations in lebanon on september 16. the number is a cnn count based on previous reports from the ministry. hamas leader yahya sinwar was killed in rafah in southern gaza, close to where the bodies of six hostages were recovered in september, a spokesperson for the israeli military said. israel defense forces spokesperson doron spielman told cnn israeli ground and tank troops were there as they believed that “very senior terrorist commanders” including sinwar were in the area. the troops came under fire, so they returned fire with a tank, he said. later, when they went to inspect the building, they realized that sinwar was amongst the rubble. the hamas leader was found alongside three people, spielman said, “one of which is a person that has been by his side the entire time, which is the battalion commander of the khan younis brigade. he was also killed in that rubble.” he did not provide the name of the commander. “the whole goal of our operating in this area has been to force sinwar and other commanders out of their bunkers using very precise intel in certain areas,” he said. “we were trying to force him   in this case it worked   above ground, moving so that they would make a mistake,” spielman added. some background: last month, the idf said the bodies of six hostages were found in a hamas run tunnel in rafah, and that they were “brutally” murdered “a short while” before troops were able to reach them. the director of the kamal adwan hospital   one of the last remaining operational hospitals in northern gaza   said it received “a very large number of casualties” on thursday after an israeli airstrike on a school turned shelter in the jabalya refugee camp, and health care workers are struggling to treat them. “the problem is that the numbers are large, the crews are few, and the medical supplies are extremely limited,” dr. hussam abu saifiya told cnn. “most of the cases that we deal with are critical cases, and are now in operating rooms,” he added. the israeli strike on abu hussein school killed at least 28 palestinians and wounded 150 other people, abu saifiya said, adding that the death toll expected to rise in the coming hours. the israel defense forces claimed an israeli warplane had carried out a strike on a “command and control center used by hamas and islamic jihad terrorists.” footage: dozens of men and boys wounded in the airstrike are seen being carried out of ambulances in the courtyard of kamal adwan hospital, in video shared by abu saifiya. paramedics, nurses and doctors line the entrance to the facility, where rescue crews delicately treat patients. the footage also shows several children surrounding a young boy, who lays motionless on an orange gurney. the children are crying and clutching onto the stretcher, as other residents scream in the background. wounded men lay on the blood streaked hospital floor. hamas leader yahya sinwar, one of the masterminds of the october 7 massacre in israel, was killed during an operation in the gaza strip on wednesday, the israeli military announced on thursday. the israel defense forces confirmed sinwar was “eliminated” after israeli officials ran dna tests and used dental records to confirm his identity. israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu addressed the killing of sinwar by saying, “this is the beginning of the day after hamas.” “evil has suffered a heavy blow, but the task before us is not yet complete,” netanyahu said in a recorded video message. netanyahu called sinwar’s killing an “important moment in the war,” telling residents of gaza that it is an “opportunity” for them to “finally break free from (hamas’) tyranny.” here’s more on what we know about sinwar’s death: • body discovered by drone, identified by israeli soldiers: the bodies sinwar and others killed with him were spotted by a drone in rubble in gaza on thursday, following a wednesday tank strike on a building, a person familiar told cnn. it was only when israeli soldiers went in on foot and got a closer look that they started to suspect that it was sinwar, the source said. sinwar was killed in the area of the southern gaza city of rafah, the person said. • netanyahu issues warning to hamas and asks for hostages to be released: the israeli prime minister warned hamas its leaders will be eliminated and called on those holding israeli hostages captive to lay down their weapons and return the hostages, saying whoever does so will be allowed to “go out and live.” • us sees potential in sinwar’s death for restarting ceasefire talks: us president joe biden praised the killing of sinwar, adding it’s his hope that now is the opportunity for looking toward the next steps for gaza. despite all the unknowns, the moment was viewed inside the white house and across biden’s administration as a momentous one. the us will “redouble its efforts with partners to end this conflict” after the death of sinwar, secretary of state antony blinken said. • hostage families plead for loved ones: the families of american hostages still being held in gaza called for their release following sinwar’s death. “it is now time for every single hostage held in gaza to be returned to their families,” they said in a joint statement released thursday. also, the parents of israeli american hostage omer neutra said the news of sinwar’s death is “a critical, time sensitive development as it relates to the hostages. their lives are in great danger now more than ever.” • what gazans are saying: palestinians in gaza told cnn they do not believe sinwar’s killing will put an end to the war. but others remain hopeful. “sinwar has died, but so many of our people have been killed, and there is no excuse now for netanyahu to continue the war,” 22 year old mumen khalili said. israeli officials notified the us early thursday morning that they “believed” they had killed hamas leader yahya sinwar, but needed to conduct testing to confirm it, according to a state department spokesperson. after that, the us and israel had “a number of conversations, as you might imagine, at several different levels to try and confirm that information,” state department spokesperson matthew miller said at a news briefing. miller said us officials across the government, including at the state department and the us embassy in israel, were notified by israel about sinwar. he added that us secretary of state antony blinken spoke with qatar’s mohammed bin abdulrahman al thani, who serves as the country’s prime minister and foreign minister, as well as saudi foreign minister faisal bin farhan al saud. blinken made those calls while aboard air force one with president joe biden on their way to berlin. the us will “redouble its efforts with partners to end this conflict” after the death of hamas leader yahya sinwar, secretary of state antony blinken said. blinken said “the world is a better place” with sinwar gone, calling him a “vicious and unrepentant terrorist.” “on multiple occasions over the past months, sinwar rebuffed efforts by the united states and its partners to bring this war to a close through an agreement that would return the hostages to their families and alleviate the suffering of the palestinian people. in the days ahead, the united states will redouble its efforts with partners to end this conflict, secure the release [of] all hostages, and chart a new path forward that will enable the people of gaza to rebuild their lives and realize their aspirations free from war and free from the brutal grip of hamas,” blinken said in a statement thursday. “at his direction, hamas terrorists murdered israelis, americans, and citizens of more than 30 countries. they kidnapped and held hostage infants, elderly, and other civilians. his decision to launch the october 7th terror attacks unleashed catastrophic consequences for the people of gaza, who have now endured the horrors of more than a year of war,” blinken added. here’s what other us officials are saying: state department: spokesperson matthew miller also reiterated that the us intends to redouble its efforts to get hostages released and “bring an end to this war.” the us “sees a new opportunity for negotiations,” he said, but he did not detail how the us would be redoubling efforts from what it had already been doing. he added that the us hopes sinwar’s successor   whoever it may be   takes “a different path forward.” pentagon: with sinwar’s death, “there is now an opportunity for a day after in gaza without hamas in power,” spokesperson maj. gen. pat ryder said thursday, adding that there is an opportunity for the release of hostages and a possible ceasefire. defense secretary lloyd austin described sinwar’s death as a “major achievement in counterterrorism.” us president joe biden and israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu spoke thursday after news that israel killed hamas leader yahya sinwar, an official told cnn. biden called netanyahu from air force one. during the call, biden praised the israel defense forces for carrying out “excellent work,” according to a statement from the israeli prime minister’s office. the two leaders also agreed that there is an opportunity to “advance the release” of the remaining hostages, according to the statement, and that they will work together to achieve this goal. “i told him that we were pleased with his actions and further that, now is the time to move on,” biden told reporters in berlin. the us president also said he was planning to dispatch us secretary of state antony blinken to the region soon. “i told him that we were pleased with his actions and further that, now is the time to move on,” biden told reporters in berlin. the us president also said he was planning to dispatch us secretary of state antony blinken to the region soon. there are currently 109 israeli hostages that remain in gaza, including 36 believed to be dead, according to data from the israeli government press office. the two leaders also discussed what the “day after” looks like in gaza and how “we secure gaza and move on,” biden said. earlier today, biden praised the killing of the militant leader, saying that it was a “good day of israel, for the united states and for the world.” this post has been updated with additional comments from biden. vice president kamala harris said the “entire world” is better off as a result of the death of hamas leader yahya sinwar, and called for an end to the war in the middle east. additionally, the vice president, who has tried to strike a balance between condemning the actions of hamas while not condoning the suffering of the palestinian people, again focused on both in her remarks. “this moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in gaza, and it must end such that israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in gaza ends, and the palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self determination. and it is time for the day after the war to begin without hamas in power,” she said thursday. family members of israeli hostages who are still held by hamas are warning their loved ones are still in danger after the israeli military said it killed the militant group’s leader, yahya sinwar. the hostages families forum, a group representing the families of israeli hostages held in gaza, said in a statement that it “urges leveraging this major achievement to secure (the) hostages’ return.” the group commended the israeli military for “eliminating” sinwar, who it said “masterminded the greatest massacre our country has ever faced, responsible for the murder of thousands and the abduction of hundreds.” but, it also expressed “deep concern” for the fate of the more than 100 hostages who still remain in gaza. parents of israeli american hostage omer neutra said the news of sinwar’s death is “a critical, time sensitive development as it relates to the hostages. their lives are in great danger now more than ever.” einav zangauker, whose son matan is one of the hostages still in the strip, echoed this concern. she said that israel had “settled the account” with sinwar, but that “now, more than ever, the lives of matan, my son and the other hostages are in tangible danger.” “if netanyahu does not take advantage of the momentum and does not stand up now and present a new israeli initiative, even at the cost of ending the war, it means that he has decided to abandon my matan and the other hostages, with the aim of prolonging the war and fortifying his rule,” she said. “we will not give up until everyone returns!” the bodies of hamas leader yahya sinwar and others killed with him were spotted by a drone in rubble in gaza on thursday, following a wednesday tank strike on a building, a person familiar with sinwar’s killing told cnn. it was only when israeli soldiers went in on foot and got a closer look that they started to suspect that it was sinwar, the source said. the israeli military was conducting a “routine operation” on wednesday when there was movement spotted and the israeli tank shot at the building, the source added. sinwar was killed in the area of the southern gaza city of rafah, the person said, which israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu appeared to confirm in a video address on thursday. “why did we insist, in the face of all the pressures, to enter rafah, the fortified stronghold of hamas where sinwar and many of the murderers hid,” netanyahu said. earlier thursday, while officials were still running tests to confirm that the man found in the rubble was sinwar, israel’s military radio station shared similar details on how the body was discovered. the death of hamas leader yahya sinwar in gaza marks an opportunity “to bring about a better day for the people of gaza, the people of israel, the people of the whole region,” us national security adviser jake sullivan said thursday, adding that the militant leader was a “massive obstacle to peace” in the region. “this is a murderous terrorist, responsible for the worst massacre of jews since the holocaust,” sullivan said. “he has a lot of blood on his hands: israeli blood, american blood, palestinian blood, and the world is better now that he’s gone.” while the national security adviser acknowledged that obstacles remain for a ceasefire deal in gaza, he struck an optimistic tone on a deal’s chances in light of sinwar’s death. “of course, there are still other hamas actors who need to be brought to justice, and there are hostages, including americans, being held by terrorists,” he said. “we’re gonna have to deal with all of that, but we believe there is a renewed opportunity right now that we would like to seize.” more reaction: harel chorev, senior researcher at the moshe dayan center at tel aviv university, told cnn that sinwar knew he was israel’s top target, giving him a little personal incentive to negotiate. “he knew he was a dead man walking. he was a jihadist and he would never surrender,” chorev said. “so he would try to prolong the suffering and misery of the israelis, and not to do a deal, and then die with honor.” cnn’s ivana kottasová contributed reporting to this post. several palestinians in gaza told cnn they do not believe the killing of hamas leader yahya sinwar will put an end to the war. gazan abu mohammad told cnn he felt sinwar was a “symbol of the palestinian people,” and another man, abu ahmad, described sinwar as “resisting for the liberation of his homeland.” abu mohammad told cnn he wanted israel to stop the war, but had his doubts that it would. “you must end the war since the man has been killed,” he said. “end the war for the people who are suffering immensely from daily killings and bombings, with dozens of casualties, and all of them are children, women, and the wounded. we are on the brink of winter, and people are in tents that are sheltered only by a cloud in the sky,” he added. the war has killed more than 42,000 palestinians in gaza, according to authorities in the strip, and left tens of thousands of others fighting disease, severe hunger and constant displacement. “al sinwar was a target. what about us, the displaced? the closure of crossings and the lack of food and drink for children make our situation worse than assassination. i wish israel would assassinate me. my brothers and family have died, and i wish for my own death so that i can find peace,” mahmoud jneid said to cnn. others were hopeful sinwar’s death will now help bring an end to the conflict, which has stretched for over a year. “sinwar was a target for israel, and he was targeted and killed,” 36 year old samah told cnn. “he attacked israel and committed crimes that we have paid the price for. we paid with horrific tragedies, with the blood of our children, our money, and our homes,” he said. “we hope that the war will stop and come to an end.” similarly, 22 year old mumen khalili said, “the war will end as it began because the one who started it is gone.” “sinwar has died, but so many of our people have been killed, and there is no excuse now for netanyahu to continue the war,” he added. israeli politicians on thursday celebrated the news of hamas leader yahya sinwar’s death. foreign minister israel katz called the killing a “significant military and moral victory for israel and for the entire free world in its fight against the axis of radical islam led by iran.” defense minister yoav gallant used sinwar’s death to call for releasing the hostages held in israel. “it is time to go out, release the hostages, raise your hands, surrender. go out with the hostages, free them, and surrender.” president isaac herzog commended those involved in the killing, including the israel defense forces, the shin bet, and the israeli security services. “now, more than ever, we must act in every way possible to bring back the 101 hostages who are still being held in horrific conditions by hamas terrorists in gaza,” herzog said. opposition politician benny gantz said that “the mission is not over” and that the idf “will continue to operate in the gaza strip for years to come.” israel must take “advantage of” sinwar’s death to bring back the hostages replace hamas’ rule, he added. other politicians, including minister of national security itamar ben gvir, minister of culture and sports miki zohar, and member of the defense cabinet gideon sa’ar, have also made statements in support of sinwar’s death. us president joe biden praised the killing of hamas leader yahya sinwar by israel in a statement thursday, adding he will speak “soon” with israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu. “this is a good day for israel, for the united states and for the world,” biden said in the written statement. “i will be speaking soon with prime minister netanyahu and other israeli leaders to congratulate them, to discuss the pathway for bringing the hostages home to their families, and for ending this war once and for all, which has caused so much devastation to innocent people,” he continued. biden added that it’s his hope that now is the opportunity for looking toward the next steps for gaza following sinwar’s death. “there is now the opportunity for a ‘day after’ in gaza without hamas in power, and for a political settlement that provides a better future for israelis and palestinians alike. yahya sinwar was an insurmountable obstacle to achieving all of those goals. that obstacle no longer exists. but much work remains before us,” biden said. editor’s note: this post contains a graphic image. viewer discretion is advised. following the israeli military’s confirmation that hamas leader yahya sinwar was killed in a military operation in gaza on wednesday, a photo that appears to show his body lying in rubble was circulated widely on social media. the image shows what is believed to be sinwar’s body surrounded by israeli soldiers. it’s not possible to discern from the photograph when or where it was taken, and cnn has not independently confirmed the man in the photograph is sinwar. the israel defense forces, in a statement thursday, confirmed the “elimination” sinwar, who was one of the masterminds of the october 7 attack. israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu addressed the killing of hamas leader yahya sinwar on thursday, saying, “this is the beginning of the day after hamas.” “evil has suffered a heavy blow, but the task before us is not yet complete,” netanyahu said in a recorded video message. netanyahu called sinwar’s killing an “important moment in the war,” telling residents of gaza that it is an “opportunity” for them to “finally break free from (hamas’) tyranny.” netanyahu warned hamas its leaders will be eliminated and called on those holding israeli hostages captive to lay down their weapons and return the hostages, saying whoever does so will be allowed to “go out and live.” he commended the “heroic soldiers” who carried out the operation and told the families of hostages still held in gaza that it is “highest commitment” that israel will continue “with all our strength until the return home of all your loved ones, who are our loved ones.” “now it is clear to everyone, in israel and in the world, why we insisted on not ending the war,” netanyahu said. watch his remarks: dna tests conducted by the israeli police have found that the body of an individual killed in an israeli operation in gaza was that of hamas leader yahya sinwar, police said thursday. “the police’s forensics department completed the dna test, which also found a match for the confirmed identification of yahya sinwar,” an israeli police spokesperson said. for months, frustrated american officials looking to end the war in gaza have mused quietly about the one scenario they believed could loosen deadlocked ceasefire talks: the death of hamas leader yahya sinwar, believed to be hiding deep underneath gaza in the group’s network of tunnels. whether that is what transpires over the coming days remains an open question. “we don’t know what this means yet,” said one us official, adding there could be “rapid” movement toward a ceasefire and hostage deal or “there could still be a long path ahead.” despite all the unknowns, the moment was viewed inside the white house and across president joe biden’s administration as a momentous one. sinwar’s killing has the potential to transform a conflict that long ago became a drag on biden’s political fortunes   and by extension vice president kamala harris’s campaign. even with sinwar’s death, there is virtually no expectation the wider middle east conflict will be resolved before election day on november 5, particularly as israel prepares to retaliate against iran’s ballistic missile attack from earlier this month. for many voters, negative views of the conflict have hardened after a year of fighting. yet any development that could allow for a lowering of the regional temperatures would be welcome, both inside the white house and at harris’ campaign headquarters. read more about the possibilities following sinwar’s death. several united states lawmakers are reacting to the news that the israeli military killed hamas leader yahya sinwar on wednesday. ﻿democratic sen. chris coons, who is a senior member of the foreign relations committee, said that in the elimination of the militant group’s leader, “justice has been done” for the october 7 attacks in israel. sinwar was one of the key architects of the attacks. “having him gone, having sinwar dead, on top of military accomplishments by israel” might reignite the stalled negotiations on a hostage deal in gaza and help move toward regional peace, coons told cnn, adding that israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu should use the moment to see if there is any window to secure the release of hostages. republican sen. lindsey graham called israel’s killing of sinwar “a mighty blow to hamas and iran,” which backs the militant group. “the ultimate revenge against iran and their terrorist proxies is to replace terrorism and hate with sustainable security, peace and prosperity for the region,” he said in a statement. republican rep. carlos gimenez expressed his support for netanyahu and said there is “only one way to deal with” people who have vowed to hurt israel “for decades.” “i’m behind israel and their efforts right now. look, a lot of these leaders have always thought that they’re immune, that they could do whatever they want and israel wouldn’t touch them. well, now they’re finding that it’s a different … it’s a different day,” he told cnn. the lawmaker also blamed hamas for civilian casualties in gaza, where tens of thousands of palestinians have been killed by israeli bombardment. cnn’s ted barrett contributed reporting to this post. the families of american hostages still being held in gaza called for their release following the death of hamas leader yahya sinwar. “it is now time for every single hostage held in gaza to be returned to their families,” they said in a joint statement released thursday. “no more delays and no more demands. whether through negotiation or by any other means, all parties must immediately seize this opportunity to bring home the 101 remaining hostages, including seven americans, before it is too late. the elimination of this brutal terrorist is a step toward justice. but true victory for israel, its allies, and for the world will only be achieved when every hostage is released and the suffering of civilians in gaza ends,” the statement adds. ruby chen, the father of us israeli hostage itay chen, who was killed on october 7 and whose body has yet to be returned, told cnn that “time is of essence.” “we are very concerned terrorists in the field will do something irrational to the hostages they are holding,” chen said. chen and other families of american hostages taken by hamas have met and spoken with top us officials like national security adviser jake sullivan and white house middle east coordinator brett mcgurk throughout the course of the conflict. some context: negotiations for a hostage release and gaza ceasefire deal have been at a standstill for almost a month, according to qatar’s prime minister, who has said there is “silence from all parties.” this post has been updated with comments from ruby chen. the israel defense forces said hamas leader yahya sinwar was killed on wednesday after a “year long pursuit.” “in recent weeks, idf and (israeli security agency) forces, under the command of the southern command, have been operating in the southern gaza strip, following idf and isa intelligence that indicated the suspected locations of senior members of hamas,” the idf said in a statement released thursday. “idf soldiers of the 828th brigade (bislach) operating in the area identified and eliminated three terrorists. after completing the process of identifying the body, it can be confirmed that yahya sinwar was eliminated,” it added. israeli forces encountered sinwar during a routine military operation, two israeli sources familiar with the matter told cnn earlier. defense secretary lloyd austin spoke with israeli minister of defense yoav gallant on thursday, a defense official told reporters traveling with austin. austin is currently in brussels for a nato defense ministerial meeting. cnn reported that a defense official said earlier in the day that austin was passed a note about hamas leader yahya sinwar’s death during an ongoing nato meeting. dental records helped israel identify the body of slain hamas leader yahya sinwar, a us official and former official familiar with the matter said, in addition to other biometrics. the dental confirmation was able to be conducted relatively quickly, the official said. the israeli government has sinwar’s biometrics because he spent more than two decades in israeli imprisonment for murder. the israel defense forces has confirmed the “elimination” of hamas leader yahya sinwar, in a statement released thursday. israel has confirmed to american officials that hamas leader yahya sinwar is dead according to initial dna testing, a person familiar with the matter said. further testing is being done. the apparent death of hamas leader yahya sinwar is expected to rise to the forefront of discussions for president joe biden and his closest european counterparts during a meeting in berlin on friday, according to two western officials involved in the planning. the agenda for the leaders of the us, germany, france, and the uk had expected to feature discussions on the path to a ceasefire in lebanon and a resolution to the humanitarian crisis in gaza. but “today’s news will overtake previous plans,” one of those officials told cnn. the leaders had also been expected to discuss how to put kyiv in the strongest position possible going into the ukraine defense contact group, a gathering of 57 countries supporting ukraine’s military efforts that meets every few months. it is not yet clear how or if at all the apparent killing of hamas leader yahar sinwar will impact ceasefire and hostage talks in gaza, multiple officials told cnn. one official in the israeli government said sinwar’s elimination would help efforts to secure a deal to release the remaining hostages in gaza. discussions will take place in the coming days about the implications of the apparent death in hostage negotiations, the official added. however, others warned the lack of a clear, immediate successor could also complicate matters and put the hostages at risk. an israeli source familiar with the matter said there were also concerns that chaos in hamas’s ranks could follow sinwar’s death. ‎there is a concern that, in the absence of clear leadership, the hostages could be killed   whether out of revenge or due to a lack of a plan on what to do with them. where things stand: hopes for a ceasefire deal and hostage release deal have been shattered repeatedly by failing negotiations. talks are currently stalled, with israel and hamas blaming each other for the impasse. the prime minister of qatar, one of the key meditators in talks, said wednesday that there had been no negotiations on a hostage and ceasefire deal for almost a month. us intelligence agencies were scrambling on thursday morning to update their assessments of who is likely to succeed hamas leader yahya sinwar, who may have been killed in an israeli operation overnight. us officials have long hoped that killing sinwar would give israel the political opening that it needed to agree to a ceasefire. but who succeeds him, sources said, could have a profound impact on whether hamas will be willing to restart meaningful negotiations with israel for a halt to the fighting and the release of hostages. current and former us officials said there are several possible successors to the shadowy sinwar, who for more than a year has been the sole voice of authority in the organization. if mohammed sinwar   yahya’s brother   assumes command, “negotiations are totally screwed,” one us official said. mohammed sinwar, according to a former official, is cut from the same hardline cloth as his brother, who the us long believed was willing to sacrifice palestinian civilians to achieve his vision. his brother, mohammed, has overseen hamas’s tunnel building network, according to a former us official. “but with much of the group exhausted, [its] preference might be for an outsider who might be more likely to deal,” this person said. in july, cnn reported, sinwar was under pressure from his own over stretched commanders to put a stop to the bloodshed. another possibility is khalil al hayya, who has been one of the lead negotiators for hamas during ceasefire talks held in doha. because of that, he is “probably who the us would want,” the former official said. al hayya took over as the principal negotiator after the july assassination of ismael haniyeh in tehran, which is widely believed to have been carried out by israel. a third option would be khaled meshaal   an obvious choice for hamas, but an unlikely one because of his past support for a sunni uprising against syrian president bashar al assad. the episode caused a rift between hamas and its patron, shia dominated iran. it also damaged meshaal’s leadership ambitions. cnn’s alex marquardt contributed to this report. israeli officials are looking at fingerprints and dental records of the body believed to be hamas leader yahya sinwar, in addition to dna testing, according to a person familiar with the matter. cnn previously reported that the israeli government had told the us it was doing dna testing to confirm sinwar’s death. the israeli government has sinwar’s biometrics because he spent more than two decades in israeli prisons for murder. israeli defense minister yoav gallant is currently holding a security briefing with members of the military stationed along israel’s border with gaza, according to his ministry. the briefing comes as the israeli military continues to investigate whether hamas leader yahya sinwar was killed during a routine military operation in gaza on thursday. in photos shared by the defense ministry, gallant can be seen alongside israel’s military chief herzi halevi talking to troops stationed along the border. us secretary of defense lloyd austin was passed a note during the ongoing nato defense ministerial meeting regarding hamas leader yahya sinwar’s potential death, according to a us official. the israelis notified department of defense officials and have passed along photos, and the pentagon is now awaiting updates from the israelis who have not yet confirmed that it was sinwar who was killed. austin is at nato headquarters in brussels, belgium. israel will “pursue and eliminate” its enemies, the country’s defense minister, yoav gallant, said in a post on social media thursday. the statement comes after the military said it was checking whether it had killed hamas leader yahya sinwar during an operation in gaza strip. gallant posted a passage from leviticus 26, writing: “you will pursue your enemies and they will fall before you by the sword.” he posted the quote alongside an image showing the late hezbollah leader hassan nasrallah, as well as the late hamas chief mohammed deif, with red crosses over their faces. the israeli military said that it killed both leaders earlier this year. “our enemies cannot hide. we will pursue and eliminate them,” gallant wrote. israeli sources have said that the military encountered and killed a man believed to be sinwar during routine military operations in the gaza strip. israeli authorities are working to identify him. hamas leader yahya sinwar is believed to have been killed after an israeli tank fired at a house in the early hours of thursday morning, israeli army radio reported. according to the radio station, which is state funded and operated by the israel defense forces, the israeli military detected “suspicious movement” on the upper floor of a building in the early hours of thursday morning, so fired at it with a tank. the israeli military later confirmed sinwar was killed on wednesday. later in the morning, israeli army radio said, a drone scanned the area of the attack, and soldiers recognized the face of sinwar in the rubble. the idf had previously detected “unusual activity” in the area, the radio station reported, so decided last week to “increase scans and not to leave.” this post has been updated with additional information from the israeli military. us officials are making no immediate statements about the potential death of hamas leader yahya sinwar and what this might mean for the future of the israel hamas war. “we don’t know what this means yet,” said a us official, there could be “rapid” movement towards a ceasefire and hostage deal or “there could still be a long path ahead.” secretary of state antony blinken had previously said that “the fate of the deal” when it comes to driving a ceasefire and hostage deal between israel and hamas was in sinwar’s hands. but us officials are not saying today that his death will result in a deal overnight. the ongoing military conflict between hezbollah and israel could also complicate any potential opportunity for bringing the sprawling conflict to an end, the official said. keep in mind: the us has been sharing intelligence with israel regularly to try and identify sinwar’s whereabouts but it’s not clear that any of that intelligence contributed to this specific operation. sinwar hasn’t been seen since the war between israel and hamas began on october 7, 2023. he also hadn’t been publicly heard from for almost a year   until mid september. “the idf is more surprised by this than we are,” the official said, noting that israelis have told them that this was not an operation that they had been carrying out specifically to target sinwar. at least 28 palestinians have been killed in an israeli airstrike on abu hussein school in northern gaza, local emergency services told cnn on thursday. dr. hussam abu safiya, the director of the kamal adwan hospital, said that 28 people had died in the strike on the school turned shelter, which is located in the jabalya refugee camp. at least 150 others were wounded, according to fares afana, the head of emergency and ambulance services in the region. afana added that ambulances have been unable to evacuate injured people from jabalya to nearby baptist hospital for 13 days. “we are also facing a shortage of specialists to treat the severe injuries,” he said. the israel defense forces said an israeli warplane had carried out a strike on a “command and control center used by hamas and islamic jihad terrorists,” claiming that it was located inside a compound that “was previously” the school in northern gaza. remember: israel launched new, widespread operations in the north of the enclave earlier this month after saying it had seen signs of hamas regrouping there, despite a year of constant bombardment and fighting on the ground. the renewed israeli campaign has displaced tens of thousands of palestinians and left scenes of carnage in northern gaza. this post has been updated. president joe biden is being updated on the potential developments relating to hamas leader yahya sinwar by us national security adviser jake sullivan aboard air force one. biden, sullivan and secretary of state anthony blinken are currently on their way to germany. the israelis have told the us they are doing the dna testing now. yahya sinwar is hamas’ leader in gaza and one of the key architects of the october 7 attacks into southern israel   making him one of the key targets of israel’s war in the palestinian enclave. the israeli military is investigating whether sinwar, who has not been seen in public for more than a year, was killed in gaza. longtime figure: sinwar was appointed the new head of hamas’ political bureau, following the assassination of his predecessor, ismail haniyeh in late july, casting him as one of the militant group’s most potent figures. he was convicted in 1988 of playing a role in the murder of two israeli soldiers and four palestinians suspected of collaboration with israel, and spent more than two decades in israeli prison. sinwar later said he had spent those years studying his enemy, including learning to speak hebrew. he has been designated a global terrorist by the us department of state since 2015, and has been sanctioned by the united kingdom and france. rise to power: sinwar joined the palestinian group in the late 1980s, and was responsible for bolstering hamas’ military wing before forming key ties with regional arab players. he was born in 1962, in a refugee camp in khan younis, southern gaza. decades earlier, his family fled al majdal, a village in historic palestine during al nakba, or “the catastrophe”   along with 700,000 palestinians who fled or were forcibly expelled from their homes following the 1948/49 war, in what is now israel. israeli forces encountered a man believed to be yahya sinwar during routine military operations in the gaza strip, two israeli sources familiar with the matter said. israeli infantry troops encountered three militants near a building in gaza and engaged them, the sources said. after the battle ended, troops found a body resembling sinwar’s and alerted senior commanders. the israeli military and intelligence services have since been working to identify whether the body is indeed sinwar’s through dna analysis, the sources said. earlier on thursday, israel’s military said it was investigating whether hamas leader yahya sinwar was killed in military operations in the gaza strip. this is a breaking news story. we will bring you more details as we get them. there were no signs of harm to any hostages in the israeli operation in gaza that may have killed hamas leader yahya sinwar, israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu has said. netanyahu’s spokesperson said that the prime minister had instructed the israeli military to tell families of hostages there were “no signs of harm to the hostages in the encounter in question.” unconfirmed pictures purported to show the dead body of hamas leader yahya sinwar are circulating widely on social media. in them, a man strongly resembling sinwar can be seen lying dead in the rubble of a destroyed building with serious injuries to the skull. cnn’s photo desk has run the images through authenticator software, which shows no signs of image manipulation. it is not possible to discern a location or timeframe of his death from the still photographs. cnn has not yet been able to confirm the identity of the man seen in the photographs. the israel defense forces said on thursday it was investigating whether the hamas leader has been killed in gaza. one of israel’s most wanted men, yahya sinwar hasn’t been seen since the war between israel and hamas began on october 7, 2023. he also hadn’t been publicly heard from for almost a year   until mid september. on september 10, he issued his first statement since the war, congratulating algerian president abdelmadjid tebboune for his election victory, according to hamas’ telegram channel. the next day, his office said he wrote letters thanking those who offered condolences after the death of ismail haniyeh, his slain predecessor. and on september 13, a letter was sent to then hezbollah chief hassan nasrallah. cnn could not verify if sinwar was indeed the author of the letters. sinwar was named political leader of hamas after haniyeh was assassinated in the iranian capital tehran in july. he is seen as more hardline than his predecessor in dealings with israel and favors cooperation and closer ties with iran and allied islamist groups such as hezbollah. us officials were mum in the immediate moments after the israel defense forces (idf) announced it was investigating whether a strike in gaza had taken out hamas leader yahya sinwar. if sinwar is in fact confirmed dead, the ramifications for the biden administration would be momentous. his potential death, perhaps more than anything else, the singular event that many us officials had pointed to as the biggest potential game changer in the israel hamas war that has now been ongoing for more than a year. with a ceasefire and hostages deal to pause the war stubbornly stuck for months, senior administration officials had hung onto hope that sinwar might one day be taken out   and that that could open up doors that simply would not be otherwise. us officials have looked at sinwar, simply put, the scalp that israel needs most to be able to declare that they are done with the gaza war. even in discussions of a so called “all for all” deal   the idea that every hostage held by hamas would be released in exchange for every palestinian prisoner that hamas wants freed   which is widely viewed as far fetched   some us officials had mused perhaps such an idea could be remotely viable if sinwar were dead. israel’s military is investigating whether hamas leader yahya sinwar was killed in military operation in the gaza strip. “during idf operations in the gaza strip, three terrorists were eliminated. the idf and isa are checking the possibility that one of the terrorists was yahya sinwar. at this stage, the identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed,” the israel defense forces said in a statement. sinwar is the most significant hamas figure still at large, and israel considers him the “mastermind” of the deadly october 7 attacks that triggered israel’s ground invasion of gaza. he has not been seen in public since the hamas attacks and is thought to have been hiding in the vast network of tunnels worming their way under gaza. this is a developing story. we will bring you more details as we get them. this post has been updated to clarify what the idf said about its military operation in the gaza strip. more than 180,000 children age 10 and younger have been vaccinated for polio in central gaza after a three day vaccination campaign from october 14 16, a spokesperson for the un’s children’s agency (unicef) told cnn on thursday. the spokesperson added that eight health facilities will continue to provide polio vaccines and vitamin a doses until tuesday for those who missed out in the first round. the campaign will continue in the south of gaza from saturday until tuesday and then in the north of the enclave from wednesday to next thursday. world health organization chief tedros adhanom ghebreyesus noted the campaign end with a post on x, saying: “the #polio campaign, with second dose vaccination, concluded in central #gaza yesterday with 181,429 children being vaccinated and 148,064 children receiving vitamin a supplements,” ghebreyesus said on thursday. the united states has said it does not want to see entire villages destroyed in lebanon after footage emerged of israeli forces apparently blowing up a historic town in the south of the country. a video released by the israeli military on wednesday shows multiple blasts near at least two dozen buildings, followed by plumes of smoke. cnn geolocated the video to the town of mhaibib in the nabatiyeh governate, roughly 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the border with israel. in a separate video, shared on social media and geolocated by cnn, the shrine of prophet benjamin   a site of religious, historic and touristic significance believed to be more than 2,000 years old   can be seen shrouded in smoke. cnn cannot verify the state of the shrine. “obviously, we do not want to see entire villages destroyed,” state department spokesperson matthew miller said, when asked about the footage on wednesday. “we don’t want to see civilian homes destroyed. we don’t want to see civilian buildings destroyed.” the israel defense forces (idf) said the video it released showed the “dismantling of [a] hezbollah terrorist tunnel network.” it also said it struck dozens of hezbollah targets in the nabatiyeh area to dismantle what it claimed was “underground infrastructure” used by the lebanese militant group’s elite radwan forces. in a later statement, the idf said it struck several towns in southern lebanon, including mhaibib. the idf declined to comment further after being contacted by cnn. the mayor of a neighboring village told the associated press that families had already left the village. this post has been updated after the idf declined comment. a “new humanitarian crisis is unfolding in syria,” the norwegian refugee council warned thursday, as the israel hezbollah war forces tens of thousands of people to flee lebanon, many to its war torn neighbor. “we are now looking at the third humanitarian crisis emerging in the region in just 12 months, amid a backdrop of numerous ongoing challenges,” said angelita caredda, the ngo’s regional director for middle east and north africa. more than 276,000 lebanese and syrians living in lebanon have fled to syria, the nrc said, including children who have been sent on their own. many refugees who once left syria seeking safety have now been forced to return home, where an existing humanitarian crisis is likely to escalate. prior to the war in lebanon, poverty and suffering were rampant in syria, a country roiled by civil war since 2011. more than 90% of the population was living below the poverty line, according to the un. three in every four people in syria needed life saving aid in may 2024   the highest number since the civil war began, the head of the un said. “syria is already on its knees after 13 years of conflict. the mass displacement from lebanon comes at a time when the aid response already cannot keep pace with existing needs,” said caredda. “thousands of families crossing into syria will struggle to find a safe place to stay or the basics their children need. this is a crisis within multiple crises.” the us has carried out a round of strikes against the houthis in yemen, targeting five underground weapons storage facilities using b 2 stealth bombers. here’s what you need to know about the attack: who are the houthis and why is the us attacking them? the houthis are part of an iran backed alliance of militant groups in the middle east. the alliance, which spans yemen, syria, gaza and iraq, has been attacking israel since the israel hamas war began. the houthis say they won’t stop striking israel and its allies until a ceasefire is reached in the palestinian enclave. while they do not pose as much of a threat to israel and the us as other iranian proxies, such as hamas and hezbollah, the houthis have for months targeted ships in the red sea, one of the world’s busiest waterways, in response to the war in gaza. austin said he authorized the us strikes at the direction of president joe biden to “further degrade” the houthis’ abilities after more than a year of attacks by the houthis on us and international vessels in the region. the facilities were holding “various weapons components” used to target vessels in the middle east, the defense secretary said. why did the us use b 2 bombers? thursday’s attack was the first time the us used the b 2 stealth bomber to attack the houthis in yemen since the beginning of the war in gaza. the b 2 is a much larger platform than the fighter jets that have been used so far to target houthi facilities and weapons, capable of carrying a far heavier load of bombs. austin said us forces used the b 2 bomber to show the us can target facilities that “our adversaries seek to keep out of reach, no matter how deeply buried underground, hardened, or fortified.” how have the houthis responded? a houthi spokesperson said “america will pay the price for its aggression on yemen, and as we have said before, its aggression will not deter yemen from its stance in support of gaza.” israel’s defense minister has called france’s ban on israeli firms holding displays at an upcoming naval show “a disgrace to the french nation,” as the diplomatic divide between the two countries deepens. barring the country’s companies from having a stand at the euronaval expo in paris “aids israel’s enemies during war,” yoav gallant said wednesday. french president emmanuel macron has called for the complete suspension of the sale of arms used in israel’s war in gaza, while pushing for a ceasefire in the enclave as well as in lebanon. israel has said it opposes the ceasefire proposal. the french government told organizers that israeli delegations could attend “without any stand or exhibition of equipment,” ﻿euronaval said, noting that seven israeli companies were affected by the decision. israeli companies and citizens who wish to attend the show, which will be held in paris between november 4 and 7, are welcome, according to a statement on euronaval’s website, “france has adopted, and is consistently implementing a hostile policy towards the jewish people. we will continue defending our nation against enemies on 7 different fronts, and fighting for our future   with or without france,” gallant said in a social media post. some context: this is not the first time france has banned israeli companies from displaying at an arms fair. france banned israeli companies from participating in the eurosatory weapons exhibition in june, due to israel’s incursion in the southern gazan city of rafah. later this month, france is set to hold an international meeting to rally support for the lebanese people and strengthen the country’s security situation. the united states’ use of one of its most important and costly weapon systems, the b 2 stealth bomber, against houthi underground munitions facilities in yemen sends a wider message that will be heard in tehran amid iran’s confrontation with us ally israel. sending its rare $2 billion b 2 bombers   the us air force has only 19 of them   to hit a group that has nothing near that level of sophisticated military hardware seems at first glance like overkill. washington has been content to use run of the line weapons fired from aircraft and warships in the region to strike houthi targets over the past year while suffering minimal if any damage to its platforms. but us defense secretary lloyd austin’s words in announcing the strike were telling: “this was a unique demonstration of the united states’ ability to target facilities that our adversaries seek to keep out of reach, no matter how deeply buried underground, hardened, or fortified.” he also said washington will “not hesitate to take action … to deter attacks against civilians and our regional partners.” those words point to iran in two ways. much of tehran’s nuclear and military command facilities are thought to be in hardened, underground facilities. and there is no more important us “regional partner” in the middle east than israel. as the world awaits israel’s retaliation for iran’s october 1 ballistic missile strikes, washington is sending a signal to tehran it will only tolerate limited further action against israel. the last reported combat mission by a b 2 bomber was in january 2017. it would be hard to believe the us waited more than seven years   and a year into the confrontation with the houthis   to send a costly message to the group alone. yemen’s houthis have vowed that the united states will “pay the price” after washington launched airstrikes against the iran backed group targeting five underground weapons storage facilities using b 2 stealth bombers. “america will pay the price for its aggression on yemen, and as we have said before, its aggression will not deter yemen from its stance in support of gaza,” nasruddin amer, the deputy head of the media office for the houthis, said on x. the houthis have for months targeted ships in the red sea, one of the world’s busiest waterways, which they have said are in response to israel’s war in gaza. hamas, hezbollah and the houthis are all part of an iran led alliance spanning yemen, syria, gaza and iraq that has attacked israel and its allies since the war began. they say they won’t stop striking israel and its allies until a ceasefire is reached in the palestinian enclave. the strikes on yemen come at a time of great tension across the region. israel is expected to retaliate for iran’s recent missile barrage before the november 5 us election, and its conflicts with hezbollah in lebanon and hamas in gaza are deepening. the us carried out a round of strikes in yemen against the iran backed houthis on thursday morning, targeting five underground weapons storage facilities using b 2 stealth bombers. austin said he authorized the strikes at the direction of president joe biden to “further degrade” the houthis’ ability after more than a year of the iran backed group’s attacks on us and international vessels in the region. the attacks come as hostilities continue to escalate in the region, with israel’s retaliation against iran’s recent missile attack now expected before the november 5 us election and its wars in lebanon and gaza ramping up. here are the latest developments in the region: © 2025 cable news network. a warner bros. discovery company. all rights reserved. cnn sans ™ & © 2016 cable news network.

middle east tensions mr. sinwar had also been hit in the arm during a firefight earlier with israeli soldiers, according to the israeli doctor who oversaw the autopsy. hamas confirmed its leader’s death but said his “banner will not fall.” transcript “we are kind of, let’s say, happy to see some kind of justice, to see that sinwar is dead now. but as i said, what’s most important is that we want to see all the hostages coming back.” “the leader is gone now. but this does not solve the problem. the problem now is that all the hostages that hamas have in gaza, and it depends now on the israeli government.” “i hope it’s going to bring peace as soon as possible. and quiet, and not a war. the war should stop, and i hope it’s going to be positive stage for the state of israel.” liam stackjim tankersley and aaron boxerman the leader of hamas, yahya sinwar, was killed by a gunshot wound to the head, according to the director of israel’s national forensic institute, dr. chen kugel, who oversaw the autopsy and described its findings in an interview with the new york times on friday. he said that shrapnel, possibly from either a small missile or tank shell, had earlier hit mr. sinwar’s arm, causing bleeding that he was trying to stanch by using an electrical cord as an impromptu tourniquet. “but it wouldn’t have worked in any case,” mr. kugel said. “it wasn’t strong enough, and his forearm was smashed.” several points remained unclear, including who fired the shot, when and with what weapon. hamas confirmed the killing of mr. sinwar in a televised eulogy on friday by his longtime deputy, khalil al hayya, who said the loss had changed nothing for the armed group or its war with israel. the remarks by mr. al hayya stood in contrast to the optimism expressed a short time earlier by president biden, who said mr. sinwar’s death presented “an opportunity to seek a path to peace” in the yearlong war in gaza. “we are continuing hamas’s path,” mr. al hayya, who lives in exile in qatar, said in the group’s first official comments about mr. sinwar’s killing by israeli forces, adding that the slain leader’s “banner will not fall.” speaking to reporters in berlin on friday, mr. biden called mr. sinwar’s death “a moment of justice” and a chance at “a better future in gaza without hamas.” he plans to send secretary of state antony j. blinken to israel in the coming days to discuss securing gaza and postwar planning, an effort to jump start cease fire talks that have been stalled for months. the president spoke with prime minister benjamin netanyahu of israel, whose office said that both leaders had agreed there was an “opportunity to advance the release of the hostages” captured in last year’s hamas led attacks in israel as part of a cease fire deal. dozens of hostages are still being held by hamas and its allies in gaza. mr. sinwar orchestrated the hamas assault on oct. 7, 2023, that killed up to 1,200 people, captured some 250 hostages and prompted an israeli retaliation that has killed tens of thousands of palestinians and left much of the gaza strip in ruin. he was considered the driving force behind hamas’s refusal to surrender, and his survival made it impossible for israel to declare victory. but after mr. sinwar’s killing, mr. netanyahu made it clear that he would continue to direct the israeli military to pursue hamas. “this is not the end of the war in gaza,” he said in a video address. “it is the beginning of the end.” here’s what else to know: relief in gaza: many war weary palestinians in gaza reacted to mr. sinwar’s death with relief on thursday. some in khan younis, his hometown, expressed hope that the war might soon end, while others blamed him for starting the conflict by organizing the oct. 7, 2023, attacks on israel. unlikely find: for over a year, israel’s security establishment, backed by the united states, dedicated vast resources to its hunt for mr. sinwar, who was thought to be hiding in hamas’s tunnel network under gaza. ultimately, a unit of trainee squad commanders unexpectedly encountered mr. sinwar above ground while on an operation in southern gaza. netanyahu weighs push: mr. netanyahu, directing remarks on thursday toward palestinians in gaza, said that the war could end “tomorrow,” if hamas laid down its arms and returned the hostages. hamas has survived the deaths of many previous leaders, and mr. netanyahu must still weigh a renewed push for a hostage deal against the priorities of his allies in government who want him to continue the war hamas’s next steps: mr. sinwar’s killing was a powerful blow to a violent organization that had already seen several senior leaders killed since the war in gaza began. though few experts expect hamas to collapse, they said his elimination could cause a leadership vacuum and more chaos in its ranks. it remained unclear when hamas would announce a successor. hostage families react: for the families and supporters of the hostages remaining in gaza, the killing of mr. sinwar, their chief captor, brought both a moment of satisfaction and deep trepidation over the fate of the captives. eve sampson the death of the hamas leader yahya sinwar was confirmed thursday by the israeli authorities, but questions remain about the location of his body and what may happen to it in the future. mr. sinwar was killed by a gunshot wound to the head in southern gaza during a firefight, dr. chen kugel, the director of israel’s national forensic institute, said in an interview with the new york times on friday. dr. kugel oversaw the autopsy and, after it was complete, mr. sinwar’s body was handed over to the israeli military, he said. he did not know where it was being kept. israel often holds the corpses of palestinians, hoping to use them in a future exchange with hamas or other militant groups, just as hamas has done with the bodies of hostages killed on or after the hamas led attack in israel. it remains to be seen whether mr. sinwar’s body will be held, released back to hamas or otherwise interred. the israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. when asked about an exchange, experts said it was unlikely that israeli officials would create a situation where his body would be laid to rest in a place that could become a shrine. “what i would imagine would happen is there will be a secret dignified burial in an undisclosed place,” said jon b. alterman, the director of the middle east program at the center for strategic and international studies in washington, adding, “when bin laden was killed, he received a dignified muslim funeral.” when osama bin laden, the mastermind of the sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was killed in 2011 by u.s. forces, he was quickly buried at sea. that was probably done to avoid the possibility of a shrine, in accordance with muslim tradition, which requires burial within 24 hours of death. dr. kugel estimated that mr. sinwar’s autopsy took place between 24 to 36 hours after his death, but he could not specify an exact time. mr. alterman said that israeli officials probably have robust protocols in place to deal with the deaths of militants. “there will be a huge israeli effort to make sure there is nothing left to be an object of veneration,” he said. the burial site will probably be in israel, he said, and israelis will want to avoid a situation where his supporters could try to claim he was buried in palestinian territories as a martyr. when hamas’s leader, ismail haniyeh, was assassinated in iran in late july, israelis did not have custody of his body. mr. haniyeh was buried in qatar’s capital city, doha, where hundreds of mourners reportedly lined the streets as his coffin, draped in a palestinian flag, passed through the streets. aaron boxerman contributed reporting. oct. 16 building where hamas leader was killed gaza city gaza strip khan younis israeli vehicles rafah location of imagery n oct. 16 building where hamas leader was killed israeli vehicles gaza city gaza strip khan younis rafah location of imagery source: satellite image by planet labs by the new york times aric tolerriley mellen and ronen bergman a roll of mentos. nail clippers. an expired passport. an israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, shared photos of items said to have been found near the bodies of the hamas leader, yahya sinwar, and two other militants killed in a firefight in southern gaza with israel soldiers on wednesday. the items range from the ordinary, including religious materials, to the operational, including firearms and a map. a number of identification documents were also found, including those of mahmoud hamdan, a hamas leader the israeli military claimed to have killed in september. the israeli military said on friday that this claim was inaccurate, and mr. hamdan was actually killed on friday in rafah, near where mr. sinwar was located. the documents also include an expired passport for a man whose occupation was listed as “unrwa teacher,” referring to the united nations agency that supports palestinian refugees. according to the leader of unrwa, philippe lazzarini, the man left gaza for egypt earlier this year. it was unclear why the identification documents would be near the bodies of mr. sinwar and the other hamas militants. the times identified the locations written on a hand drawn map that the official said was found near mr. sinwar. the map shows numerous locations in the tel al sultan neighborhood of northern rafah, the same area where mr. sinwar was killed. the house where mr. sinwar was killed is not included on the map. neil collier contributed reporting. ephrat livni violence in the israeli occupied west bank that has spiked during the war in gaza is raising new alarms about an annual agricultural rite crucial to many palestinians’ livelihoods: the olive harvest. jens laerke, the spokesman for the united nations agency for humanitarian coordination, known as ocha, said in a briefing in geneva on friday that the annual harvest was becoming more perilous, noting that a woman working a grove near the city of jenin, in the territory’s north, had been killed a day earlier. “the olive harvest is an economic lifeline for tens of thousands of palestinian families in the west bank,” mr. laerke said, warning that israeli settlers were increasingly endangering palestinian farmers, land and production and that “israeli forces have been using lethal warlike tactics” in the territory. he said that the israeli military, as the occupying power, had a legal obligation to protect palestinians in the territory but had at times been complicit in the increased violence. the palestinian ministry of health said on thursday that the woman, hanan abd rahman abu salameh, 59, was shot by israeli military fire. the israeli newspaper haaretz reported that her family said she had been working in a grove about 200 yards from the israeli built separation barrier when a man in a military uniform shot her in the back. in response to a query about the death, the israeli military said in a statement on sunday that the military advocate general was investigating and that once the investigation was concluded its “finding will be submitted for review.” it added that “the commander of the force present during the incident had been suspended from duty” pending the probe. there have been at least 32 settler attacks in the west bank since the start of october that have led to casualties, property damage or both, mr. laerke said. most of those were related to the olive harvest, according to ocha’s latest weekly update on the west bank on thursday. “israeli settlers attacked palestinians or prevented them from gaining access to their lands and damaged trees, stole crops and harvesting tools,” the report said, adding that about 600 trees and saplings were raided or vandalized, affecting farmers in about 15 communities. the agency’s warnings followed on the heels of other, similar alarms. the u.n.’s high commission on human rights, in a statement on wednesday, called it “the most dangerous olive season ever” for palestinian farmers, citing agency experts and recalling that last year’s harvest had been “marred by a sharp increase in movement restrictions and violence by israeli forces and settlers.” the u.n. has recorded more than 1,400 attacks by israeli settlers against palestinian communities since the war in the other palestinian territory, gaza, began last october after the hamas led terrorist attacks on southern israel, and israeli forces have conducted raids and strikes in the west bank against what they identify as terrorists. the british foreign secretary, david lammy, alluded to the issue in a statement on tuesday announcing the imposition of financial sanctions on settlers and groups identified as supporting violence against palestinians in the west bank. mr. lammy expressed concern that the rising settler violence could worsen during the harvest, which he said had “traditionally suffered spikes in violence as organized settler groups disrupt and attack palestinians.” and a dozen diplomatic missions in jerusalem and ramallah   including those from canada, france, germany and the european union   released a joint statement on monday that called on israel to “ensure a successful olive harvest” and fulfill its obligation to protect palestinians in the west bank. “it is the responsibility of israeli security forces to actively prevent israeli settlers from entering palestinian olive groves to disrupt the harvest,” the statement said. more than 2.7 million palestinians live in the west bank, alongside about 500,000 jewish settlers. israel seized control of the territory from jordan in 1967 during a war with three arab states. israeli jews have moved in since in increasing numbers, residing there with both tacit and explicit government approval. the far right government of the israeli prime minister, benjamin netanyahu, has expanded israeli settlements in the west bank, despite international declarations that they are illegal. some government ministers   including the national security minister, itamar ben gvir, and the finance minister, bezalel smotrich   have been explicit about implementing policies to speed up israeli settlement in the territory to thwart the creation of a palestinian state, emboldening extreme elements of the settler movement and increasingly blurring the line between the state and the settlers’ actions. euan ward reporting from beirut lebanon’s caretaker prime minister accused iran on friday of meddling in the country’s affairs, opening up a rare diplomatic spat after iran’s parliament speaker remarked that his country was ready to help negotiate terms to bring about a cease fire between israel and hezbollah. the reported remarks amounted to “a blatant interference in lebanese affairs,” said the prime minister, najib mikati, who later summoned tehran’s envoy to answer for them   a highly unusual rebuke by a top lebanese official given the stranglehold that iran backed hezbollah has on the country. in an interview published by france’s le figaro newspaper a day earlier, the iranian parliament speaker, mohammad baqer ghalibaf, was quoted as saying that his government was ready to negotiate with france on the implementation of security council resolution 1701, a u.n. agreement that ended the last war between hezbollah and israel in 2006 and is seen as a precondition for a cease fire in lebanon. “the issue of negotiating to implement international resolution 1701 is being undertaken by the lebanese state,” mr. mikati said in response, referring to the u.n. agreement. “everyone is required to support it in this direction, not to seek to impose new mandates.” the 2006 agreement called for a withdrawal of israeli forces from lebanon and said that only the lebanese army and u.n. peacekeepers could operate militarily in southern lebanon. it has widely been considered ineffective but has come into focus again during the current conflict. since the hamas led attack into israel last year, israel has been exchanging cross border fire with hezbollah, a lebanese militant group and political party. the conflict has escalated sharply in recent weeks, leading israel to invade southern lebanon in a bid to destroy the group’s border infrastructure. although mr. ghalibaf’s chief adviser, mahdi mohammadi, later denied the remarks, it was too late to defuse the diplomatic tensions and tehran’s envoy in beirut was summoned to offer clarification. lebanese officials stressed during the meeting that the country needed to preserve its sovereignty as it pursued a diplomatic solution to the conflict, according to a statement by lebanon’s foreign ministry. mr. mikati has repeatedly affirmed his government’s commitment to the full implementation of the u.n. agreement in an attempt to bring an end to the violence in lebanon that has killed thousands and displaced over one million. however, lebanon’s crisis racked caretaker government is deemed largely powerless to rein in hezbollah. aric tolerlauren leatherby and riley mellen it was a pivotal moment of the war in gaza and, in a surreal twist of modern warfare, israel said it was filmed by a drone. hunched in an armchair, his face masked by a kaffiyeh and his body covered in dust, is a man who israel says is yahya sinwar, the leader of hamas. his right arm is gravely injured and bleeding. his fate is all but sealed. the man, nearly motionless, watches as he is filmed, apparently recognizing the hovering israeli drone for what it is. in his left hand he lifts a long object, possibly a stick, and puts it back down. then, after staring at the drone for at least 20 seconds, he defiantly throws the object at it. the video ends a few seconds later. the israeli military, which released the video, said it shows the last moments of mr. sinwar, an architect of the oct. 7 attacks, before he was killed in rafah on wednesday. while the room, the man’s clothing and the arm injury broadly match other visual evidence of mr. sinwar’s death, the times could not independently verify his identity in the video. in modern warfare, militaries use drones to scope out enemy positions, and often release propaganda videos showing enemy soldiers being killed. on the battlefields in ukraine, both sides in that conflict have released a steady stream of drone footage showing panicked soldiers moments before their deaths. but here the drone footage shows a solitary figure remarkably close up. in a war often seen from far away, in large explosions or wide vistas of broken buildings, the moment is remarkably personal. there are many unknown details about the video, which was heavily edited before it was released. it does not show how the man’s arm was injured, nor does it show the moment of his death. at the beginning of the clip, the drone enters a residential building in the tel al sultan neighborhood of rafah, in southern gaza, through a second story window. photos of the building taken later show more damage, indicating that an explosion occurred at some point after the drone footage was taken. in another video released by the israeli military, two tanks are positioned nearby, one of which fires on the building. mr. sinwar was killed soon after the drone footage was recorded. a sniper shot him in the head, and then a tank shell flattened much of the building, the military said. reporting was contributed by christiaan triebert. christiaan triebert and euan ward the israeli military destroyed most of a village in southern lebanon this week with a series of explosions, according to videos verified by the new york times and satellite images. about two dozen buildings were demolished in the village, which the times identified as mhaibib, just over a mile from israel’s northern border. in a video taken from a distance, which circulated widely online, soldiers who appear to be wearing israeli uniforms react with exclamations in hebrew as they watch buildings explode simultaneously. it was not possible to determine the source of that footage. but the times confirmed that it depicted the same demolition shown in another video, published by an israeli radio station, in which israeli soldiers give thumbs up signs as they watch the destruction of the buildings on a drone controller screen. in a series of posts on social media, the israeli military said that its soldiers had “dismantled” a tunnel network used by hezbollah’s elite radwan force on wednesday, saying that it ran through “the heart of a village.” accompanying the statement was aerial footage that showed several explosions and smoke rising from the village. the statement did not name the location, but the times geolocated the video to mhaibib. hezbollah has made no public comment on the israeli assertion, and the israeli military, asked about the village on friday, said that it was “checking.” satellite imagery of the village captured before and after the detonations show that only a couple of buildings are left standing after the israeli operation, which the military’s statement said had been carried out by the 91st division. one of structures that appears to still be standing is an ancient shrine that has attracted pilgrims from around the region. it is dedicated to benjamin, a son of jacob, whom islam regards as a prophet. it was not possible to determine from the images whether the shrine had been damaged. oct. 13 oct. 16 oct. 13 oct. 16 source: satellite imagery by planet labs by the new york times mhaibib, which sits atop a hillside overlooking the israeli border, was the scene of heavy fighting in 2006, during a monthlong war between israel and hezbollah. over the last year, it has been hit repeatedly by strikes as the israeli military battles cross border fire from hezbollah, which began just after its fellow iranian backed militant group hamas led the devastating oct. 7 attacks. israel began a ground invasion of lebanon almost three weeks ago. the israeli military campaign against hezbollah has killed more than 2,400 people in lebanon since last year, most of them in its recently intensified operations, including a ground invasion that began less than three weeks ago. in that time, israel has flattened several other villages. it was unclear whether there were any injuries or deaths in mhaibib; many southern lebanese border villages were already largely emptied of residents when hostilities flared last year. the village chief, qassem ahmed jaber, was quoted by anadolu, turkey’s state run news agency, as saying that the residents had already fled. he could not be reached for comment by the times. matthew miller, a state department spokesman, said at a news briefing on wednesday that he had seen the video and that u.s. officials had been in contact with the israeli government but that he did not have any details. “we understand that hezbollah does operate at times from underneath civilian homes, inside civilian homes,” mr. miller said. “so israel does have a right to go after those legitimate targets, but they need to do so in a way that protects civilian infrastructure, protects civilians.” riley mellen, aric toler, ephrat livni and sanjana varghese contributed reporting. nick cumming bruce reporting from geneva u.n. peacekeepers in lebanon have experienced a series of deliberate attacks by the israeli military in recent days, but the peacekeeping force will maintain its positions along the border despite israeli pressure to withdraw, according to a spokesman for the force, known as unifil. the unifil spokesman, andrea tenenti, told reporters by video link from beirut on friday that the israeli military had “repeatedly targeted our positions, endangering the safety of our troops.” he added that hezbollah was also endangering the peacekeeping troops by launching rockets near their positions into israel. unifil has 10,000 troops from 50 countries occupying 29 positions close to the border between israel and lebanon, where they monitor the conflict and try to coordinate deliveries of humanitarian aid to the civilians remaining in southern lebanon. israel has accused the u.n. peacekeepers of acting as a shield for hezbollah and demanded that they pull out. but all the countries contributing troops to the force and the u.n. security council decided unanimously that the force should remain in all positions, according to mr. tenenti. “i think the role of unifil at the moment is more important than ever,” he said. mr. teneti also said that unifil had found “a trace of a possible use” of white phosphorus close to a peacekeeper position, but lacked capacity to investigate reports of wider use in israel’s bombardment of southern lebanon. the material can inflict serious burns and munitions using it are banned by international conventions from use against targets close to civilian population. a unifil commander accused israel last year of directly hitting a peacekeeping position with white phosphorus munitions. peacekeepers have come “under deliberate attack” five times as israeli forces pursue their assault on hezbollah in southern lebanon, mr. tenenti said. among the incidents reported since oct. 10, an israeli tank opened fire on a unifil observation tower that mr. tenenti said was occupied by serbian peacekeepers on wednesday, damaging the tower and destroying two cameras. in other cases in the past week, two israeli tanks forced their way into a unifil site, staying for 45 minutes, and two peacekeepers were injured six days ago when an israeli tank fired at an observation tower at unifil’s headquarters in naqoura, on lebanon’s southernmost mediterranean coast. israel has denied targeting the u.n. peacekeepers. mr. tenenti insisted otherwise. “what happened is clear deliberate targeting of peacekeepers because there was no one else around,” he said, adding that no other exchanges of fire were underway at the time. aaron boxerman and ronen bergman reporting from jerusalem and tel aviv the fatal blow to the hamas leader, yahya sinwar, was a gunshot wound to the head, the israeli autopsy of his body found. he was earlier hit in the arm during a firefight with israeli soldiers. on a routine operation, a unit of commanders in training encountered a group of militants on the streets of rafah in southern gaza. they didn’t know at the time that the group included mr. sinwar. two militants fled into one building, while a third, who would later turn out to be mr. sinwar, entered another, triggering an hourslong firefight, according to the israeli military. during the encounter, shrapnel, possibly from either a small missile or tank shell hit mr. sinwar on his right arm and wounded him, the director of israel’s national forensic institute, dr. chen kugel, who oversaw the autopsy and described its findings in an interview with the new york times on friday. at some point, mr. sinwar tied an electric cable around his wounded arm, in what appears to be a makeshift tourniquet to stanch the bleeding, dr. kugel added. “but it wouldn’t have worked in any case,” he said. “it wasn’t strong enough, and his forearm was smashed.” an israeli drone that was flown into the building where mr. sinwar had fled captured what the israeli military said were the “moments before his elimination.” the video, edited and released by the military, shows a man sitting in a chair, covered in dust. the man, identified as mr. sinwar by the military, watches the drone for at least 20 seconds before throwing what appears to be a stick in its direction. the times could not independently verify the identity of the man. elements of the video match those of other photographs obtained by the times showing the corpse of mr. sinwar. mr. sinwar was later shot in the head, killing him, dr. kugel said. other points remain unclear, including when the fatal shot was fired, what weapon was used and who fired it. the following morning, his body was found in the rubble of the building, which had partially collapsed following shelling, according to israeli officials. soldiers at the site realized the militant bore a striking resemblance to mr. sinwar. the soldiers cut off one of his fingers so that health officials could establish his identity, dr. kugel said. the body arrived at the national forensic institute on thursday night for the autopsy. the institute director said that mr. sinwar was relatively pale, which would make sense for someone who had spent long stretches of time in hamas’s underground tunnel network, as is believed. he was at a healthy weight   over 150 pounds   and showed no signs of malnutrition, dr. kugel added. for dr. kugel, the autopsy was the closing of a painful circle that began during last year’s hamas attack on southern israel, in which 1,200 people were killed. in its wake, an endless tide of victims flooded into israel’s forensic institute. now mr. sinwar, the architect of the attack, lay on his table. dr. kugel performed his work as he had done many times before. “it was only when i stepped outside that i internalized that this was the man responsible for more murder than anyone in the history of the country,” he said. after the autopsy was complete, the body was handed over to the israeli military, dr. kugel said. israel holds the corpses of hundreds of palestinians that it hopes to one day use for a future exchange with hamas and other armed groups. aric toler, riley mellen and christiaan triebert contributed reporting. adam sella dr. yuval bitton, the israeli dentist who helped save yahya sinwar’s life while the hamas leader was in prison two decades ago, was preparing to celebrate the jewish holiday of sukkot when he began to hear reports that mr. sinwar had been killed. dr. bitton said he was surprised to hear the news about mr. sinwar, who had evaded israeli forces despite being the subject of an intense israeli manhunt, but the situation quickly came into focus. after a former colleague shared a photograph that later circulated online and that appeared to show the body of a man with facial features strongly resembling mr. sinwar, dr. bitton said he realized that it was the man he had spent years talking to, treating and analyzing. “i spent so many years looking at his face that i didn’t need any form of identification,” he said. “i immediately recognized him.” since the two got to know each other in an israeli prison in the early 2000s, their lives have been closely intertwined. now that the hamas leader is dead, dr. bitton expressed hope that a more peaceful future would descend on the middle east   and that he would finally lose the moniker of the israeli who saved mr. sinwar. in 2004, dr. bitton, then a young prison dentist, came across a befuddled mr. sinwar in the infirmary. after a short exchange, dr. bitton realized that mr. sinwar’s life was at risk and that he needed to be taken to a hospital immediately. at the hospital, surgeons removed an aggressive brain tumor, and mr. sinwar thanked dr. bitton for saving his life. the two developed a unique relationship of sorts. as a dentist and later as a senior intelligence officer for the israeli prison service, dr. bitton spent hours talking to mr. sinwar, up until the moment that mr. sinwar boarded a bus back to gaza during a prisoner exchange in 2011. “the conversations with sinwar were not personal or emotional,” dr. bitton said. “they were only about hamas.” but the hamas led attack on israel in october 2023, which prompted israel to go to war in gaza, did affect him personally: dr. bitton’s nephew tamir adar was taken hostage during the assault, he said. the israeli government later told the family that intelligence suggested that mr. adar was injured in the attacks and had apparently died not long after being taken to gaza. dr. bitton did not take joy in the hamas leader’s death. “in the torah there’s a proverb, ‘don’t rejoice when your enemy falls,’” he said. but he did express optimism that the killing of mr. sinwar would help precipitate a deal to bring home the remaining hostages in gaza and end the war there. “this is what is known as a game changer,” he said. dr. bitton also said he hoped that mr. sinwar’s death would end a chapter in his own life. “i’m asked every day if i have regrets,” dr. bitton said, referring to his role in saving mr. sinwar’s life. “i couldn’t have acted any differently,” he added. “now, i think that both the public and the media will no longer have this association that he’s alive because of me,” dr. bitton said. “that’s it. he’s no longer alive.” aaron boxerman yahya sinwar was killed by a gunshot to the head, said chen kugel, the chief of israel’s forensic institute, who conducted the autopsy. sinwar was relatively pale, he added, which would make sense for someone who is believed to have spent much of his time underground. but he had a healthy weight of over 150 pounds and showed little sign of poor nutrition, kugel said. aaron boxerman israeli soldiers initially brought one of sinwar’s fingers to begin forensic analysis to establish his identity before his body was brought to israel on thursday evening, kugel said. the hamas leader was also wounded in his arm during the battle that led to his death, kugel added. farnaz fassihi iranian officials are commenting on sinwar’s killing following hamas’s confirmation of his death. president masoud pezeshkian of iran said in a statement that sinwar had fought and died “like a hero” but that “the martyrdom of commanders, leaders and heroes will not make a dent in the islamic people’s fight against oppression and occupation.” farnaz fassihi iran’s foreign minister, abbas araghchi, said, “martyrs live forever, and the cause for the liberation of palestine from occupation is more alive than ever.” michael d. shear john kirby, the white house’s national security spokesman, said the u.s. believes yahya sinwar had been the chief obstacle to a gaza cease fire. “now he’s gone, so we’ll see," kirby told reporters in berlin. "i mean, hamas obviously will make their own decisions about what their structure is going to look like and if and who might replace mr. sinwar. but yes, his death does provide a unique opportunity here.” michael d. shear kirby added, however, that he was not aware of any communication with other hamas officials over the past day that would indicate a softening of the hard line the group took under sinwar. bilal shbair and liam stack reporting from khan younis, in the gaza strip, and from tel aviv as news of yahya sinwar’s death spread through the gaza strip on thursday night, war weary palestinians there expressed one emotion again and again: relief. “the first moment i heard his death, i felt relieved that finally we will have a truce or cease fire on the ground,” said shorouq abu hammad, 22, as she was out shopping in khan younis, mr. sinwar’s hometown. many of her neighbors felt the same way, she said, about the death of a man who “caused all this tragedy for the gazan people.” mr. sinwar, the leader of hamas and the top target of israel’s military, was killed in a firefight with israeli soldiers in the southern gaza strip on wednesday, israeli officials said. he rose through hamas’s ranks after it seized power in gaza in 2007 and helped it to establish authoritarian rule. and he was a key architect of hamas’s attack on israel last october, which left up to 1,200 dead and set off israel’s yearlong air campaign and ground invasion of gaza that has killed more than 42,000 palestinians, according to local health officials, and destroyed the territory’s infrastructure. ms. abu hammad has lost one brother since the war began, she said. another had his legs amputated because of injuries suffered in israeli attacks, and she had been injured, too, she said. “i hope his death will put an end to this war soon,” ms. abu hammad said of the hamas leader. “sinwar is the one who planned all of this, and now it is a normal outcome that he be killed.” at a makeshift roadside coffee shop near where ms. abu hammad was shopping, several people shared her hopes. before the war, khaled abu jarad, 59, worked as a taxi driver in gaza city. he now lives in a makeshift camp outside a gas station in khan younis, displaced from his home like most of gaza’s 2.2 million people. he said he thought only dyed in the wool hamas supporters would mourn mr. sinwar, whose brutality to his fellow palestinians suspected of spying for israel earned him the nickname “the butcher of khan younis.” mr. abu jarad expressed hope that the death of mr. sinwar   who was widely seen as an obstacle in cease fire talks   would lead to a compromise between israel and hamas that could end the fighting and allow people to return to their homes. “it would be insane and bizarre to keep killing all of gaza in this war,” he said. saher abdul ghafour, 19, agreed, saying that the war must end “at any cost.” “i hope the next leader of hamas can be a more diplomatic and wise person who can stop this war through negotiations and political channels,” he said. others in the coffee shop were less optimistic. ahmed awad, 21, whose university studies in design were interrupted by the war, said he had “lost hope” that it would end. but he, too, said he felt “a kind of relief” when he heard mr. sinwar had been killed. “sinwar’s death may make some supporters of his sad and angry, but the majority of other people won’t feel that way because they lost everything,” mr. awad said. “he is gone now, and we will see what he has left behind.”

announcement comes after former hamas political chief ismail haniyeh killed in bombing attack last week hamas has named yahya sinwar as the new head of its political bureau, elevating the hardline militant to the group’s top post after the assassination in tehran of its previous political leader. sinwar’s appointment was announced in a brief statement by hamas on tuesday that was aired on pro hamas iranian state media channels. sinwar, the hamas military leader who is seen as the mastermind behind the 7 october attack against israel, is believed to be hiding in the series of tunnels underneath gaza. he is the group’s chief decision maker in gaza, and is believed to hold control over the estimated 120 israeli hostages who are still in hamas’s custody. sinwar succeeds ismail haniyeh, the former hamas political chief who was killed in a bombing attack last week that hamas and iranian officials blamed on israel. the assassination came during the inauguration of iran’s new president and has further stirred fears of a larger regional war involving iran, which backs hezbollah in lebanon and hamas in gaza. iran has promised to retaliate against israel for the attack on its soil. haniyeh was another key figure in the talks between israel and hamas over a ceasefire, and was seen as an intermediary between israel and sinwar. haniyeh had little direct control over hamas militants in the gaza strip and was seen as a relative moderate, directing hamas’s delegations in talks mediated by egypt, qatar and the us aimed at a ceasefire and hostage and prisoner release deal. sinwar is a founding member of hamas and is seen as the group’s most powerful figure. a former head of the group’s intelligence service, sinwar spent 23 years in israeli prisons as he served four life sentences for attempted murder and sabotage. a former interrogator called him “1,000% committed and 1,000% violent, a very, very hard man”. sinwar was released as part of a swap in which israel traded 1,000 prisoners in 2011 in exchange for gilad shalit, an israeli soldier who had been captured five years earlier by hamas. sinwar quickly returned to militancy and said he had concluded that capturing israeli soldiers was the key to freeing prisoners from israel. the move will further consolidate the group under sinwar, whose elevation to the head of hamas’s political wing will raise further doubts about the potential for any ceasefire deal to be struck in the conflict. sinwar is believed to have launched the 7 october attack from gaza without informing the political leadership, which was headquartered under haniyeh in qatar. “in electing sinwar to head hamas, the organisation lays to rest any differences between external and internal leaders and whatever illusions of moderation existed to reveal its true face,” wrote aaron david miller, a senior fellow at the carnegie endowment. israel claims it killed hamas’s military commander, mohammed deif, in a strike in july, among a number of assassinations of key members of hamas’s leadership. another top political leader, saleh al arouri, was killed in january. the policy of killing top hamas leaders, including those from the more moderate political wing, has led to rising tensions between the us president, joe biden, and the israeli prime minister, benjamin netanyahu. biden last week told netanyahu during a phone call that the israeli pm was intentionally sabotaging efforts to conclude a ceasefire, according to the new york times and other us media. netanyahu argued that the assassination in teheran would temporarily delay negotiations, but would ultimately lead to a ceasefire more quickly by putting pressure on hamas. in reaction to sinwar’s appointment, israeli military spokesperson rear adm. daniel hagari told saudi owned al arabiya televsion: “there is only one place for yahya sinwar, and it is beside mohammed deif and the rest of the october 7th terrorists. that is the only place we’re preparing and intending for him.” speaking to al jazeera television after the announcement, hamas’s spokesperson osama hamdan said sinwar would continue the ceasefire negotiations. “the problem in negotiations is not the change in hamas,” he said, blaming israel and its ally the us for the failure to seal a deal.

more login sign up search yahya sinwar (left), head of hamas in gaza, was thought to have been one of the masterminds of the october 7 attack on israel. israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu (right) said that, despite sinwar's death, the war in gaza would go on. source: aap, getty / ap / adel hana / lev radin / pacific press / lightrocket who was yahya sinwar, the hamas leader killed by israeli forces? 'mum, i love you': october 7 survivor michal thought these would be her last words share this with family and friends morning (mon fri) afternoon (mon fri) weekend by subscribing, you agree to sbs’s terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from sbs. sbs world news

manage your account in a windowless room, somewhere in the bowels of the israel defense forces (idf) headquarters, chief of staff lt gen herzi halevi jabbed his index finger forward. israel had just assassinated the hezbollah leader and was about to invade lebanon when he summoned his generals and commanders to take instructions. but pictures of the meeting released to the press showed a seemingly unrelated image in the background. up on a screen mounted on the wood panelled wall are fourteen mugshots of the hamas chain of command   most of them with a giant red cross over them to mark that they had been killed. at the top of the chain was public enemy no 1, hamas leader yahya sinwar, with his grey hair and salt and pepper beard. for the first time since the war began, he had a question mark over his head. the image set off a fresh round of speculation that israel’s most wanted, the man who planned and ordered the oct 7 massacres, was finally dead. a little over a week until the anniversary of the terror attacks this coming monday, was it possible the idf had finally got their man? rumours about his possible death had emerged a few weeks earlier when intelligence officials began briefing that one of the precision airstrikes that had levelled gaza may have killed the leader. no concrete evidence has emerged since, but the pattern follows similar high level assassinations in gaza, which have taken a few weeks to be publicly announced. two well placed israeli officials told the telegraph that the defence establishment believes that sinwar is now dead. one of the sources said that “it is highly likely that yahya sinwar was eliminated in one of the idf strikes. the assessments in israel’s security leadership suggest that sinwar was most likely killed.” however, plenty of caution remains. sceptics question the timing around the oct 7 anniversary and how israel would have killed a man said to have been hidden deep underground and surrounded, according to reports, by israeli hostages. sinwar could have decided the best way to keep himself safe as assassinations take down his top leaders is to retreat entirely from view. american officials told the new york times they believed sinwar is still alive and making key decisions for hamas. israeli sources told the telegraph that one piece of evidence emerging about his possible death was an end to communications with the leader. one source said the handwritten notes delivered by couriers that had been keeping the hostage negotiations alive had dried up. however, israel also announced on thursday it had killed sinwar’s right hand man some three months ago. rawhi mushtaha was allegedly one of those involved in the complex human chain of delivering the notes. israel’s intelligence machine has relied on tracking couriers in the past, notably to find and kill hamas’ military chief mohammed deif, who was killed in an airstrike in gaza in july. the us adopted a similar technique to find osama bin laden. sources suggested israel’s defence establishment is believed to be currently in a situation similar to when an airstrike targeted mr deif in khan younis on july 13. the official confirmation of his death was announced nearly three weeks later on august 1. sinwar was appointed the political leader of hamas after ishmail haniyeh was killed in an alleged israeli attack in tehran in july, making him the all powerful figure of the terror group. widely seen as the architect behind the oct 7 massacre, he is considered the most valuable target for israel, which refers to him as a “dead man walking.” israeli forces have scoured gaza for sinwar since they invaded the enclave in late october and even came close to capturing him several times. the idf assessed early on in the war that the hamas leader was hiding in southern gaza, specifically in a tunnel deep underground. in february, the idf released the first footage of sinwar since oct 7, showing his children and wife walking through a tunnel under a cemetery in the bani suheila area in khan younis. sinwar is seen in flip flops and carrying a bag as he walks through the tunnel behind his family on oct 10 but israeli soldiers only reached the tunnel in february where they found the surveillance footage. idf spokesperson daniel hagari said that the tunnel from which sinwar escaped before israeli forces came contained “bedrooms of senior hamas officials and the office of the commander of the khan younis brigade’s eastern battalion, from where he directed the attack on oct 7”. senior hamas officials resided in the compound in “comfortable conditions” with food and bathrooms, along with safes with “personal funds of millions of shekels and dollars in cash,” mr hagari added. in december, mr netanyahu announced that israeli troops had surrounded mr sinwar’s home in khan younis. “i said last night that our forces could reach anywhere in the gaza strip. now, they are encircling sinwar’s home. his home is not his fortress, and while he may flee, it is only a matter of time until we get him,” mr netanyahu said. in august, the outgoing commander of the idf’s 98th division, brig. gen. dan goldfus, told channel 12 that the army was “minutes” away from catching the hamas leader. “we were close. we were in his compound. we got to an underground compound. we found a lot of money there. the coffee was still hot. weapons strewn around,” mr goldfus said. and as israel continues to kill hamas commanders, mr sinwar is running out of places to hide. “every day, he has trouble finding places where he can hide. the list of associates and confidants is being reduced,” a security source told the jerusalem post in august. but israel is also dealing with a far wider and more complex network of tunnels than they believed existed before the invasion. that leaves intelligence gathering as the key. hunters fall under an umbrella of units under the israeli security agency and include intelligence officers, special operation units from the israel defense forces (idf), military engineers and surveillance experts. teams of experts entering the tunnels, like the special section of the combat engineering corps, are armed with ground penetrating radar. yahalom, a special section within the combat engineering corps, has more experience in tunnel warfare than any of its counterparts in western armies and has access to state of the art us made ground penetrating radar. many clues have turned up in hamas compounds revealing everything from the terror group’s plans, orders, maps and blueprints of compound structures. seized computers, documents and surveillance footage have all helped keep the trail warm. “hundreds and thousands of interrogations of terrorists and senior leaders would not have yielded such intimate intelligence on their methods of order and organisation in such a short period,” a military official said in july. but the interrogations of thousands of members of hamas and other terror groups who were arrested since oct 7 has also helped. they have so far led to the idf finding tunnels and weapon depots and revealing hospitals and red crescent facilities hamas allegedly uses to operate from. “each and every investigation leads to the incrimination of new sites, and the human intelligence that emerges… is an inseparable layer of the complete intelligence picture,” the idf said already back in november. the importance of tracking sinwar’s communication with other members has also become clear. previously israel’s secretive signals intelligence unit 8200 had been employed to eavesdrop on hamas communications. but their role was reduced since hamas leadership ditched all electronic communication in favour of notes and oral messages delivered by runners. “using complex means, he communicates with all the leadership of the movement both inside (gaza) and outside, and also with the (ezzedine) al qassam brigades,” a senior hamas leader told afp. “he follows complex security procedures for his personal protection, but this does not prevent him from continuing his duties and making decisions,” he added. if mr sinwar has been killed, it raises a number of questions. khaled meshaal, the former leader of hamas, is perhaps the only person who could fill his shoes and govern the terror group effectively, albeit from abroad and not inside gaza. there is also the possibility that hostages may have been killed in the same strike on sinwar. if so, the israeli government will be met with fury from the vast majority of the public that wants a ceasefire deal with hamas. in theory, killing sinwar could give mr netanyahu the win he needs to sign a deal that could end the war and release the remaining hostages. khalil al hayya, the deputy leader of hamas, is currently representing the terror group in the negotiations, which notably have been stalled for weeks. but since he doesn’t have a mandate to strike a deal by himself, there won’t be any ceasefire until mr sinwar either shows signs of life, and re engages with mediators, or he is announced dead and a new leader is appointed. giora eiland, the former head of israel’s national security council, told the telegraph that there are definitely “signs” that sinwar has been killed. but he added he hasn’t received any information from israeli officials he’s spoken to in recent weeks. “it’s still a mystery,” he said. mr netanyahu’s speech on sunday raised eyebrows as it listed sinwar alongside other commanders killed by israel. “the regime in tehran does not understand our determination to defend ourselves and to exact a price from our enemies. sinwar and deif did not understand this; neither did nasrallah or mohsen,” mr netanyahu said. broaden your horizons with award winning british journalism. try the telegraph free for 3 months with unlimited access to our award winning website, exclusive app, money saving offers and more.

israel says its troops in gaza have killed hamas leader yahya sinwar, a chief architect of the 7 october 2023 attacks and the country's most wanted man. sinwar disappeared at the start of the war triggered by the unprecedented hamas attacks, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage. that was hardly surprising, as thousands of israeli troops backed by drones, electronic eavesdropping devices and human informants, tried to discover his whereabouts. "yahya sinwar is the commander... and he is a dead man," declared israel defense forces (idf) spokesman rear admiral daniel hagari at the time. it was assumed that sinwar spent much of the past year cornered below ground, hiding in tunnels somewhere beneath gaza with his bodyguards, communicating with very few people for fear that his signal would be tracked and located. there were also fears that he would surround himself with israeli hostages as human shields. but in the end, soldiers operating in southern gaza killed sinwar inside a building where there was no sign of any hostages being present, according to the idf. it announced his death on thursday, after identifying his body using fingerprint and dental records. "he who carried out the worst massacre in our people's history since the holocaust, the arch terrorist who murdered thousands of israelis and kidnapped hundreds of our citizens, was killed today by our heroic soldiers," israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu said. "and today, as we promised to do, we settled the score with him." israel has already killed many other senior hamas figures in gaza, who were all declared "dead men walking" following the 7 october attacks. they included mohammed deif, the leader of hamas's military wing, the izzedine al qassam brigades, who the idf said was killed in an air strike in gaza in july. hugh lovatt, senior policy fellow at the european council on foreign relations (ecfr), said last year that he believed deif was the brains behind the planning of the 7 october attack because it was a military operation, but that sinwar "would likely have been part of the group that planned and influenced it". hamas also accused israel of assassinating its overall leader, ismail haniyeh, in tehran in july. despite being on the run, sinwar was named as his successor the following month. sinwar, 61, widely known as abu ibrahim, was born in the khan younis refugee camp at the southern end of the gaza strip. his parents were from ashkelon but became refugees after what palestinians call "al naqba" (the catastrophe)   the mass displacement of palestinians from their ancestral homes in palestine in the war that followed israel's founding in 1948. he was educated at khan younis secondary school for boys and then graduated with a bachelor's degree in arabic language from the islamic university of gaza. at that time, khan younis was a "bastion" of support for the muslim brotherhood, said ehud yaari, a fellow of the washington institute for near east policy, who interviewed sinwar in prison four times. the islamist group "was a massive movement for young people going to the mosques in the poverty of the refugee camp", yaari said, and it would later take on a similar importance for hamas. sinwar was first arrested by israel in 1982 and then arrested again in 1985. it was around this time that he won the confidence of hamas's founder, sheikh ahmed yassin. the two became "very, very close", said kobi michael, a senior researcher at the institute for national security studies in tel aviv. this relationship with the organisation's spiritual leader would later give sinwar a "halo effect" within the movement, michael added. two years after hamas was founded in 1987, he set up the group's feared internal security organisation, the al majd. he was still only 25. al majd became infamous for punishing those accused of so called morality offences   michael said he targeted shops that stocked "sex videos"   as well as hunting down and killing anyone suspected of collaborating with israel. yaari said he was responsible for numerous "brutal killings" of people suspected of co operation with israel. "some of them with his own hands and he was proud of that, talking about it to me and to others." according to israeli officials, he later confessed to punishing a suspected informer by getting the man's brother to bury him alive, finishing the job using a spoon instead of a spade. yaari said he was "the kind of man who can gather around him followers, fans   together with many who are simply afraid of him and don't want to pick any fights with him". in 1988, sinwar allegedly planned the abduction and killing of two israeli soldiers. he was arrested the same year, convicted by israel for the murder of 12 palestinians and given four life sentences. sinwar spent a large part of his adult life   over 22 years   in israeli prisons, from 1988 to 2011. his time there, some of it in solitary confinement, appeared to have radicalised him even further. "he managed to impose his authority ruthlessly, using force," said yaari. he positioned himself as a leader among the prisoners, negotiating on their behalf with prison authorities and enforcing discipline among the inmates. an israeli government assessment of sinwar during his time in prison described his character as "cruel, authoritative, influential and with unusual abilities of endurance, cunning and manipulative, content with little... keeps secrets even inside prison amongst other prisoners… has the ability to carry crowds". yaari's assessment of sinwar, built up over the times they met, was that he was a psychopath. "[but] to say about sinwar, 'sinwar is a psychopath, full stop,' would be a mistake" he said, "because then you will miss this strange, complex figure". he was, yaari said, "extremely cunning, shrewd   a guy who knows to switch on and off a type of personal charm". when sinwar would tell him israel must be destroyed and insist there was no place for jewish people in palestine, "he would joke, 'maybe we'll make an exception of you'". while incarcerated sinwar had become fluent in hebrew, reading israeli newspapers. yaari said sinwar always preferred to speak hebrew with him, even though yaari was fluent in arabic. "he sought to improve his hebrew," yaari said. "i think he wanted to benefit from somebody who spoke higher hebrew than the prison wardens." sinwar was released in 2011 as part of a deal that saw 1,027 palestinian and israeli arab prisoners released from jail in exchange for a single israeli hostage, the idf soldier gilad shalit. shalit had been held captive for five years after being kidnapped by   amongst others   sinwar's brother, who is a senior hamas military commander. sinwar later called for more kidnappings of israeli soldiers. by now, israel had ended its occupation of the gaza strip and hamas was in charge, having won an election and then eliminated its rivals, yasser arafat's fatah party, by throwing many of its members off the tops of tall buildings. when sinwar returned to gaza, he was immediately accepted as a leader, michael said. much of this was to do with his prestige as a founding member of hamas who had sacrificed so many years of his life in israeli prisons. but also, "people just feared him   this is a person that murdered people with his hands", michael said. "he was very brutal, aggressive and charismatic at the very same time." yaari said he was "not an orator" and that when he spoke to the public it was "like somebody from the mob". yaari added that immediately after leaving prison, sinwar also forged an alliance with the izzedine al qassam brigades and chief of staff marwan issa. in 2013, he was elected a member of hamas's political bureau in the gaza strip, before becoming its head in 2017. sinwar's younger brother mohammed also went on to play an active role in hamas. he claimed to have survived several israeli assassination attempts before being pronounced dead by hamas in 2014. media reports have since surfaced asserting he may still be alive, active in hamas's military wing hiding in tunnels beneath gaza and may even have played a part in the 7 october attack. sinwar's reputation for ruthlessness and violence earned him the nickname of the butcher of khan younis. yaari said he imposed "brutal discipline", and that hamas members knew that if they disobeyed him "you put your life on the line". he was reputed to have been responsible for the 2015 detention, torture and murder of a hamas commander named mahmoud ishtiwi who was accused of embezzlement and homosexuality. in 2018, in a briefing to the international media, he signalled his support for thousands of palestinians to break through the border fence separating the gaza strip from israel as part of protests over the us moving its embassy from tel aviv to jerusalem. later that year he claimed to have survived an assassination attempt by palestinians loyal to the rival palestinian authority (pa) in the west bank. yet he also showed periods of pragmatism, supporting temporary ceasefires with israel, prisoner exchanges, and a reconciliation with the palestinian authority. he was even criticised by some opponents as too moderate, michael said. many in israel's defence and security establishment believe it was a fatal mistake to have let sinwar out of prison as part of the prisoner exchange. israelis feel they were lulled into a false sense of security in the mistaken belief that by offering hamas economic incentives and more work permits, the movement would have lost its appetite for war. this, of course, turned out to be a disastrous miscalculation. yaari said sinwar saw himself as "the guy destined to liberate palestine" and that he was "not about improving the economic situation, social services for gaza". in 2015, the us state department officially categorised sinwar as a "specially designated global terrorist". in may 2021 israeli air strikes targeted his home and office in the gaza strip. in april 2022, in a televised address, he encouraged people to attack israel by any available means. analysts identified him as a key figure linking hamas's political bureau with its armed wing, the izzedine al qassam brigades, which led the 7 october 7 attacks. on 14 october 2023, an israeli military spokesman called sinwar "the face of evil". he added: "that man and his whole team are in our sights. we will get to that man." sinwar was also close to iran. a partnership between a shia country and a sunni arab organisation is not an obvious one, but both share a goal to end the state of israel and "liberate" jerusalem from israeli occupation. they have come to work hand in hand. iran funds, trains and arms hamas, helping it to build up its military capabilities and amass an arsenal of thousands of rockets, which it uses to target israeli towns. sinwar expressed his gratitude for the support in a speech in 2021. "had it not been for iran, the resistance in palestine would not have possessed its current capabilities." the loss of yahya sinwar will be a seismic blow to hamas. when the group chose him to replace haniyeh as overall leader in august, it was a deliberate act of defiance and resilience. it could not have chosen a more uncompromising figure. the group will now have to decide whether is the time to make a deal that ends the year long israeli military operation that has devastated the gaza strip. or, conversely, whether to continue fighting and resisting, hoping to outlast israel's patience, despite the horrendous death toll this conflict has wreaked upon palestinian civilians. us secretary of state antony blinken said recently that a ceasefire deal in gaza was "90% there". the killing of sinwar could be an opportunity to finally complete that deal and bring israel's hostages home. it also risks doing the opposite: driving angry hamas members further away than ever from any kind of compromise. additional reporting by jon kelly some 180 prisoners are being freed in exchange for three israeli hostages. or levy, ohad ben ami and eli sharabi are returning home after being released in gaza on saturday. a total of 135 people captured during the 7 october attacks have been released or freed. the men were all taken captive during the 7 october attacks and have been held in gaza for 16 months. a total of 73 hostages, taken captive after the 7 october attacks, still remain unaccounted for. copyright 2025 bbc. all rights reserved. the bbc is not responsible for the content of external sites. read about our approach to external linking.

this page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the arab israeli conflict. yahya ibrahim hassan sinwar[note 2] (arabic: يحيى إبراهيم حسن السنوار, romanized: yaḥyá ibrāhīm ḥasan al sinwār; 29 october 1962   16 october 2024) was a palestinian militant and politician who served as chairman of the hamas political bureau from august 2024,[3] and as the leader of hamas in the gaza strip from february 2017, until he was killed in a clash with the idf in october 2024, succeeding ismail haniyeh in both roles.[4][5] sinwar was born in the khan yunis refugee camp in egyptian occupied gaza in 1962 to a family who had been expelled or fled from majdal 'asqalan during the 1948 palestine war.[6] he finished his studies at the islamic university of gaza, where he received a bachelor's degree in arabic studies.[7] in 1989, sinwar was sentenced to four life sentences in israel for orchestrating the abduction and killing of two israeli soldiers and four palestinians he considered to be collaborators. he spent 22 years in prison until his release among 1,026 others in a 2011 prisoner exchange for israeli soldier gilad shalit.[4] during his time in prison, sinwar continued to coordinate the military activities of hamas.[8][9] sinwar was one of the co founders of the security apparatus of hamas.[10][11] in 2017, sinwar was elected as the leader of hamas in gaza and claimed to pursue "peaceful, popular resistance" the following year, supporting the 2018 2019 gaza border protests,[12] though he is also reported to have been dedicated to eradicating israel[13][14] and is said to have seen military confrontation as the only path to "liberating palestine", saying that this would be achieved "by force, not negotiations".[15] he also developed strong ties with iran.[16][17][18] re elected as hamas leader in 2021, sinwar survived an assassination attempt by israel that same year. he is widely regarded as the mastermind behind the 7 october hamas led attack on israel in 2023,[19][20][21] which was followed by the israel hamas war that spilled over to other parts of the middle east.[22][23][15] hamas and the izz ad din al qassam brigades have been designated terrorist organisations by the united states, the european union, and other countries and, in september 2015, sinwar was specifically designated a terrorist by the united states government.[10] in may 2024, karim khan, the prosecutor of the international criminal court, announced his intention to apply for an arrest warrant for sinwar for war crimes and crimes against humanity, as part of the icc investigation in palestine.[24] sinwar was killed on 16 october 2024, during a firefight with the israeli military.[25] yahya ibrahim hassan al sinwar was born on 29 october 1962,[26] in the khan yunis refugee camp, when the gaza strip was under egyptian occupation, where he spent his early years.[27] his family were forcibly expelled from majdal asqalan (arabic: مدينة المجدل, romanized: medīnat al majdal),[28] now known as ashkelon, during the nakba, and sought refuge in the gaza strip. sinwar, discussing his refugee upbringing, tied it to his hamas involvement in conversations with fellow prisoners during his later imprisonment. according to esmat mansour, another inmate, sinwar was deeply affected by the communal living conditions and food distribution in the refugee camp.[8] after he graduated from high school at khan yunis secondary school for boys, he went on to the islamic university of gaza, where he received a bachelor's degree in arabic studies.[29][30] his younger brother is mohammed sinwar, a military leader of hamas.[31] sinwar was first arrested in 1982 for subversive activities and he served several months in the far'a prison where he met other palestinian activists, including salah shehade, and dedicated himself to the palestinian cause.[29] arrested again in 1985,[5] upon his release he co founded with rawhi mushtaha the munazzamat al jihad w'al dawa (majd), an organization that worked, among others, to identify collaborators with israel among the palestinian population,[4] which in 1987 became the hamas "police".[29] sinwar's killing of suspected collaborators with israel gained him the nickname "the butcher of khan younis".[32][33][34] when asked about this nickname in the new yorker's august 2024 profile on sinwar, basem naim, a member of hamas's leadership, said: "i think this is nonsense. that is the first time i have ever heard this." he and other hamas leaders and supporters added that "israelis require a great villain" and made one out of sinwar for this reason. academic expert on hamas khaled hroub said sinwar is "widely respected as a great organizer", and that claims of his alleged ruthlessness had not been proved. "before october 7th, i hadn't heard all these terrible stories", hroub said, adding: "i think some of these stories came about to complete this image of sinwar the villain. he is decisive, that is true, and maybe people started to extrapolate from that and spice it up."[35] in 1988, sinwar planned the abduction and killing of two israeli soldiers and the murder of four palestinians whom he suspected of cooperating with israel. he was arrested on february that year; during questioning he admitted to strangling one of the victims with his bare hands, suffocating another with a keffiyeh,[8] inadvertently killing a third during a violent interrogation, and accidentally shooting the fourth during an attempted abduction, and showed investigators an orchard where the four bodies were buried.[failed verification][36] he was sentenced to four life sentences in 1989.[5][10] sinwar regarded extracting confessions from collaborators as a righteous obligation. he told interrogators that one of them had even said "he realized he deserved to die."[8][36] sinwar persisted in targeting informants while in prison. israeli authorities suspected him of ordering the beheadings of two suspected informants. hamas operatives reportedly disposed of the victims' severed body parts by throwing them out of cell doors and telling guards to "take the dog's head."[8] gershon baskin, an israeli peace activist who has long been involved in prisoner exchange negotiations and talks with hamas leaders, cautioned that “all these israeli experts and shin bet people and interrogators will tell you that they know exactly what sinwar knows and believes. but they can't know. the dynamic of a meeting with someone who is your prisoner is obviously fraught."[35] sinwar, respected for his resourcefulness among fellow inmates, attempted multiple escapes, including digging a hole in his cell floor to tunnel under the prison. he collaborated with hamas leaders outside, smuggling cellphones into the prison and using visitors to relay messages. these often involved planning to kidnap israeli soldiers for prisoner exchange. years later, sinwar would say, "for the prisoner, capturing an israeli soldier is the best news in the universe, because he knows that a glimmer of hope has been opened for him."[8] sinwar's time in prison was transformative, shaping his leadership qualities, according to ghazi hamad, a senior hamas official. sinwar also mastered hebrew through an online program and extensively studied israeli news to comprehend his adversary better. he meticulously translated hebrew autobiographies of former shin bet chiefs into arabic, sharing them with fellow inmates to study counterterrorism tactics. he referred to himself as a "specialist in the jewish people's history". sinwar once remarked to supporters: "they wanted prison to be a grave for us, a mill to grind our will, determination and bodies. but, thank god, with our belief in our cause we turned the prison into sanctuaries of worship and academies for study."[8] ma'ariv reported that during his time in prison, sinwar enrolled in fifteen courses through the open university of israel over a span of seven years, beginning in 1995. most were in history, covering topics such as the history of the jews in the second temple and rabbinic periods, the first temple period, the holocaust, and zionism, along with a political science course on governance and israeli democracy.[37] hamas elects its leaders democratically within prison. committees handle day to day decisions and punishments, while an elected "emir" and a high council oversee operations for limited terms. sinwar alternated as emir with rawhi mushtaha, a confidant, during his imprisonment, serving as emir in 2004. despite his leadership among prisoners, sinwar was seen as a humble ascetic who shared cooking duties and other chores with junior inmates as well as making knafeh for fellow prisoners, in order to foster camaraderie.[8] in 2004, sinwar, displaying symptoms like standing for prayer then falling and drifting in and out of consciousness, complained of neck pain. a prison dentist, yuval bitton, suspected a brain issue, possibly a stroke or abscess, urging urgent hospitalization. at soroka medical center, israeli surgeons removed a brain tumor that would have been fatal. bitton emphasized that without surgery, the tumor would have burst. he recounts that a few days later, he visited sinwar in the hospital with a prison officer. sinwar asked the muslim officer guarding him to thank the dentist and to explain to him the significance of his life saving surgery in islam and how he felt indebted to him for saving his life. sinwar rarely interacted with israeli prison authorities, but he began regular meetings with the dentist. their discussions, unlike the dentist's usual chats with inmates, solely concerned hamas ideology. sinwar, who knew the qu'ran by heart, articulated hamas' beliefs, emphasizing its religious stance on the land. he dismissed the possibility of a two state solution, asserting the land belonged to muslims.[8] in a search of sinwar's cell, guards confiscated a handwritten novel he completed at the end of 2004. the book, titled the thorn and the carnation, mirrored his life and the palestinian resistance. the story revolves around ahmed, a devout gazan boy, navigating life under israeli occupation during the 1967 arab israeli war. at least one copy was smuggled out, and a typed pdf was found in an online library by the new york times.[8] a different translation of the book title al shawk wa’l qurunful by a source well versed in arabic is thorns and carnations.[38][39] sinwar's sole interview with an israeli television outlet in 2005 saw him warning israelis to "be scared" of hamas's election victory. however, he privately conveyed that much depended on the israeli government's actions. he emphasized hamas' demand for rights from the israeli leadership, not control of the entire town.[8] sinwar played a pivotal role in the negotiations for gilad shalit's release. despite being part of the negotiation team, sinwar opposed deals that did not include high profile prisoners, known as "the impossibles", such as those serving multiple life sentences. even after negotiations secured the release of over a thousand prisoners, including some high profile ones, sinwar remained adamant. this stance led to a rift in hamas leadership, with saleh al arouri, another prominent hamas figure, recognizing the need for compromise. despite efforts to persuade sinwar, he persisted, even attempting to orchestrate a hunger strike involving 1,600 hamas prisoners. his unwavering principles and refusal to compromise complicated negotiations. eventually, sinwar's authority waned as other hamas leaders negotiated a deal without him, as israeli authorities had put him in solitary confinement until the deal was reached. he was the most senior palestinian prisoner released to gaza among 1,026 others in the 2011 prisoner exchange for the soldier. in an interview with hamas's al aqsa tv, he expressed determination to continue efforts to free more prisoners, urging the al qassam brigades to kidnap soldiers for exchanges.[8] following his release from prison, sinwar was elected to a role within hamas akin to defense minister.[8] in november 2012, during the 2012 israeli operation in the gaza strip, sinwar met iranian revolutionary guard corps quds force general qasem soleimani in tehran[40] and after his 2017 election as the group's leader in gaza he cultivated closer cooperation between hamas, hezbollah and iran.[41][42] sinwar was the political representative of the qassam brigades when the brigades' zeitoun battalion commander mahmoud ishtiwi was accused of embezzlement and other "moral violations".[43] hamas believed that fear of having these violations revealed led to him giving israel information that ultimately contributed to the deaths of mohammed deif's wife widad asfura and their two children when their home was bombed by israel in august 2014. ishtiwi was reportedly whipped, suspended from a ceiling for hours across multiple days, and ultimately killed by being shot with three bullets to the chest.[44] in february 2017, sinwar was secretly elected the leader of hamas in the gaza strip, taking over from ismail haniyeh. in march, he established a hamas controlled administrative committee for the gaza strip, opposing power sharing with the palestinian authority in ramallah.[4] sinwar elevated his former prison associates alongside him, with rawhi mushtaha serving as the head of hamas's gaza government, and tawfiq abu naim helped him to establish an internal security force feared by locals.[45] sinwar rejected any reconciliation with israel,[4] and was said to have been dedicated to its eradication,[13][14] seeing military confrontation as the only path to "liberating palestine", and saying that this would be achieved "by force, not negotiations".[15] sinwar strengthened hamas's military wing,[45] and called on militants to capture more israeli soldiers.[10] in september 2017, a new round of negotiations with the palestinian authority began in egypt, and sinwar agreed to dissolve the hamas administrative committee for gaza.[46] he was said to have silenced hard line voices in gaza, ordering against the use of tunnels that mohammed deif wanted to use to sneak fighters into israel before they were shut down by new classified israeli technology in 2017.[12] on 16 may 2018, in an unexpected announcement on al jazeera, sinwar stated that hamas would pursue "peaceful, popular resistance" to the israeli occupation, opening the possibility that hamas, which is considered a terrorist organisation by many countries, may play a role in negotiations with israel.[12] a week earlier he had encouraged gazans to breach the israeli siege and endorsed the great march of return, saying "we would rather die as martyrs than die out of oppression and humiliation," and adding, "we are ready to die, and tens of thousands will die with us."[47] on 1 december 2020, sinwar tested positive for covid 19 and was reportedly following the advice of health authorities and taking precautionary measures. a spokesman for the group also said that he was in "good health and [...] pursuing his duties as usual".[48] in march 2021, sinwar was elected to a second four year term as the head of hamas in gaza.[49] by that time, sinwar had solidified his control over the territory, and eliminated veteran hamas commanders.[45] he started bypassing hamas's influential shura council and kept the doha based senior leadership partially uninformed about his activities.[45] on 15 may 2021, an israeli airstrike was reported to have hit sinwar's home; there were no immediate details of any deaths or injuries. the strike took place in the khan yunis region of southern gaza in the midst of increasing tension between israelis and palestinians.[50] in the week that followed, he appeared publicly at least four times. the most obvious was in a press conference on 27 may 2021. during the conference, sinwar stated he would walk home from the venue and invited benny gantz, the israeli minister of defense to order his assassination during his walk home. sinwar spent the next hour in the streets of gaza taking photos with the public.[51] in the autumn of 2022, hamas began planning a surprise attack on israel. sinwar sought to convince iran and hezbollah to participate in the attack or in a broader conflict with israel,[52][53] aiming to cause its 'collapse'.[52] during one meeting, sinwar acknowledged that such an attack would likely require sacrifices, probably referring to the people of gaza.[52] in september 2022, he reviewed the battle plans, though the attack was postponed.[52] by may 2023, sinwar and his colleagues were relieved to have avoided a minor confrontation during ramadan, intending to preserve the element of surprise for the 7 october attack.[52] sinwar and mohammed deif were regarded as the masterminds behind the 7 october hamas led attack on israel in 2023, the deadliest attack in israeli history.[19][20][21] the attack left around 1,200 people dead and about 240 taken as hostages in gaza. following the attack, sinwar was put under eu terrorist sanctions[54] and became a top target for assassination by the israeli military.[55] israeli intelligence presumed sinwar was hiding in a complex system of tunnels beneath gaza and was surrounded by hostages acting as human shields.[56] according to israeli officials, sinwar constructed an underground fortress in his hometown of khan yunis, from where he continued to coordinate attacks. idf spokesperson noted that israeli forces had come close to capturing him on multiple occasions during the war, but he consistently managed to evade them, primarily hiding underground between khan yunis and rafah.[57] after three weeks of conflict in the israel hamas war, sinwar proposed the release of all palestinian prisoners in israeli confinement in exchange for the release of all the hostages kidnapped in the conflict.[58][55] sinwar reportedly visited the hostages in the early days of the war promising they would not be harmed. when one of the hostages, yocheved lifshitz, said sinwar should be ashamed of himself, he was silent.[59] during subsequent cease fire talks, sinwar urged other hamas leaders to refuse concessions. he said that high civilian casualties and the suffering of civilians in gaza led to international pressure on israel giving hamas the upper hand in negotiations.[60] on 7 november, after israel had surrounded gaza city, it claimed it had "trapped" sinwar in a bunker there.[61] israeli military authorities later claimed he was in khan yunis in an underground bunker.[62] israeli defence minister yoav gallant said: "we will get to yahya sinwar and eliminate him. if the residents of gaza get there ahead of us, that will shorten the war."[63] leaflets allegedly dropped by israel into gaza proclaimed a bounty of $400,000 for providing information on sinwar's location.[64] according to reuters, israel demanded the exile of sinwar, deif, and four other hamas leaders from gaza as a condition for a ceasefire.[65] by february 2024 the idf believed that sinwar had moved to rafah from khan younis. according to the idf, sinwar was constantly on the move and thus was unable to personally command hamas forces.[66] on 13 february the idf released cctv footage dated 10 october showing sinwar and his wife and children as well as his brother ibrahim in a hamas tunnel complex in khan younis. the idf stated that they were collecting intelligence and interrogating hamas commanders and their relatives to find sinwar.[67] on 20 may 2024, karim khan, the prosecutor of the international criminal court, announced his intention to apply for an arrest warrant for sinwar for war crimes and crimes against humanity, as part of the icc investigation in palestine.[68][24] in june 2024, the wall street journal published what it said were leaked communications between sinwar and hamas' leadership, in which sinwar claimed to "have the israelis right where we want them" and suggested that palestinian civilian deaths were "necessary sacrifices" that would "infuse life into the veins of this nation, prompting it to rise to its glory and honour".[69][70] the authenticity of these messages could not be verified.[71] ghazi hamad, a hamas spokesperson, refuted the report, asserting that sinwar never made such comments and was instead focused on ending the conflict swiftly, calling the circulated statements "completely incorrect".[72] on 3 september 2024, the u.s. department of justice announced criminal charges against sinwar for his role in the 7 october attack on israel. the charges, which were filed under seal in february 2024, include conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and conspiracy to murder u.s. nationals.[73][74][75] following the assassination of ismail haniyeh on 31 july 2024, hamas named yahya sinwar as the new "overall leader" of the movement, as well as the new chairman of the hamas political bureau. the announcement came after the shura council, the body that elects hamas's politburo, voted unanimously to choose sinwar as the new leader, in what was described by a hamas official as a "message of defiance to israel". he held this position for over 2 months until his own death on october 16, 2024.[76][3] according to the bbc, yahya sinwar's election as the leader of hamas "signalled the end of an era and the beginning of a new, more extreme phase". per hamas officials, he was elected due to his considerable popularity in the arab and islamic worlds following the october 7 attacks and his strong connections with the "axis of resistance", a network of armed groups led by iran.[18] according to the wall street journal, his election suggests that the movement endorsed his strategy of waging war against israel in conjunction with iran's militia allies, also noting that sinwar had gained increasing popularity among palestinians due to his approach in handling the conflict.[16] the economist report indicated that sinwar's election made a ceasefire less likely as he represented hamas's most extreme faction. his leadership consolidated hamas's alignment with iran and its resistance to diplomatic negotiations.[17] the idf military intelligence directorate announced in september that they had begun an investigation into sinwar's possible death in an airstrike after noting that he had not been heard from for some time.[77] israel hayom reported that israeli authorities believed he was still alive, and lacked any direct evidence of his death, but were "exploring other scenarios".[78] in october sinwar re established contact with the hamas delegation in qatar.[79] it is thought that sinwar had spent a considerable period of time above ground despite the presence of israeli forces, as his autopsy found no evidence of significant health deterioration that could be attributed to spending excessive amounts of time underground.[80] yahya sinwar carried out most of his military operations in rafah, where he would conceal his face with a blanket to avoid detection, sometimes planning attacks in the vicinity of israeli soldiers or within homes that previously had presence of israeli soldiers.[81] according to the wall street journal, sinwar was offered an opportunity to leave gaza for egypt in exchange for allowing egypt to negotiate ceasefire on behalf of hamas. sinwar refused, telling arab mediators that he was on "palestinian soil". sinwar recommended that, in case of his death, hamas appoint a council of leaders to govern and manage the transition following his death.[82] on 21 november 2011, sinwar married samar muhammad abu zamar. the couple had three children. sinwar's wife received a master's degree in theology from the islamic university of gaza.[83][84][85] in addition to his native arabic, sinwar spoke hebrew, which he learned, along with insights into israeli culture, during his imprisonment in israel.[8] sinwar was a hafiz (a title given to those who have completely memorized the quran).[8] on 17 october 2024, the israel defense forces and shin bet said they were looking into whether sinwar was among three individuals killed in an operation in gaza the previous day, though neither israel nor hamas officially confirmed his death at that time.[88] the next day, it was reported that idf soldiers investigating a strike on hamas members had found a body with a striking resemblance to sinwar, and that a dna sample had been collected from it.[89][90][91] sinwar's body was found dressed in military fatigues and a kuffiyeh, and grasping an ak 47.[92] among other items found on his person were 40,000 nis in cash, a lighter and number of identity documents.[93] according to kan radio, his associates were found with cash, weapons and false identification documents.[94][95] an israeli pathologist reported that sinwar sustained injuries to his right forearm from missile fire, his left leg from "fallen masonry", and his body from shrapnel, before being shot in the head, resulting in his death from "severe traumatic brain injury".[96][97] the idf confirmed through dna analysis that sinwar had been killed a day earlier in gaza during a firefight with the idf.[88][25] israel police said in a statement that the body matched sinwar's dental records and fingerprints.[98][99] prime minister benjamin netanyahu stated that the killing of sinwar "is not the end of the war in gaza,"[100] but he said that sinwar's death marked the beginning of a new era without hamas's rule over gaza.[101] hamas confirmed sinwar's death on 18 october.[102][103] on 2 november, sources close to hamas told the pan arab newspaper asharq al awsat that "shortly before his death, sinwar and those with him suffered from limited access to food, especially during the last three days when they did not eat at all. they were preparing for a confrontation with israeli forces, which led them to move between several damaged neighboring buildings, shifting from one to another."[104]

in the archives of israel’s military courts, there is a six page document, handwritten in hebrew, that records an interrogation of yahya ibrahim hassan sinwar, the hamas leader in the gaza strip. the document, dated february 8, 1999, gives him identification number 955266978. sinwar was thirty six at the time, and had been imprisoned for eleven years. before being jailed, he had led a hamas unit called munazamat al jihad wa al da’wa, or the majd an enforcement squad that punished those who collaborated with israel or who committed offenses against orthodox islamic morality, including homosexuality, marital infidelity, and the possession of pornography. sinwar was serving four life sentences in a facility in the negev desert for executing palestinians accused of working with the enemy. as his interrogator, a sergeant named david cohen, recorded, he also admitted to another crime: the year before, he had conspired from prison to engineer the kidnapping of an israeli soldier. sinwar’s co conspirator was a fellow inmate, the hamas commander mohammed sharatha. the two had become cellmates in 1997, when sharatha was in the middle of a long sentence; as part of a hamas security force called unit 101, he had participated in the kidnapping and killing of two israeli soldiers. he wasn’t especially remorseful about the operation (“i did what i did, and i don’t regret it,” he said later), but he was troubled about something. as sinwar wrote in a confession included in the interrogation file, “i felt that he was sad most of the time.” sharatha eventually explained the source of his despair: his sister, back in gaza, was dishonoring the family by having an extramarital affair. could sinwar help find a way to have her appropriately punished? sinwar promised to get word to his brother, mohammed, a leading member of the hamas military wing in gaza. (hamas prisoners routinely smuggled out messages through visitors.) the interrogation record notes that the deed was soon accomplished by one of sharatha’s brothers: their sister was found dead in the strip. podcast: the new yorker radio hourdavid remnick talks with raja shehadeh. from the start, sinwar regarded israeli prison as an “academy,” a place to learn the language, psychology, and history of the enemy. like many other palestinians designated as “security prisoners,” he became fluent in hebrew and consumed israeli newspapers and radio broadcasts, along with books about zionist theorists, politicians, and intelligence chiefs. despite the length of his sentence, he was preparing for his release and the resumption of armed resistance. indeed, even in jail he continued his battle. in 1998, he and sharatha agreed that there was little hope of winning the release of palestinian prisoners by political means, so they devised a plan: they’d pay kidnappers on the outside to capture an israeli soldier. in exchange for the soldier’s release, they would demand the freedom of no fewer than four hundred prisoners. but, as sinwar told his interrogator, “soldiers had been kidnapped and killed before, and nothing was gained in return.” instead, they planned to hustle the soldier across the border to egypt, “so that the israelis would not be able to free him” from his captors. sharatha mentioned that one of his brothers, abd al karim, was connected to a band of thieves who stole cars in israel and drove them to egypt. maybe they could pull off the job. sinwar smuggled a written message to a critical figure in gaza: the founder and spiritual leader of hamas, sheikh ahmed yassin. he asked for his blessing and for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to finance the kidnapping. yassin agreed. the plot, however, came undone when israeli police picked up another of sharatha’s brothers, abd al aziz, as he was trying to cross into egypt to lay the groundwork for the kidnapping. in the years that followed, the conspiracy was more or less forgotten. and yet to read the records of the interrogation is to shudder with a sense of what was to come. the foiled plan can easily be seen as a foreshadowing of the events that led to the current war, the bloodiest chapter in the history of the israeli palestinian conflict. in 2006, hamas soldiers led a cross border raid through a tunnel from gaza. at an israeli military outpost near the village of kerem shalom, they killed two soldiers and kidnapped a third, a nineteen year old corporal from the galilee named gilad shalit. hamas kept shalit captive in gaza year after year, demanding hundreds of prisoners in return. in israel, there were candlelight vigils and bitter debates over whether the life of just one soldier was worth freeing so many palestinian prisoners. shalit was finally released in 2011, in exchange for more than a thousand palestinians including yahya sinwar and mohammed sharatha. sinwar soon ascended to the leadership of hamas in gaza, and on october 7, 2023, together with the hamas military leader, mohammed deif, he unleashed al aqsa flood, the most devastating attack on israel in half a century. the war that followed, which has killed forty thousand palestinians, continues to inflame the politics of the globe. yahya sinwar is believed to have spent the days since october 7th in the vast network of tunnels that runs deep beneath the cities, towns, and refugee camps of the gaza strip. security officials in israel and the united states, along with independent palestinian sources, told me they are confident that sinwar is alive and still a critical player in negotiations over a potential ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages. at first, sinwar’s underground headquarters were believed to be in the southern city of khan younis, where he was born; then, as the israel defense forces closed in, he likely fled south to a subterranean complex in rafah. he no longer trusts electronic communications, lest the i.d.f. detect his location and kill him. instead, he gives notes and oral messages to trusted runners, who get them to hamas leaders. when the i.d.f. seized hamas’s complex in khan younis, they eagerly distributed footage of his quarters: bathrooms with showers, an office safe overflowing with cellophane wrapped bricks of dollars and shekels. they also released a video that they believe shows sinwar, his wife, and their children hustling through a tunnel. link copied yocheved lifshitz, an eighty five year old peace activist from kibbutz nir oz, was taken hostage on october 7th. after her release, she told the israeli newspaper davar that she and other hostages had encountered sinwar in the tunnels, a few days after they arrived. “i asked him how he wasn’t ashamed to do something like this to people who have supported peace all these years,” she said. “he didn’t answer us. he was silent.” oded lifshitz, yocheved’s eighty four year old husband, remains in captivity. it is not known whether he is still alive. adina moshe, another hostage who was released, also recalled her encounters with sinwar in the tunnels. “he’s short, you know? all his guards were taller than him,” she told channel 12. “it was ridiculous to see him like that. . . . he stood there. no one responded. ‘shalom! how are you? everything o.k.?’ we all looked down. he came twice, about three weeks apart. each time, it was ‘shalom! how are you?’ no one responds, and he leaves.” from the start of the bombardment of gaza, the israeli war cabinet has referred to sinwar and his chief lieutenants as “dead men walking.” many of the military commanders and political leaders of hamas have been killed. the israeli military effort is unrelenting. on july 13th, the air force struck a hamas compound in al mawasi, west of khan younis, where israel intelligence had determined that deif was meeting with another hamas leader. deif, who is said to be responsible for hundreds of israeli deaths over the years, had previously proved so elusive that the journalist anshel pfeffer dubbed him the “scarlet pimpernel” of hamas, “a phantom hero of the resistance.” after the strike, the i.d.f. announced that deif was dead. hamas has not confirmed this. what is beyond dispute is that the attack near a site where thousands of displaced palestinians were living in tents killed ninety other people, half of whom were women and children, according to the gaza ministry of health. on july 31st, iranian authorities announced that israel had assassinated ismail haniyeh, the leader of the hamas politburo. the times reported that a bomb had been smuggled into the guesthouse in tehran where haniyeh was staying an act that threatens an even wider conflagration in the middle east. sinwar’s image close cut gray hair and beard, protruding ears, a penetrating gaze is known to nearly every israeli and palestinian. one image in particular: in 2021, after eleven days of fighting against the israelis, sinwar had his photograph taken sitting in an armchair, legs crossed, flashing a rare, defiant smile. he is surrounded by rubble that was once his house. soon, on social media, many other gazans appeared sitting on chairs outside their own pulverized homes. until 1948, sinwar’s parents and grandparents lived in al majdal, a town north of gaza now known as ashkelon. during the war against the newborn state of israel a period of suffering and displacement known in arabic as the nakba, or “catastrophe” the family fled south and into the gaza strip. born in 1962, sinwar grew up in a large family in the khan younis refugee camp. a depiction of the political and emotional landscape of sinwar’s youth can be found in an autobiographical novel that he wrote in 2004, while still in prison, called “al shawk wa’l qurunful” (translated as “the thorn and the carnation”). fellow prisoners “worked like ants” to smuggle out his manuscript and “bring it into the light,” according to the preface. last december, amazon began offering an english translation. the promotional copy promised that the novel would provide readers a rare opportunity to “traverse the corridors of [sinwar’s] mind, possibly where the seeds for the ‘flood of al aqsa’ operation . . . were sown.” amazon removed the book after several pro israel groups took offense and warned jeff bezos that selling it could be a violation of british and u.s. antiterrorism laws, but it’s still possible to find a digital copy online. sinwar’s fictive depiction of his life in gaza makes the novels of soviet socialist realism seem as fluid and fanciful as “don quixote.” the book is a stolid, schematic bildungsroman, but it is revealing in the way sinwar intends: as a portrait of palestinian life and the armed resistance. the story begins in june, 1967, during what became known as the six day war. ahmad, the young narrator and sinwar’s alter ego, has taken shelter with his family from the fighting between egypt and israel, which they believe will end with the liberation of palestine. but it’s soon clear to ahmad that the israelis will prevail. commentators on the voice of the arabs radio station had been gleefully issuing statements about “throwing the jews into the sea”; now their tone is mournful. the israelis have seized gaza and sinai from egypt; the golan heights from syria; and the west bank, including east jerusalem, from jordan. in israel, there is euphoria. in ahmad’s world, there is grief, shame, humiliation: “our dreams of returning to our homelands from which we were exiled began to crumble like the sandcastles we used to build as children.” ahmad’s father is believed dead in the fighting. his mother, a stoic figure of pious nobility, is left to hold the family together. against a backdrop of increasing repression, ahmad and his school friends play arabs and jews, instead of cowboys and indians. the israeli army dominates the strip. there are curfews, interrogations, arrests, soldiers storming into houses and harassing people at will. in retaliation, palestinians hurl stones and molotov cocktails. just as ahmad is clearly meant to represent the author, his family members are cutouts for the various resistance factions: one is a marxist, one a nationalist, one an ardent islamist. his nationalist brother argues that a compromise with the israelis is possible: two states for two peoples. an islamist cousin cannot countenance a jewish presence on the waqf, the god given muslim lands stretching from the jordan river to the mediterranean sea. eventually, ahmad, too, will become an islamist. on october 6, 1973, a radio blares the news that another war has broken out. the egyptians and syrians, intent on avenging the humiliating loss of 1967, have taken the israelis by surprise on the jewish holy day of yom kippur, fuelling more “dreams of victory and return.” but after several days these hopes are dashed. four years later, when the egyptian leader anwar sadat makes his historic visit to jerusalem and announces to the members of the knesset, israel’s parliament, that he is ready for peace, ahmad describes the moment as a “catastrophe,” a betrayal of the palestinian cause. every interaction with israelis, ahmad concludes, is either violent or morally reprehensible. the gazan men who find work inside the green line, in israeli cities, invariably indulge in the libertine pleasures of tel aviv. some take up with jewish women. but when those affairs end and the men return to their old lives in gaza, they are fallen souls. one of ahmad’s cousins, hassan, comes home after such a misadventure, and ahmad sees that “he had become more like the jews than his own people.” ahmad’s pious cousin ibrahim insists that hassan must be killed. ahmad suggests instead “that we ambush hassan and break his legs so he would remain bedridden in that house and stop harming others.” ahmad feels a deepening connection to the islamic youth groups flourishing in gaza. one day, he and some fellow students go on a field trip into israel. they pass the ruins of mosques and villages that were once palestinian and finally reach the al aqsa mosque, in jerusalem, one of the holiest sites in islam. “a shiver ran through my body,” ahmad recounts. on the way back home, he thinks about yet another site, the pulpit of salah al din the twelfth century muslim hero who defeated the crusaders which was destroyed by a christian arsonist, in 1969. ahmad thinks about the “sinful jewish hands” that rule jerusalem and asks, “is there a salah al din for this era?” in the novel, ahmad is transformed by an encounter with a sheikh whom he describes as a spiritual and political mentor. when sinwar was a young man, he met sheikh ahmed yassin, who at the time was one of the most influential islamist leaders in gaza. yassin, a member of the muslim brotherhood, was a figure of unlikely charisma. he was confined to a wheelchair, the result of a spinal injury that he suffered in a sporting accident as a boy, and he spoke in a high pitched voice. yet he built a fervent following. in the nineteen seventies and eighties, as the founder of mujama al islamiya, or the islamic center, he established mosques, youth groups, schools, and clinics. in 1984, he was arrested for amassing weapons. “sheikh yassin was a genius,” david hacham, a retired i.d.f. colonel who spent eight years in gaza and advised seven israeli defense ministers on arab affairs, told me. “i met him dozens of times. when you saw him, you saw a tiny, paralyzed guy. he hardly moved, but his mind was always working.” in the eighties, while the leadership of the palestine liberation organization was operating out of tunisia, yassin was able to appeal directly to people, particularly young gazans disenchanted with their lot and hungry for guidance. sinwar, who studied arabic at the islamic university of gaza, grew increasingly close to yassin, eventually becoming an aide de camp. in december, 1987, a spontaneous uprising began in gaza and then throughout the west bank that came to be known as the first intifada, or “shaking off.” it was sparked after an israeli vehicle struck and killed four gazan men as they returned home from their daily work in israel. many young palestinians were convinced that the accident had been a deliberate act of aggression, and went into the streets, hurling stones and setting tires ablaze. the day after the incident, yassin assembled a group of associates in a modest house in the al shati refugee camp, in gaza city, and, after long and feverish discussions, they founded hamas as an islamist alternative to the p.l.o. by that summer, hamas had issued a charter, complete with a stated determination to eradicate israel and “the nazism of the jews.” the charter’s description of jewish history was filled with familiar antisemitic conspiracy theories about a plot for global domination lifted from the tsarist era text “the protocols of the elders of zion.” hamas, from the start, was dedicated to jihad a struggle that was both spiritual and military. according to tareq baconi, the author of “hamas contained,” “waging jihad was understood as a way of being, as existing in a state of war or espousing a belligerent relationship with the enemy.” to establish internal discipline and moral rectitude, yassin set up the majd and selected yahya sinwar to help lead it. sinwar, who handled southern gaza for the majd, reportedly carried out his duties with icy efficiency and without a trace of regret. “he saw murder victims as people who needed to die,” a shin bet interrogator who had questioned sinwar told haaretz. “he brutally murdered a barber. why? because there was a rumor that the man had obscene material in the barbershop that he sometimes showed his clients quietly, behind a curtain.” but sinwar’s main responsibility was enforcing loyalty and punishing disloyalty. zaki chehab, a journalist who grew up in a palestinian refugee camp in lebanon, writes in his book “inside hamas” that yassin’s instructions were specific: “any palestinian informer who confesses to cooperating with the israeli authorities kill him straight away.” hacham told me that sinwar’s mission was to torture collaborators and intimidate anyone in the community thinking about working with the israelis. “he used to do it in the cruellest manner,” he said. “he would drip boiling oil on people’s heads to get them to confess to collaboration. people were terrified of him.” michael koubi, a former officer in the israeli security services who interrogated sinwar in prison, told me that he was the coldest man he had ever encountered. “he described to me very precisely how he killed people,” koubi said. “he took out a machete and cut off their heads. he put one suspected collaborator in a grave and buried him alive.” decapitations, boiling oil it is hard to confirm such lurid stories about sinwar, and certainly hamas refuses to credit them. but, as a 2009 amnesty international report published after one of the i.d.f.’s operations in gaza noted, men and women suspected of working as informants for the israelis were routinely abducted, tortured, executed, and “dumped . . . in isolated areas, or found in the morgue of one of gaza’s hospitals.” and israel has indeed recruited thousands of palestinian collaborators to provide intelligence, including the whereabouts of hamas leaders. yassin was killed in an israeli air strike in march, 2004. just a month later, his successor, abdel aziz al rantisi, met the same fate. after sinwar was arrested and sent to prison, in 1988, he betrayed no fear of his jailers. the shin bet interrogator recalled sinwar telling him, “you know that one day you will be the one under interrogation, and i will stand here as the government, as the interrogator.” after october 7th, the official said, “if i lived in a community near the gaza strip, i might have found myself in a tunnel, opposite that man. i absolutely remember how he said it to me, as a promise, his eyes red. how did he put it? ‘our roles will be reversed. the world will turn upside down for you.’ ” hamas leaders and supporters insist that the israelis require an outsized villain, and so they’ve made one of sinwar. resistance groups, like the irish republican army, have always punished collaborators as a necessity of war, they argue. when i asked basem naim, a member of hamas’s leadership, about sinwar’s nickname among israeli authorities the butcher of khan younis he told me, “i think this is nonsense. that is the first time i have ever heard this.” khaled hroub, a palestinian who has written two books about hamas, told me that, although sinwar is widely respected as a “great organizer,” the talk of ruthlessness hasn’t been proved. “before october 7th, i hadn’t heard all these terrible stories,” hroub said. “i had heard some. i think some of these stories came about to complete this image of sinwar the villain. he is decisive, that is true, and maybe people started to extrapolate from that and spice it up.” gershon baskin, a columnist and a peace activist who has sometimes acted as a civilian liaison with hamas leaders, particularly in prisoner exchange negotiations, cautioned me, “all these israeli experts and shin bet people and interrogators will tell you that they know exactly what sinwar knows and believes. but they can’t know. the dynamic of a meeting with someone who is your prisoner is obviously fraught.” and yet, he allowed, we do know a fair amount about sinwar: “during covid, he talked about how it would be a terrible thing if he died of covid and didn’t get a chance to be a martyr and kill a lot of the enemy at the same time.” yuval bitton, a retired dentist in his late fifties, is a tall, slouchy man with a mournful aspect. his english is good, but not as fluent as his arabic (his parents were immigrants from morocco) or his romanian (he studied in bucharest). he lives in a bungalow in kibbutz shoval, a short drive from gaza. his refrigerator and shelves are covered with snapshots of his three children. on a broiling morning, he flicked on the air conditioner and set out coffee and cookies. bitton grew up in beersheba, in southern israel. in 1996, after a brief career in private practice, he accepted an offer to work at the dental clinics of two prisons in the negev. he found himself treating members of hamas, fatah, and palestinian islamic jihad, who had been imprisoned for various terror related crimes. sinwar was among them. link copied at first, the number of security prisoners was relatively modest; hundreds had been released as part of the oslo peace accords between israel and the p.l.o. those who remained were considered some of the most hard core prisoners, as the authorities put it, “with jewish blood on their hands.” but the second intifada, which began in 2000, brought a brutal wave of suicide bombings and israeli incursions into palestinian cities and towns, and there was a sharp increase in arrests. “the prisoners retained the structure of the organizations they came from,” bitton said. “if it was hamas, they lived together as a group, fatah with fatah. they retained a semi military life. and they were very tough.” prisoners held periodic leadership ballots, and, in 2004, sinwar became the “emir” of the hamas prisoners. the security prisoners, bitton recalled, were in their cells for more than twenty hours a day. the hamas prisoners were particularly ascetic, assembling for the “count” roll call at 5 a.m. and then doing their morning prayers. during brief exercise periods, sinwar jogged and jumped rope. bitton took note of sinwar’s steeliness and remove, his refusal to speak personally with his jailers, his pitiless way of enforcing discipline among the other hamas prisoners. in the years to come, bitton spent hundreds of hours talking with sinwar, who seemed to have little interest in concealing his past or his intentions for the future. when bitton asked him whether achieving his goals was worth the lives of many innocent people, israelis and palestinians, sinwar replied, “we are ready to sacrifice twenty thousand, thirty thousand, a hundred thousand.” bitton’s account, which he has provided to many visitors, did not much differ from those of the palestinians i spoke with. mkhaimar abusada, a political scientist at al azhar university in gaza, told me, “to be from a refugee camp is not unique in gaza. that’s where most of us are from. what made sinwar who he is was two things. first, once you kill someone, it’s easier the second and third times. sinwar was acquainted with killing, with executions. he killed palestinian collaborators during the first intifada. second, his life in israeli jails made a lasting imprint on his personality. he became a leader there.” for palestinian prisoners, he added, jail is “not about serving time it’s about learning about israeli society, becoming fit, holding small discussion groups.” basem naim, the hamas leader, put it this way: “anyone who is arrested and imprisoned, from the first day will face two choices either to continue complaining about why he is here and about those who brought him to this station in his life, to jail, or to accept it as a fact in his life and to try to make the best out of this new situation. sinwar was one of those who chose the second option. he set out to convert this challenge into an opportunity.” in a meticulous hand, sinwar took notes on his reading, filling thousands of pages in journals. “prison builds you,” he told an interviewer years later. “especially if you are palestinian, because you live amid checkpoints, walls, restrictions of all kinds. only in prison do you finally meet other palestinians, and you have time for talking. [you’re] thinking about yourself, too. about what you believe in, the price you are willing to pay.” ehud yaari, a journalist known for decades in israel as an expert in middle eastern politics, visited a number of palestinian security prisoners, including sinwar. in their first encounter, yaari began speaking in arabic. “no, speak hebrew,” sinwar told him. “you speak better hebrew than the wardens.” sinwar had seen yaari on israeli television and presumably wanted to learn from him. “he is a straightforward man, no nonsense, no rhetoric, to the point, very calculated, clearly cunning,” yaari told me. the prisoners had permission to buy food in the canteen and cook in their cells. sinwar invited yaari to eat with him. “in the best arab tradition, he would feed you,” yaari recalled. but the warmth stopped there. in the early two thousands, sinwar was transferred to wing no. 4, a high security area of beersheba prison, along with other leaders of hamas, islamic jihad, and fatah, the largest component of the p.l.o. bitton, an observant professional, quickly figured out how to tell hamas men from fatah members: their teeth were better. hamas is a very religious outfit; its members don’t smoke, and they are careful about what they eat. even in prison, they were fastidious about their habits, retiring at 9 or 10 p.m.; many of the fatah men stayed up late, smoking, gossiping, watching television. in addition to being a dentist, bitton had trained in romania in general medicine, and he sometimes assisted the prison physicians. one afternoon in 2004, at the clinic, he saw sinwar, who was experiencing severe pain in the back of his neck. at first, sinwar did not recognize him, and then he said that he had lost his balance when getting up from prayer. bitton thought that he might be suffering from a stroke, and expressed alarm to his doctors. sinwar was sent to the soroka medical center, where he underwent emergency brain surgery to remove a potentially fatal growth. a few days later, bitton stopped by the hospital to see sinwar. “he said that he owed his life to me,” bitton recalled. bitton said that he helped broker an interview between sinwar and yoram binur, a correspondent for israeli television, in which sinwar acknowledged israeli’s military strength and held out the possibility of a hudna, a truce that could last a generation. after the interview, sinwar told bitton he was confident that israel could not count on its strength forever; it was innately fragile. fissures between the country’s religious and secular populations would deepen. “after twenty years, you will become weak,” sinwar said, “and i will attack you.” while filling cavities, bitton could engage inmates on everything from prison conditions to matters of politics. in 2007, he accepted an offer to become a full time prison intelligence officer. in this new position, he spent his days at ketziot, a large and notoriously harsh prison in the negev. around 2009, bitton recalled, sinwar got heavily involved in the negotiations surrounding gilad shalit, the israeli soldier who had been kidnapped three years earlier and was being held hostage in gaza. the israelis were prepared to give up hundreds of hamas and fatah prisoners in exchange, but they were reluctant to free anyone convicted of killing israelis after the start of the second intifada. sinwar was almost certain to be among those released. “after all,” bitton said, “he did not have jewish blood on his hands” only palestinian blood. it soon became clear that sinwar was a maximalist voice in the talks, insisting that even those who perpetrated the most serious crimes be released. bitton, who was also involved in the negotiations, heard from a west bank hamas leader named saleh al arouri that sinwar was holding up the talks. eventually, sinwar was stashed in solitary confinement so that the deal could be completed without him. on october 18, 2011, sinwar was one of hundreds of palestinian prisoners loaded onto buses headed to gaza and the west bank. nearly everyone in the hamas leadership knew that israel was paying an immense price for shalit. ahmed al jabari, a leader of the group’s military wing, told the newspaper al hayat that the prisoners were collectively responsible for the deaths of five hundred and sixty nine israelis. bitton thought that releasing sinwar was a terrible idea, one that would come back to haunt israel. before the buses left, israeli security officials demanded that prisoners sign statements promising never to engage in terrorist acts again. the lower ranking members of hamas signed. sinwar refused. as a young man, sinwar used to say that he had no need of a wife; he was married to the palestinian cause. but within a month of his release, according to yedioth ahronoth, he married a woman eighteen years his junior named samar. raised in a relatively affluent and pious family from gaza city that was known for its support of the palestinian resistance, she had earned a master’s degree in religion at the islamic university of gaza. sinwar did not find his bride on his own. his sisters selected her while he was on a pilgrimage to the holy sites of saudi arabia. samar wears a traditional niqab to cover her face. she and sinwar have three children. by 2007, hamas had displaced the palestinian authority as the dominant political presence in gaza first through legislative elections, then by prevailing in a deadly civil war. sinwar’s reputation as a prison leader catapulted him to the highest ranks of hamas almost as soon as he returned. he became a critical decision maker in the strip and was in frequent contact with ismail haniyeh, who at the time was hamas’s chief political leader in gaza; mohammed deif, the military commander; and important foreign allies, including the leaders of hezbollah, in lebanon. in 2012, he travelled to tehran to consult with general qassem suleimani, the head of the iranian revolutionary guards corps’ quds force. sinwar also remained involved in the sanctioning of collaborators. in 2015, he led an effort to punish a hamas commander named mahmoud ishtiwi, who was suspected of embezzlement and homosexuality and was thus susceptible to being compromised. khaled meshal, who was then hamas’s primary political leader, reportedly tried to de escalate the situation, but sinwar was unrelenting. ishtiwi’s relatives say that he was suspended from a ceiling and whipped for days. “i went through torture that no one has gone through in palestine, not by the palestinian authority, not even at the hands of the jews, but by hamas internal security,” ishtiwi wrote, according to documents that the i.d.f. claims it found in gaza during the current war and that were excerpted in haaretz. ishtiwi was convicted by a religious court and sentenced to death. he wrote a final letter to his wife: “i ask to die at your feet as i kiss them.” these words were a reference to a quotation from the prophet muhammad: “paradise is at the feet of mothers.” hamas has four centers of authority gaza, the west bank, the diaspora, and the prisons and a ruling politburo that makes policy. in 2017, haniyeh was elevated to the head of the politburo, and sinwar was elected as the over all chief of hamas in gaza. in the early years of his reign, sinwar sometimes presented a more nuanced view of hamas ideology. he persisted in the language of resistance and the claim that israel was an alien jewish entity on land bequeathed to islam. and yet, at moments, he hinted at compromise. link copied in 2018, an italian journalist named francesca borri visited gaza and arranged to interview sinwar. borri told me that sinwar wanted to send a message that he favored “quiet for quiet,” a pause in the armed hostilities with israel. “the truth is that a new war is in no one’s interest,” he told borri. “for sure, it’s not in ours. who would like to face a nuclear power with slingshots?” sinwar praised the “brilliant” young people of gaza, who managed to be inventive despite israel’s draconian control. “with old fax machines and old computers, a group of twentysomethings assembled a 3 d printer to produce the medical equipment that is barred from entry,” he told borri. “that’s gaza. we are not only destitution and barefoot children. we can be like singapore, like dubai. and let’s make time work for us. heal our wounds.” he also said that the jews had once been “people like freud, einstein, kafka. experts in mathematics and philosophy. now they are experts in drones and extrajudicial executions.” when borri asked sinwar to compare his life in jail with his life as a leader in gaza, he said, “i have only changed prisons. and, despite it all, the old one was much better than this one. i had water, electricity. i had so many books. gaza is much tougher.” in the years that followed, benjamin netanyahu, the israeli prime minister, put in place what is now widely known as the “conception,” a set of tactics intended to contain hamas while weakening the palestinian authority, in the west bank, and stifling any talk of peace negotiations. he allowed qatar to funnel billions of dollars into gaza, supposedly for civic projects and governance, even though he knew that sinwar was siphoning much of the money to buy arms and expand the “gaza metro,” the system of tunnels and bunkers. over time, sinwar and the rest of the hamas leadership lost faith that there would be any progress with israel. after the second intifada, the israeli political establishment, especially under netanyahu, became increasingly brazen in its contempt for palestinian interests, talking about annexing the west bank. the trump administration, led by jared kushner, helped draft the abraham accords, which aimed to normalize relations between israel and the sunni ruled states, particularly saudi arabia, sidelining the palestinians yet again. sinwar’s rhetoric began to darken. in 2019, he talked about the “traps” that hamas had set in its tunnels. if the israelis made any “stupid mistakes,” he said, “we will crush tel aviv.” he even declared, “the script is there, and the rehearsal has been completed. gaza will burst with the full force of its resistance, and the west bank will explode with all its power. our people will attack all the settlements at once.” eventually, he spoke of dispatching “ten thousand martyrdom seekers” to israel if al aqsa was harmed, of igniting fires in israeli forests, of “the eradication of israel through armed jihad and struggle.” i had not read much of any depth about sinwar’s evolution until june, 2021, when i came across a long piece in haaretz by yaniv kubovich, reporting that the israeli security establishment had revised its understanding of sinwar. kubovich’s sources noted that sinwar had dispensed with his “former pragmatism” and “relative humility” in favor of more aggressive military tactics and a messianic style of leadership. the shift seemed to come about not just because the israelis were ignoring the palestinian issue but also because sinwar had endured a startlingly close reëlection race that year. the analysts concluded that sinwar felt he was “paying a price” for his tacit arrangements with the israelis. kubovich’s sources told him that sinwar was now a more vivid presence on the streets, meeting frequently with ordinary residents. the sources were struck by how people reached out to touch him, how they hung photographs of him. “sinwar is turning himself into a spiritual figure,” one told kubovich. “he is trying to create myths around himself and to talk about himself as someone chosen by god to fight for jerusalem on behalf of the muslims.” in may, 2021, fighting broke out between hamas and israel after israeli police raided the al aqsa mosque, amid protests against the looming eviction of palestinian families from their homes in the east jerusalem neighborhood of sheikh jarrah. in eleven days, gazan forces killed roughly a dozen israelis, whereas the i.d.f. killed two hundred and sixty palestinians. the israeli security establishment concluded that sinwar, at least in his own mind, was no longer merely a palestinian leader. he was now a leader of the arabs, “instructed by god to protect jerusalem and al aqsa.” he began saying that the biggest gift israel could give him would be to make him a martyr on a grand scale. “i’m leaving now by car, heading home,” he said. “they know where i live i’m waiting for them.” there were many hamas speeches and public meetings prior to october 7th that should have instilled a heightened sense of alarm in the netanyahu government. one took place on september 30, 2021, at the commodore hotel in gaza city, at a conference called “promise of the hereafter: post liberation palestine.” the purpose of the discussions, according to accounts by haaretz and the middle east media research institute, was to prepare for a future after “liberation” that is, after the state of israel “disappears.” the conference attendees called for a declaration of independence that would be a “direct continuation” of two earlier proclamations: one drawn up after caliph umar took control of jerusalem from the byzantines, in the seventh century, and one from after salah al din defeated the crusaders and liberated the al aqsa mosque, in the twelfth century. sinwar did not attend the proceeding, but sent a representative to assure his allies that “victory is nigh.” the plans discussed at the commodore hotel were precise. hamas had compiled a “registry” of israeli apartments, educational institutions, power stations, sewage systems, and gas stations, all of which it intended to seize. shekels would be changed into “gold, dollars, or dinars.” the plans sorted out hamas’s intentions toward the existing jewish population, deciding who would be prosecuted or killed, who would be permitted to leave or to integrate into the new state. the delegates were particularly concerned with “preventing a brain drain” of “educated jews and experts in the areas of medicine, engineering, technology, and civilian and military industry.” such people “should not be allowed to leave and take with them the knowledge and experience that they acquired while living in our land and enjoying its bounty, while we paid the price for all this in humiliation, poverty, sickness, deprivation, killing, and arrests.” shlomi eldar, an israeli journalist with myriad sources in gaza and the west bank, told me, “the conference was serious, because the hamas leadership stopped thinking logically and began thinking religiously. when you think that you have been chosen by god to carry out his mission, you believe everything is possible.” sinwar not only blessed the conference but also praised the way armed struggle had been celebrated in gazan pop culture. in may, 2022, he gave a speech lauding “fist of the free,” a television series that aired on al aqsa, a hamas sponsored station. the show was advertised as a kind of answer to “fauda,” an israeli series that features brave but tenderhearted commandos who carry out daring operations in the west bank and gaza. in “fist of the free,” hamas soldiers repel an israeli invasion of gaza and win glorious victories of counterattack, storming military outposts across the fence and taking hostages. the series, sinwar said, “has a great impact on the struggle of our martyrs and their jihad and their preparation for the path of liberation and return.” of course, history played backward can take on a devotional clarity. in december, 2022, at the annual commemoration of the founding of hamas, the organization invoked the phrase “we are coming with a roaring flood.” mkhaimar abusada, the scholar from al azhar university, dismissed such talk as a “big joke” in those days. “they’ve talked about this for a long time, the destruction of israel and liberation from the river to the sea,” he said. “but as a political scientist i thought this was just to keep the palestinian people busy with fantasies.” yet there were other signs, too. around that time, palestinian islamic jihad, a smaller but no less violent resistance group, launched rockets at israel. hamas chose not to join the fight, putting out the word that it was holding fire for a more consequential battle. samer sinijlawi, a fatah politician in east jerusalem, told me, “sinwar did everything possible to prepare, and he talked about it openly, but nobody believed it.” he added, “israel went to sleep on october 6th and thought there is a cat sleeping in gaza. they woke up the next morning only to discover a dinosaur there.” at 6:43 a.m. on october 7th, avi rosenfeld, a brigadier general who led the i.d.f.’s 143rd division the gaza division sent out an urgent military communication: “the philistines have invaded.” the reference was well understood. in the iron age, the philistines, the sworn enemies of the israelites, settled near what is now the gaza strip. as recounted in the book of samuel, the conflict reached a state of emergency when a messenger came to saul, the first king of israel, and alerted him, “hurry and come, for the philistines have invaded the land!” saul’s army fell to the philistines. rosenfeld’s coded call to arms proved futile. netanyahu and his security leaders had dismissed repeated warnings of an attack, and, when it came, the region near gaza was nearly defenseless. hamas’s overarching determination to carry out a major military operation was made collectively, by its leaders in gaza, the west bank, israeli prisons, and the diaspora. yet the raid’s planning and execution were largely in the hands of yahya sinwar, along with mohammed deif. haniyeh, the politburo chairman, who was living in qatar, had little influence on the specifics. as basem naim, the hamas leader, told me, “the operational decisions were all made by the military wing in gaza. we don’t interfere in the timing and the tactics.” sinwar’s planning reflected his acute awareness of israel and its history. the day of the assault was both shabbat and simchat torah, the last of a series of important holidays in the fall. it was also the fiftieth anniversary of the surprise yom kippur attack, and israel was immersed in a prolonged and melancholic period of self reflection. young israelis read accounts of how golda meir, moshe dayan, and other leaders had minimized intelligence reports that an attack was imminent. the assault on sinai and golan came on yom kippur, the day of atonement, when the nation is entirely shut down. in the first days of fighting, israel suffered such heavy losses that there were fears that the state itself would be destroyed. yet no event in the seventy five year history of israel had undermined the nation’s sense of security and military superiority like sinwar’s attack did. after launching an unprecedented barrage of missiles toward israel and using a variety of weapons drones, r.p.g.s to “blind” its communications and surveillance systems, sinwar’s men broke through the border fence at sixty different places. thousands of hamas led soldiers poured into southern israel, with orders to kill and kidnap as many soldiers and civilians as possible. after them came ordinary gazans some armed, some not killing, kidnapping, looting, and, always, filming. it would later be revealed that israeli intelligence had long been in possession of a hamas war plan known as jericho wall, a near exact map of the events of october 7th. sinwar had even sent a clandestine message to the israelis a few weeks beforehand, warning them to expect a flareup in the prisons. the message, according to channel 12, circulated in the highest ranks of the mossad, shin bet, and the i.d.f.; both netanyahu and the defense minister, yoav gallant, were “updated.” yet when israeli military leaders got word, shortly after 3 a.m. on the day of the attack, that hamas soldiers were undertaking maneuvers, the commanders concluded that they were likely just exercises. in fact, most gazans could never have envisioned such an assault. “this was beyond imagination,” abusada, the political scientist, told me. “maybe hezbollah could imagine something like this. but hamas has been under siege for seventeen years. we never thought that any kind of group was capable of killing and kidnapping this many israelis.” link copied although netanyahu has resisted any apology or accountability for his role in the collapse, there have been some resignations in the security establishment. rosenfeld, the general who sent out the call about the philistines, stepped down in june, saying that he had “failed in my life’s mission” of keeping the region around gaza secure. aharon haliva, the head of military intelligence, resigned in april. in a letter admitting his failure and the failure of the “directorate under my command,” he said, “i have carried that black day with me ever since, day after day, night after night.” it is assumed that there will be many more resignations when the war is finally over and there is a full government investigation, as there was after the yom kippur war. one afternoon, north of tel aviv, i met with michael milshtein, a highly regarded analyst who worked for twenty years in military intelligence; his last position, before he retired, five years ago, was as head of the department of palestinian affairs. in hindsight, milshtein said, there were many reasons that the israeli security establishment failed to anticipate the attack. for one thing, israel was concentrating on threats from iran and its proxies in lebanon, syria, iraq, and yemen. but neglecting to listen carefully to what sinwar was saying publicly was particularly unforgivable. “he said, in the next war, we will initiate the fighting and the war will be on israeli territory, not palestinian,” milshtein told me. “this was in open sources! sinwar and others said it in public!” in recent years, he pointed out, hamas had carried out extensive training, built around scenarios in which invaders swarmed kibbutzim and military bases. “the main problem was not technical,” he said. “the main problem was the deep misunderstanding of the other. it’s like you look at that coffee cup and see an elephant.” rashid khalidi, the author of “the hundred years’ war on palestine,” told me, “they will teach this in war colleges for a long time how this operation was achieved, how this intelligence failure happened much like they study pearl harbor or the 1973 war.” a senior israeli security official told me that the parallel with 1973 was uncanny: the security establishment had suffered from a “vain inability to recognize that yahya sinwar’s messianic speeches and ambitious military rehearsals had been serious.” in fact, the official added, information collected by the i.d.f. suggests that hamas had precise intelligence on the surrounding military bases and kibbutzim, and that its fighters would have gone even deeper into israel if they had been able to. the bloodshed and the trauma of the past ten months surpass anything in the history of the conflict between israelis and palestinians. on october 7th, about twelve hundred israelis were killed, thousands more wounded; approximately two hundred and forty were taken hostage. whole kibbutzim were destroyed. in the air and ground assaults that continue today, israel has ravaged the gaza strip. the figure of forty thousand deaths is frequently invoked, but it will take a long time before the dead and the injured are fully accounted for. apartment buildings, mosques, schools, hospitals, and universities have been reduced to rubble. hundreds of thousands of gazans have lost their homes. the international ramifications are still unfolding: the armed exchanges between israel and iran, between israel and hezbollah, with dark forebodings of an even wider confrontation to come; the houthi attacks on israeli ships and even tel aviv; the counterattack on yemen; the immense wave of pro palestine demonstrations across europe, the u.s., and arab capitals; the accusations of war crimes against both israel and hamas in the international criminal court; the charges of genocide against israel. as khalidi told me, “something has been started that has changed everything ‘changed, changed utterly,’ as yeats put it. we have never been at this level of armed resistance or this level of armed punishment in response. this is israel’s worst defeat, and at the same time this is worse, more deadly, day by day, for palestinians than the nakba itself.” amos harel, a military and political analyst for haaretz, said that one of the most dispiriting aspects of the current nightmare is the way sinwar was able to provoke the netanyahu government into a state of horrific and ruinous fury. “the sense in israeli society is that we are going down the drain, and sinwar has helped drag us there,” harel told me. “when we justify things we never would have justified before, we are in the moral gutter. words like ‘revenge’ used to be heard only among the bezalel smotrichs and the itamar ben gvirs of the world” two particularly reactionary ministers in netanyahu’s cabinet. “now military units and mainstream colonels are using terms like nekama, revenge. it’s almost part of the norm now. i am not sure it was part of sinwar’s great plan, but that is where we are.” not long after october 7th, i drove to the israeli region known as otef aza, the gaza envelope. there were funerals taking place all over the country, many each day. one of the dead was tamir adar, the thirty eight year old nephew of yuval bitton, the dentist who helped save sinwar’s life. adar had died while defending kibbutz nir oz; his killers took his body to gaza, where it is still being held. in the afternoon, i went to kibbutz be’eri. established in 1946, be’eri was known as a particularly old fashioned left wing peacenik community. before the attack, it was a prosperous kibbutz, with twelve hundred residents and a waiting list. now it was a scene of charred ruins, a dystopia. shortly after arriving, i encountered barak hiram, an i.d.f. brigadier general. he told me that he had been at home in tekoa, a west bank settlement, when he heard the news of the hamas incursion. he headed south, and eventually led troops in be’eri. when the fighting was over, he said, he and his men came across corpses everywhere in the houses, under trees. later, hiram and other commanders would be investigated for their actions in be’eri, including ordering a tank to fire on a house where hostages were being held; they were cleared of any violations. “they were armed to their teeth,” hiram said of the hamas fighters. “they had rocket launchers, r.p.g.s, a lot of russian equipment, ak 47s, antihuman mines, claymores. they tried to booby trap a lot of civilian bodies with hand grenades, taking out the safety pins and putting them under the body. they knew that someone would come and try to evacuate them. while we were fighting, digging into the kibbutz, trying to get to more civilians, we heard more and more shooting all around. it was a bloodbath. it was a massacre. they went from one house to another, murdering everyone.” then the general paused and said a single word that has stayed with me: “einsatzgruppen.” these were mobile paramilitary units of the third reich, notorious for rounding up and slaughtering jews, polish clergy, romani people anyone in the path of the nazi invasion. hiram had seen combat before, in lebanon and gaza. eighteen years ago, he lost an eye in a battle with hezbollah. but he could not fathom the brutality of what he encountered in be’eri. he wasn’t prepared to see gaza as the gazans do, as the site of an intolerable existence. even before october 7th, electricity, potable water, food, and medical supplies were constantly in short supply there. the unemployment rate was more than forty per cent. children grew up in a world of intermittent war and persistent trauma, of barbed wire and surveillance. hiram’s was a familiar israeli narrative, though, and not only on the right: we tried to make peace; we got suicide bombers. we withdrew from gaza; we got only rockets. and now this. what was next? “we got our orders, and we are ready to fight and diminish hamas and exterminate them wherever they are,” hiram said. “exterminate,” in reference to a small territory crowded with civilians who had nowhere to go, was as jolting as “einsatzgruppen.” as hostage and ceasefire negotiations dragged on for months, the fighting shifted to a new phase. the israeli assaults have been so prolonged and ferocious that hamas no longer has the troop strength or the command and control mechanisms of a competent army. what remains of its military is a diminished insurgent force, with fighters popping up from tunnels or from the rubble to shoot at israeli soldiers. it is not clear where sinwar is hiding, but intelligence sources told me that he could well be back in the tunnels under khan younis. one reason the hostage and ceasefire negotiations are so time consuming, they say, is that it often takes days for sinwar’s messages to reach the negotiators in doha or cairo. ehud yaari, the israeli journalist who visited sinwar in prison, told me that, about four months into the war, an aide of sinwar’s had approached him with a communication. “the main message was ‘you have done everything you can in gaza, in terms of the destruction of gaza and destroying hamas capabilities and killing its personnel. there is nothing much more you can do for now,’ ” yaari told me. “the implication was that he is not in a hurry to go for a hostage deal and strip himself of the defensive shield of hostages around him.” under the circumstances, the closest i could come to talking with sinwar was to talk with one of his associates in this case, basem naim, of the hamas politburo. naim earned a medical degree in germany and practiced surgery at the al shifa hospital, in gaza city. in the early days of the war, he unleashed plenty of spin in the international press, denying, for instance, that hamas soldiers had killed any civilians at all on october 7th. (“things went out of control,” sinwar reportedly said in one of his messages, according to the wall street journal. naim blamed, variously, the other palestinians who breached the fence that day and israeli friendly fire.) like others before him, naim began by raising the history of gaza. “a whole generation has been losing any hope of a better future,” he said, speaking from qatar. “we have tried through peaceful means, protests, diplomatic means to bring down the siege. but israel was supported by the international powers, especially the u.s., and continues this aggression and this siege on gaza. we also have more than fifty five hundred palestinian prisoners in israeli jails, and some of them are there for decades. so we had to go for a step to oblige israel to negotiate this release.” the “broader context,” he continued, included the approaching normalization between israel and saudi arabia; matters related to control of the al aqsa mosque; the expansion of settlements in the west bank; and plans that “basically target the elimination of the palestinians and the undermining of their cause forever.” on october 7th, ismail haniyeh, the head of the hamas politburo, addressed the jews of israel. “get out of our land. get out of our sight,” he said. “you are strangers in this pure and blessed land. there is no place or safety for you.” not long after that, another senior hamas official, ghazi hamad, declared on lebanese television that the existence of israel was “illogical” and that it must be eliminated. “we must teach israel a lesson,” he said. “the al aqsa flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth.” naim’s stance was more modulated in its language, but not in its intent. when i asked if hamas would repeat such an attack, he responded, “i cannot say no.” the essential issue remained, he said: ending the occupation and establishing a palestinian state. “if we can achieve it politically, o.k., but, if not, we will do it again maybe like october 7th, or maybe another way.” he added that there were other means available to hamas to “delegitimize the enemy: resistance in the media, peaceful protests, and armed resistance in the west bank and jerusalem.” even with so many dead, with gaza in ruins, naim insisted that hamas had won a great victory. considering the gap in the “capabilities” of the two sides, he said, “the weaker party can claim victory if it is able to survive.” naim was especially gratified that the war had “undermined israel’s international reputation.” his one note of disappointment was that it had not yet become a full blown regional conflict. “we didn’t consult with any other party, but, yes, we expect support from other parties,” he said, measuring every word. “how much and how to do it is their decision.” one morning, i drove to east jerusalem and met yehuda shaul, an israeli peace activist, and nathan thrall, a former director of the arab israeli project at the international crisis group and the author of a pulitzer prize winning book about a palestinian family living under occupation, “a day in the life of abed salama.” shaul is a garrulous, barrel bellied raconteur in his forties. he grew up in a conservative, religious family in jerusalem and was radicalized by his experiences in the i.d.f., particularly his months in the west bank city of hebron, during the second intifada. as we sat in a park near mt. scopus, shaul recalled how he and his fellow conscripts were ordered to raid palestinian homes in the middle of the night, toss shock grenades, light fires on rooftops a range of harassing activities known as “making our presence felt.” toward the end of shaul’s service, he began gathering testimony from other soldiers about their experiences. he wrote anonymous letters to the press describing what he had seen. in 2004, he co founded breaking the silence, one of a small clutch of left leaning anti occupation n.g.o.s in israel. link copied we spent the day travelling through the west bank, to examine how the architecture of the occupation had rendered it ever more entrenched and impossible to dismantle. we rode in a boxy white van north toward ramallah, with shaul pausing to note how a cluster of settlements had been constructed to surround a palestinian town, and to point out the scene of a recent settler attack on a palestinian village. shaul, who describes himself as a “two state extremist,” certainly had no sympathy for the hamas attack, calling it “murderous.” but he has also watched for years as the government kept conditions in gaza on a “low boil,” while undermining the palestinian authority, preventing any progress toward an accord. and now, he said, “after october 7th, the camp that opposes israeli rule over the palestinians based on a sense of morality and values has shrunk to maybe four per cent of israeli jews.” when we reached ramallah, we called on a middle aged palestinian activist who’d just been released after nearly eight months in an israeli prison. there had been no charges levelled against him; like so many others in the west bank, he had been the subject of “administrative detention.” he wasn’t eager for me to reveal his name, lest he attract further attention. a young female activist, who sat nearby, had also been detained for a few weeks. while the man, whom i’ll call abdul, fixed tea in the kitchen, she told me that she had been deeply depressed by the war she just couldn’t take her eyes off the suffering she was seeing on social media and that she’d recently dropped her legal studies. “i don’t believe in law anymore,” she said. abdul came to the living room to sit with us and several of his old friends. some of them, too, had been detained. all of them had lost faith in the palestinian authority and saw hamas as the only group with any sense of agency. “to be a palestinian can’t be about being a victim,” abdul said. “the refugees have a right to return, not because they are victims in a refugee camp but because they are human beings.” shaul, who has known abdul for a long time, remarked on how much weight he’d lost in prison more than thirty pounds. “i didn’t have anything left to lose,” abdul said, patting his vanished gut. he sketched out the conditions in the israeli jail: a two hundred and fifty square foot cell for eleven men, a small window, a toilet, a primitive shower, just a tiny opening in the door. so little air that they often grew faint. he described the daily rations, typically a paltry serving of falafel or cold turkey with a “tiny bit of mushy, half cooked rice.” abdul told me that the war and his months in prison had changed him. “i have always believed in nonviolent resistance,” he said. “but they say i am a terrorist anyway, that i am like sinwar. the world talks about international law and the peace process, but we get nothing. nothing. so how can i believe in international law and negotiation? after october 7th, we’ve paid a price, but we feel like we are nearer to reaching our goal.” this was hard to hear. later, when i spoke to one of the most liberal minded intellectuals in the west bank, the human rights lawyer raja shehadeh, he said that, when he’d first heard the news that hamas had broken through the fence on october 7th, his reaction was celebratory, born of a sense that this was a “legitimate” act of resistance. “i thought that it’ll finally make it clear for israel that barriers and fences and wars even the most sophisticated of wars will not protect israel,” shehadeh told me. then he learned about the cruelty of the ensuing hours the killings, the kidnappings, the sexual violence. “that is something that should not have happened,” he said. “it’s a criminal action.” opinion polls reflect some displeasure with hamas, particularly in gaza, where the misery is so profound. “sinwar spent twenty odd years in jail, and the radicalization that takes place in jail can go both ways,” ibrahim dalalsha, a political strategist in ramallah, told me. “it can go the nelson mandela way, and it can go the sinwar way.” ghaith al omari, a former adviser to the palestinian authority who now lives in washington, was even more critical. “not many people end up killing people with their own hands,” he said. “sinwar is a criminal and a psychopath, someone willing to do something like october 7th. forget the killing and kidnapping of israelis for a moment. he knew what it would bring on his own people. you’d have to be blind not to see that.” but, judging by what i heard in ramallah, this is now a minority position. as abdul talked with his friends, thrall leaned toward me and said that in the west bank even people who have little sympathy for hamas believe that the massacre and the global consequences of israel’s assault on gaza have in a phrase i heard everywhere “put the palestinian issue back on the table.” neomi neumann, who led the research unit of shin bet from 2017 to 2021, told me that sinwar had scored a great political victory by showing that israel “could be hit hard” and by undermining its international support. the c.i.a. director, william burns, reportedly told a closed door meeting that, although sinwar is concerned about being blamed by many gazans for sparking the war and is facing pressure from other hamas commanders to accept a ceasefire deal, he is not concerned about being killed. palestinian and israeli sources alike said that sinwar almost certainly sees himself as the triumphal player in a great historical drama. as neumann put it, “from his point of view, he is the modern day salah al din.” in ramallah, our visit was coming to an end. abdul said, “i may not support hamas, but i support the struggle. we cannot go on losing and losing.” there was no bottom to his quiet fury. and, like the i.d.f. general in be’eri, he found his frame of reference in the second world war. the israelis, he said, were no longer the victims of hitler: “they now seem to want to be hitler. ‘the most moral army in the world?’ all a big lie.” as we got up to leave, i asked abdul what he thought about sinwar. “sinwar is in every home in palestine,” he said. “he is the most important palestinian in the world.” ♦ (with additional reporting by ruth margalit.) searching for the cause of a catastrophic plane crash. the man who spent forty two years at the beverly hills hotel pool. gloria steinem’s life on the feminist frontier. where the amish go on vacation. how colonel sanders built his kentucky fried fortune. what does procrastination tell us about ourselves? fiction by patricia highsmith: “the trouble with mrs. blynn, the trouble with the world” sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from the new yorker. sections more © 2025 condé nast. all rights reserved. the new yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our affiliate partnerships with retailers. the material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, 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profile sections local tv featured more from nbc follow nbc news news alerts there are no new alerts at this time shira pinson dramatic footage released by the israeli military that purport to show yahya sinwar's final moments will be etched in the palestinian national memory for generations to come: the defiance of sinwar, covered in dust and with his right arm appearing to have been blown off, yet still fighting. it's an image that brings to mind an uncomfortable comparison to israel’s national hero joseph trumpeldor, the one armed zionist resistance fighter. trumpeldor has become a mythical figure, an icon of zionism and heroic patriotism. he died more than a century ago in the 1920 battle for tel hai, but his legacy lives on, inspiring generation after generation of kids turned soldiers. his famous last words were said to be, "it’s good to die for our country." the phrase is displayed in children’s classrooms in israel, written in textbooks and recited on memorial day. songs were written about his famous final words and fervent fighting spirit. streets named after trumpeldor can be found in cities across israel, and a lion’s monument stands where trumpeldor fell. for many israelis, though, it feels uncomfortable to draw a comparison between their iconic hero, the symbol of courageous zionism, and sinwar   the man who died trying to eradicate it. still, it’s not unreasonable to think that sinwar’s fighting spirit in his last moments will leave a legacy inspiring generations to come   and the drone footage released by israel showing it will likely serve as a digital monument to palestinian resistance. aaron gilchrist carlo angerer reporting from berlin, germany national security spokesperson john kirby said hamas is in a much weaker position than ever after the death of its leader, yahya sinwar. speaking to the press in berlin, kirby said this has created a unique opportunity to discuss a cease fire and the return of hostages from gaza. “the military structure of hamas has just been nearly decimated,” he said. “they are absolutely incapable, as you and i are speaking here today, of conducting another attack on the scale of oct. 7.” still, kirby warned, hamas, while a “shadow of their former self,” could still be lethal and has enough capability left that it should not be underestimated. “they still exist as a terrorist organization. they’re still in gaza. they’re still holding hostages,” he said, adding that while there are no active negotiations taking place, this could change now. “we have never stopped having conversations with our counterparts in qatar and egypt about the possibility of getting something started,” he said. omer bekin elizabeth chuck in a briefing today, idf spokesman lt. col. nadav shoshani revealed further details about the operation that killed yahya sinwar. while the search for sinwar took a year, the battle began on wednesday when idf forces identified three suspects in rafah. after an exchange of fire, sinwar was wounded, shoshani said. sinwar and the two others sought refuge in separate buildings. idf forces engaged them, killed the two others, and later used a drone and a tank to demolish the third building where sinwar was located, according to shoshani. sinwar was identified through dna, fingerprint, and dental tests. the area had been booby trapped, slowing the process of retrieving his body, he said. elizabeth chuck abbas zaki, a member of fatah’s central committee, issued a statement following hamas' confirmation of sinwar's death. fatah, which dominates the palestinian authority that governs the west bank, has long been a rival of hamas, which pushed fatah out of power in gaza in 2007. the factions signed a declaration of unity in beijing in july. sinwar ended his life with "honorable heroism," zaki said in his statement. "he was not hiding underground or behind the confrontation lines, but rather he was carrying his weapon and his quiver and fighting like any resistance fighter in the field." hannah peart iranian president masoud pezeshkian said in a statement today that the death of hamas leader yahya sinwar “will not weaken the resistance” against israel, while noting that it is “a deep loss.” in a separate statement on x, iranian foreign minister abbas araghchi said "the cause for liberation of palestine from occupation is more alive than ever." iran is the primary state backer of hamas. nbc news "the war will continue and seems in won't end," a resident of the west bank told nbc news, in reaction to the death of yahya sinwar. elizabeth chuck the killing of yahya sinwar presents an opportunity to negotiate a cease fire, u.s. defense secretary lloyd austin told reporters today after a nato meeting in brussels. sinwar’s death "provides an extraordinary opportunity to achieve a lasting cease fire, to end this awful war and to rush humanitarian aid into gaza," he said, according to reuters. the statement strikes a divergent note from israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu, who vowed today to continue the war. austin also reaffirmed america's commitment to israel, adding that the u.s. forces in the middle east are ready to support israel's defense. max butterworth people gather on the streets of ramallah, in the occupied west bank today, waving palestinian flags and holding portraits of slain hamas leader yahya sinwar. khalid razak elizabeth chuck khalil al hayya, a top official of hamas' political bureau, said in a speech today that the group is undeterred by yahya sinwar’s death. the death of sinwar "will only increase the strength and solidity of our movement," al hayya said, calling sinwar "a continuation of the caravan of great martyrs in the footsteps of the founding sheikh ahmed yassin," who was assassinated by israel in 2004. al hayya did not name a successor to sinwar but made clear that hamas would remain steadfast in its perseverance. "hamas is moving forward until the establishment of the palestinian state on all palestinian soil with jerusalem as its capital," he said. reuters the israeli military said on friday it sent another army unit to support its forces operating in jabalia, the largest of gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, where residents said tanks blew up roads and houses as they thrust further into the territory. residents of jabalia in northern gaza said israeli tanks had reached the heart of the camp, using heavy air and ground fire, after pushing through suburbs and residential districts. they added that the israeli army was destroying dozens of houses on a daily basis, sometimes from the air and the ground and by placing bombs in buildings then detonating them remotely. the israeli military said its forces, which have been operating in jabalia for the past two weeks, killed dozens of militants in close quarters combat on thursday and carried out aerial strikes and dismantled military infrastructure. nbc news jerusalem residents said they hoped for a “positive stage” in israel’s gaza war, following the killing of hamas leader yahya sinwar. mithil aggarwal the israel defense forces said it killed two people it called "terrorists" who crossed a few feet over the border into israel from jordan. the suspects were identified earlier today, idf said, and the forces exchanged fire with the two people. one idf reservist and one idf soldier were injured, it added. idf also said that it suspected the "presence of an additional terrorist" in the area. the jordanian armed forces said in a statement today that its soldiers had not crossed the border. nbc news hamas' collective leadership confirmed yahya sinwar's death today in a lengthy statement that lauded the assassinated head of the militant group's "martyrdom." "the martyr leader yahya sinwar was a continuation of the caravan of great martyr leaders," the statement issued on telegram read, along with a long list of slain senior members of the group. the group vowed to continue fighting until the "comprehensive" liberation and the "return and the establishment of the palestinian state on the entire palestinian national soil with jerusalem as its capital." hannah peart the israel defense forces said on friday that it is calling up an additional reserve brigade for operational missions to support its forces in northern israel, where cross border clashes with hezbollah are ongoing. this official announcement was posted in a statement on telegram, saying the move will “enable the continuation of combat efforts” against hezbollah and “the achievement of the goals of the war, including the safe return of the residents of northern israel to their homes.” reuters prime minister benjamin netanyahu’s promises to press on with israel’s wars in gaza and lebanon dashed hopes today that the killing of hamas leader yahya sinwar might help end more than a year of escalating conflict in the middle east. lebanese militant group hezbollah, meanwhile, vowed to escalate fighting against israel and its backer iran said “the spirit of resistance” would be strengthened by the death of its palestinian ally sinwar in gaza. sinwar, a mastermind of the oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered the gaza war, was killed during an operation by israeli soldiers in the palestinian enclave wednesday, a pivotal event in the yearlong conflict. netanyahu called sinwar’s killing a milestone late yesterday but vowed to keep up the war, which in recent weeks expanded from fighting against palestinian group hamas in gaza into an invasion of southern lebanon and the bombardment of large swaths of the country. “the war, my dear ones, is not yet over,” netanyahu told israelis, saying fighting would continue until hostages held by hamas are released. aaron gilchrist carlo angerer reporting from berlin, germany during president joe biden’s visit to berlin today, he addressed recent developments in the middle east and the conflict in ukraine. speaking alongside german chancellor olaf scholz, he said they would discuss the regional security situation in the middle east and also thanked germany for holding iran accountable for “destabilizing policies.” the death of hamas leader yahya sinwar yesterday “represents a moment of justice,” biden said. “he had the blood of americans and israelis, palestinians and germans and so many others on his hands, i told the prime minister of israel yesterday, let’s also make this moment an opportunity to seek a path to peace, a better future in gaza without hamas.” chancellor scholz said it is more important than ever to prevent an escalation in the region and added that with the death of hamas leader yahya sinwar “we now hopefully see a tangible prospect” for a cease fire in gaza and a hostage release. the two leaders are scheduled to meet with british prime minister keir starmer and french president emmanuel macron later today. biden announced thursday that he will send secretary of state antony blinken to israel early next week to advance diplomatic efforts. reuters aurora almendralaurora almendral is a london based editor with nbc news digital. a united nations’ unifil peacekeeping mission spokesperson said today that the 10,000 strong force would remain in lebanon despite several direct attacks, some of which he described as deliberate, by the israeli military in recent days. “we need to stay, they asked us to move,” unifil spokesperson andrea tenenti said by video link from beirut. he added that morale among peacekeepers, several of whom have been injured by the attacks, remained high. asked about the possible use of self defense against israel, tenenti said it could be used but it was important to deconflict tensions. “the devastation and destruction of many villages along the blue line, and even beyond, is shocking,” he said, referring to a u.n. mapped demarcation separating lebanon from israel and the israeli occupied golan heights. asked about the downing of a drone near its ship off the lebanese coast yesterday, he said: “the drone was coming from the south but circling around the ship and getting very, very close, a few meters away from the ship.” tenenti also said that unifil has found traces of the possible use of white phosphorous near one of its bases several months ago. white phosphorous is an incendiary weapon, and its indiscriminate use is a potential violation of international humanitarian law. keir simmons reporting from dubai, uae in the militant group's first public response to israel's killing of hamas leader yahya sinwar, a senior hamas member today told nbc news that the organization would not let up on its fight. "israel believes that killing our leaders means the end of our movement and the struggle of the palestinian people," said basem naim, a member of the organization's political bureau, when asked whether sinwar’s death marked the beginning of the end of hamas. he named a series of leaders who had been assassinated by israel, such as founders sheikh ahmed yassin and abdel aziz al rantisi, and added: "hamas each time became stronger and more popular, and these leaders became an icon for future generations to continue the journey towards a free palestine." hamas says it launched the oct. 7 terrorist attacks in response to israel's actions and treatment of palestinians in gaza, jerusalem and the occupied west bank, and in a bid to derail israeli normalization efforts with arab states. "hamas is a liberation movement led by people looking for freedom and dignity, and this cannot be eliminated," he said. hamas, which does not officially recognize israel and has been designated a terrorist group by the united states and others, has run gaza since it was elected in 2006. doha madani sinwar is the same as any other person "afflicted" in gaza, and his death wasn’t significant   it's "regular news," said ahmed yossef, who described himself as a former deputy director of education in gaza. he added that he has “no optimism” that there will be a truce or a peace process. "he is the same as anyone in the palestinian community," yossef said. "in my opinion, things will be the same. nothing will change at all   it may get worse." omer bekin reporting from tel aviv, israel israeli president isaac herzog commended the country's military and security forces for killing sinwar, whom he described as the mastermind behind years of "heinous acts of terrorism against israeli civilians." sinwar dedicated his life to bloodshed and "destabilizing the middle east," herzog wrote on x today. "now, more than ever, we must act in every way possible to bring back the 101 hostages who are still being held in horrific conditions by hamas terrorists in gaza," herzog said. doha madani yair lapid, head of the opposition to netanyahu, said the government should use this moment to free the remaining 101 hostages being held in gaza. lapid said on x that it was time for a "decisive move." "strive for a comprehensive deal and also offer monetary rewards and safe passage to anyone who brings hostages to our forces," he wrote. nbc news netanyahu said sinwar’s death could mark “the beginning of the end” of the war in gaza. shira pinson jonathan dekel chen, father of hostage sagui dekel chen, says he finds "no reason right now for celebration" after the death of sinwar. "our way of life was destroyed," dekel chen told nbc news. "there is now going to be multigenerational trauma, not just for my family and country, but also for the people of gaza. there is no vindication here." at least 51 of dekel chen's friends were killed on oct. 7, 2023, and eight more died later as captives in gaza. he said there could be no victory, not even a partial one, until every person trapped in captivity is returned home. some might rejoice at sinwar's death, but for those who still have loved ones in gaza, there is fear for their safety, he added. military action may have killed sinwar, but there is no reason to believe it will bring the living hostages back safely, he said. "now that sinwar has evidently been killed, there is zero justification for doing anything other than all means possible and necessary to get the hostages home," he said. ian sherwood doha madani sinwar's death is a move toward a long overdue release of hostages and moves to "sustainable peace" in the middle east, british prime minister keir starmer said in a statement today. "today my thoughts are with the families of those victims," starmer said. "the u.k. will not mourn his death." french president emmanuel macron echoed those sentiments on x, repeating that sinwar was the "main person" responsible for the atrocities oct. 7. "today, i think with emotion of the victims, including 48 of our compatriots, and their loved ones," macron wrote. "france demands the release of all hostages still held by hamas." omer bekin doha madani israeli forces identified three hamas militants moving from house to house yesterday when sinwar fled into a building on his own, idf spokesperson daniel hagari said in a briefing today. the military sent in a drone that identified a masked man with a wounded hand, who has since been identified as sinwar, before he threw a wooden plank at the drone, hagari said. a video from the drone released by the idf shows a man sitting down in a destroyed building, but his face is entirely covered, and he does not turn his face to the camera. “we found him wearing a vest, carrying a gun, and with 40,000 shekels,” hagari said. “he was on the run, fleeing, and our forces eliminated him.” doha madani while sinwar's death may give netanyahu a "bonus" in his political standing, thabaat el moaar is unconvinced it will change hamas' demands. el mooar, a writer and political analyst who spoke to nbc news in khan younis, said sinwar's is just one of a long list of assassinations that have not stopped the "resistance." el moaar does not believe that changes hamas' standing or forces a surrender. "according to netanyahu, he has accomplished achievements on the ground," he said. "these achievements indeed satisfied netanyahu, but it won’t stop the resistance." with sinwar dead, there is no more justification for the war, said el moaar, who called for a deal to end the war and release the hostages. alexander smith there will be some who grieve the death of yahya sinwar, but it's doubtful that most gazans will be among them, said omar dajani, who worked with the palestinian negotiating team peace talks during the clinton administration. “even if one could put to the side the tens of thousands of lives lost and the many more lives destroyed ... i believe the assault sinwar masterminded made finding a way for jews and palestinians to live together in peace on our common homeland much, much harder," dajani said. sinwar's actions made it harder to demand that international law be applied, and it made the return of palestinian refugees harder. the future of palestinian workers trying to make a living will be more difficult, as well as cohabitation in jerusalem between israelis and palestinians, he said. "and he did it all without any concrete notion of how it would secure his contorted and fantastical vision of liberation," dajani said. chantal da silva sinwar's death is "significant for israel’s government ... at the very least in terms of it being a political win, with the commemoration of the oct. 7 attack only having just passed," mahdi ghuloom, a regional security analyst at le beck international, told nbc news. in an email before israel confirmed it had killed sinwar, ghuloom said the development could "present a window of opportunity for cease fire talks to resume," adding: "sinwar was reportedly a big barrier to such talks from succeeding." "we are already seeing statements by israeli hostage families calling on pm netanyahu to grasp such an opportunity and secure a hostage release deal. whether the israeli government does seize this opportunity remains to be seen, as well as who may replace sinwar," he said. he said sinwar's death could also "mark a new phase for hamas" in its approach to the fight against israeli forces. doha madani intelligence tipped off the idf that hamas leadership was near the rafah area, which led to weeks of operations in southern gaza, idf spokesperson doron spielman told msnbc. the area the leaders could move in was restricted, which spielman said troops hoped would force them to make a mistake. sinwar eventually fell into the trap when he and two others started firing on idf soldiers, he said. "the israeli troops returned fire   also with a tank mortar shell   the mortar shell hit the building, killing sinwar and the other terrorists," spielman said. erin mclaughlin reporting from tel aviv, israel rita lifschitz, whose in laws were kidnapped on oct. 7, 2023, fears yahya sinwar’s death makes the safe release of hostages less likely. she is worried about what hamas’ next leader may do. matthew nighswander israelis celebrated the news of sinwar's death tonight in the coastal city of netanya, above, and near kibbutz erez, below, in southern israel. in tel aviv, a demonstrator held a sign about his death during a protest calling for a cease fire deal and the immediate release of hostages. paul goldman reporting from tel aviv, israel from air force one, biden called netanyahu to congratulate him on sinwar's death, the prime minister's office said. "the american president praised the idf for the excellent work," the office said. according to the statement, the two men agreed to work together on the potential release of the remaining hostages. alexander smith hamas may be forced to accept defeat now that israel has dealt it a "lethal blow" in killing sinwar, researcher burcu ozcelik told nbc news. ozcelik, who worked at the royal united services institute think tank in london, described sinwar as a "cult of personality" leader whom his followers regarded as “near invincible.” "with sinwar, an intractable and non compromising hamas leader, now gone, it may be possible for israel and the palestinian national authority, alongside regional states, to begin planning for the ‘day after’ scenario in gaza," ozcelik said. the remaining question is whether that will mean an end to the military campaign in gaza, which will have to consider hamas' remaining power and the status of the remaining hostages. "if the hostages can be returned safely, this will undoubtedly be a major victory for the idf and netanyahu, whose legacy will now include the killing of the architect of the october 7th attack," ozcelik said. doha madani biden said sinwar's death was good for israel, the u.s. and the world. israel's military has been chasing hamas' leadership with help from american intelligence, biden said, "forcing them onto the run" over the last year. sinwar’s death proves that “no terrorists anywhere in the world can escape justice, no matter how long it takes,” he added. "there has rarely been a military campaign like this, with hamas leaders living and moving through hundreds of miles of tunnels, organized in multiple stories underground, determined to protect themselves with no care for the civilians suffering above ground," biden said. biden said he would be speaking with israeli leaders to congratulate them and discuss a path "for ending this war once and for all." abigail williams in the wake of sinwar’s death, the u.s. will push harder to end the war in gaza with its regional partners and chart a new path forward, secretary of state antony blinken said today. blinken said in a statement that sinwar had rebuffed efforts for a hostage return deal in past months. “in the days ahead, the united states will redouble its efforts with partners to end this conflict, secure the release all hostages, and chart a new path forward that will enable the people of gaza to rebuild their lives and realize their aspirations free from war and free from the brutal grip of hamas," he said. blinken spoke with his arab counterparts, including saudi arabia's foreign minister and qatar's prime minister, in calls he made while he was traveling with biden to germany. sinwar's vision for the middle east included "death, destruction, instability, chaos," state department spokesperson matthew miller said today. “the horrors of the past year cannot be the future, and they do not need to be the future," miller said. "it is time to chart a different path.” nbc news the parents of omer neutra, one of the 101 remaining hostages in gaza, told msnbc that they are holding their breath in the hope that sinwar's death may be a step toward bringing their son home. ronen and orna neutra said that netanyahu's speech today was the strongest language they've heard from him about hostages in months and that they believe the country is at an "inflection point" in the war. alexander smith sinwar's death is unlikely to end hamas' reign in gaza, frank lowenstein, who was special envoy for israeli palestinian negotiations in the obama administration, told nbc news. the reality is that hamas has tens of thousands of fighters, and it's likely that there was a succession plan for sinwar before he was killed, lowenstein said. israel's assassination of former hezbollah leader hassan nasrallah showed that such groups "survive the death of their leaders." but that won't be immediate, he added, as new leaders are unlikely to make compromises right out of the gate. it's also unlikely to soften iran, as the regime there may feel it can't be seen as backing down to israel as its proxies are hit. "killing sinwar may have a significant impact on the israeli side by giving bibi more political space to eventually make some compromises," lowenstein said, referring to netanyahu. "but for now, seems likely the idf will try to take advantage of the opportunity to strike hard at hamas when they are reeling, as they did in lebanon after nasrallah." nbc news sinwar was a man with american as well as israeli blood on his hands, vice president kamala harris said in an address today, adding that justice has been served. "hamas is decimated and its leadership is eliminated," harris said. "this moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in gaza." shira pinson while some in israel may be rejoicing at the news of sinwar's death, eyal eshel knows it will not bring back his daughter, roni. roni was assigned to the watchtower at nahal oz near the gaza border on oct. 7 when militants launched their surprise attack on israel. while eshel commends the troops who killed sinwar, he hopes the political leadership will "come to its senses" to return the hostages. "the time is ripe, this is the golden hour," eshel said. "this is the time to put pressure on hamas, what’s left of it, in order to bring the hostages back." sinwar's death, he said, should serve as a reminder to everyone that israel needs to focus on the 101 people who remain captive in gaza. he said that "anything" should be on the table to bring them home. "we need to use every possible means to get the information from the people who have it and if money needs to be paid, then they should pay the money," eshel said. doha madani whether people in gaza supported sinwar or not, some in the enclave are praying his killing will lead to an end to the war. one man said while he does not describe himself as a follower of sinwar's, he was saddened by the death of "an icon of resistance." he now worries that with sinwar dead there will be no one to negotiate with for an end to the war, making the situation more difficult. "as they claim, yahya sinwar is the last thing the israeli demands," he said. "we hope for better things from the almighty, for a better future, and for the war to end well, with a cessation of fire." another man said that sinwar's assassination is no different than that of any of the more than 40,000 people who have been killed in gaza to date. but the now displaced tailor hopes that by "cutting off the head," israel will end its siege. he prays that "sinwar's death would be a mercy." "i mean, there isn’t any justification for the machinery of demolition, destruction, killing, and death to go on," he said. "it’s the end unless there are false justifications, such as they wanted sinwar, and they continue the war." chantal da silva gil dickmann, the cousin of carmel gat, who was confirmed in august to have been killed in hamas' captivity along with five other hostages, welcomed sinwar's killing as "good news" today, but he said "the achievement is not complete." "the happiness cannot be complete until all the hostages are here," he told nbc news. dickmann said hostage families were "not looking for revenge. we don't want to seek the death of the people who killed the six hostages. what we are aiming at is the release of the 101 hostages that are still in hamas’ hands." "there is an actual opportunity right now to get all of them out of captivity, to get all of them home," he said. "that is the only thing that we care about right now." lina dandees doha madani israeli finance minister bezalel smotrich commended the idf for killing sinwar, whom he called "the father of all murderers." on x, smotrich went on to say it was time for the idf to ensure everyone in gaza knew sinwar was dead. he called for an increase in "intense military pressure" on gaza while also "offering safe passage and a financial reward to those who return our hostages to us and ask to lay down their arms and leave the strip." omer bekin doha madani reporting from tel aviv, israel in an address to the nation today on sinwar's death, israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu said, "evil suffered a heavy blow." "i want to say again, as clearly as possible: hamas will no longer rule gaza," he said. "this is the beginning of the day after hamas, and this is an opportunity for you, the residents of gaza, to finally break free from its tyranny." sinwar ruined the lives of gazans, netanyahu said. the prime minister also addressed the family members of the 101 hostages who remain in gaza, calling their return the country's "highest obligation." he urged anyone still holding hostages to release them immediately. "to the dear families of the hostages, i say: this is an important moment in the war," netanyahu said. "we will continue with all our might until the return of all your loved ones, who are our loved ones, to their homes." omer bekin reporting from tel aviv, israel israel police said in a post on x that dental records and fingerprint matching have confirmed that yahya sinwar had been killed. shira pinson former soldier roni lifshitz says while she is happy that sinwar is dead, she has mixed feelings about the news. "on the other hand, five of my friends are still not here, they are still in captivity," said lifshitz, who was stationed near kibbutz nahal oz, which was devastated in the oct. 7 hamas attack. "he was responsible for the fact that they are held hostage. his death will not bring back the rest of my friends." lifshitz lost 15 of her friends on oct. 7 when hamas led a terror attack on israel, reportedly masterminded by sinwar. she hopes, however, that development will advance the return of the 101 hostages who remain in gaza. "in actual fact, in this sense we already lost, in the sense that the hostages have been held there for over a year," lifshitz said. hayley walker the death of sinwar is time to return "every single hostage" remaining in gaza back to their families, no more delays or demands, the hostage family forum said in a statement today. "whether through negotiation or by any other means, all parties must immediately seize this opportunity to bring home the 101 remaining hostages, including seven americans, before it is too late," the statement said. sinwar being killed is a step toward justice, the group said, but it is not the end goal. true victory will only be achieved when "every hostage is released and the suffering of civilians in gaza ends." paul goldman reporting from tel aviv, israel israel has brought justice to its citizens by killing sinwar, the man who orchestrated the oct. 7 terror attack that killed 1,200 people last year, israeli defense minister yoav gallant said in an address today. “sinwar died while beaten, persecuted and on the run   he didn’t die as a commander, but as someone who only cared for himself," gallant said. the defense minister noted that sinwar is the latest in a string of assassinations of both hamas and hezbollah leadership in recent months. he called it a "clear message" to the residents of gaza and the rest of hamas' militants. "go out with the hostages, free them, and surrender," gallant said. doha madani yahya sinwar has spent the last year hiding among civilians in gaza both above ground and below, in hamas' network of tunnels in the gaza strip, the idf said in a statement confirming his death. the military’s southern command followed intelligence that led to a suspected location of three senior hamas leaders, according to the idf. "the dozens of operations carried out by the idf and the isa over the last year, and in recent weeks in the area where he was eliminated, restricted yahya sinwar’s operational movement as he was pursued by the forces and led to his elimination," the statement said. mithil aggarwal news that sinwar had been killed may be "a very happy moment for every israeli," though it is unlikely to change things for the hostages, a researcher at hebrew university of jerusalem told nbc news shortly before sinwar's death was confirmed. "the people of israel are thinking about them," said ronni shaked, a research fellow at the harry s. truman institute at the university. "but israel is not going to find some new way to bring them back now because it’s not just in the hands of sinwar." shaked, who met sinwar and the former hamas political leader ismail haniyeh years ago, said hamas can continue without its recent leadership, noting that hamas only became more fundamentalist after its original leaders were killed in 2004. without a strategic plan on how to get out of gaza, it will be "a disaster," shaked said. "the only way to move hamas aside is to bring an alternative palestinian regime to gaza." gaza's future remains uncertain, and shaked does not believe israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu will stop at sinwar's death. the west bank is also influenced by hamas, he said. "we have to look at this moment to look at what’s next," shaked said. "if we want a new middle east, what can we do?" ali vitali frank thorp vproducer and off air reporter julie tsirkin kyle stewart house speaker mike johnson was briefed on the news that hamas leader yahya sinwar had been killed, a source directly familiar with the matter told nbc news. minority leader hakeem jeffries has also been briefed, a person familiar with the briefing also confirmed. representatives for both senate leaders chuck schumer and mitch mcconnell did not immediately respond to nbc news' request for comment on whether they had been briefed. senate intelligence committee chairman mark warner was also briefed by cia director william burns about the operation, a spokesperson for warner said. separately, bipartisan staff for the senate foreign relations committee has been briefed by administration officials, according to another source with direct knowledge. chantal da silva sinwar's killing would be a "pyrrhic victory" for israel, rashid khalidi, the edward said professor emeritus of modern arab studies at columbia university and author of 'the hundred years' war on palestine," told nbc news shortly before the news was confirmed. “talk about a pyrrhic victory," he said, suggesting hamas would remain strong in both ideology and on the battlefield, even if its leader has been killed. recalling the recent assassination of hezbollah leader hassan nasrallah and the killing over three decades ago of abbas al musawi, then the secretary general of hezbollah, as well as the "killing of hundreds of plo and hamas leaders over the years," khalidi said: "the killing of sinwar, if confirmed, will not minimize resistance to israel’s occupations." omer bekin chantal da silva hamas leader yahya sinwar was killed during israeli operations in gaza, israeli foreign minister israel katz said in a statement. “terrorist mastermind yahya sinwar, responsible for the massacre and atrocities of october 7th, was eliminated today by idf soldiers," katz said in a statement to fellow foreign ministers worldwide. "this is a great military and moral achievement for israel and a victory for the entire free world against the axis of radical islam led by iran," he said. sinwar's death "creates an opportunity for the immediate release of the hostages and a potential change that could lead to a new reality in gaza without hamas and without iranian control," he added. he did not expand on how sinwar's killing would advance the release of the remaining hostages held in gaza. "israel now needs your support and assistance more than ever to advance these crucial goals together," he said. chantal da silva members of betar usa, a zionist youth movement, are planning to rally outside the israeli consulate in new york city today to celebrate the possible death of sinwar. "the world is a better place today," ross glick, director of betar usa, said in a statement sent to nbc news. "the entire world should be celebrating today the death of this man who has so much blood on his hands,” he said, though sinwar's death has yet to be confirmed. in a news release, betar usa said demonstrators planned to gather holding signs reading "thank you idf: 'sinwar is dead: celebrate'" and "hamas is isis." omer bekin reporting from tel aviv, israel guy sarfati was skeptical when he first heard news of sinwar's possible death, but as time went by the 26 year old university student became excited at the idea of a victory against hamas. "we’ve been waking up each day in israel to terrible news, hearing about another soldier killed or another hostage being killed in gaza," sarfati told nbc news. "so, finally, we have some positive news to wake up to." but the immediate question that followed was: what does this mean for the hostages? sarfati hopes that sinwar's death can be used as leverage. "it raises immediate concerns, obviously," he said. "but i hope this could be a turning point in the war in the south, because we’ve been through this for so long." hagay keren, 52, praised the idf's achievement but is doesn't believe there will be a victory in this war until all 101 hostages are returned home. the attorney hopes the government will seize the opportunity to "exploit the chaos" to bring them back. keren said this could be a chance to offer incentives for people still holding hostages to turn them over, but is skeptical that prime minister benjamin netanyahu will do so. "i fear that the motives of netanyahu’s government are never entirely pure, and that the greatest interest of netanyahu’s government is the continuation of the war, meaning that all possibilities for bringing back the hostages now might not be fully pursued," keren said. monica alba peter alexander the idf told hostage families today that there were “no signs of harm” to hostages still being held near to where the body believed to be sinwar's was found in gaza, according to two sources close to families. each family, including american, has an idf point of contact for updates. they were informed of sinwar's possible death and of efforts to confirm it. raf sanchez doha madani yahya sinwar is the hamas leader who israeli officials said was the main architect of the group’s oct. 7 terror attack on israel and who the country’s military has been chasing for more than a year. it’s been believed that sinwar, who was in charge of day to day operations in gaza prior to the oct. 7 attack, was able to escape israel defense forces by using hamas’ complex tunnel system in the palestinian enclave. after the oct. 7 attack, a former idf spokesperson described him as a “dead man walking” as the military vowed to eliminate him. sinwar joined hamas after it was founded in 1987, gaining a reputation for brutality after he reportedly helped to form the militant group’s internal security force, according a profile of him by european council on foreign relations, a think tank. he was captured by israel two years later and sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in killing israeli troops and palestinian collaborators. sinwar returned to gaza in 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange for an israeli soldier, gilad shalit, who was held hostage by hamas for five years. read the full story here. paul goldman reporting from tel aviv, israel troops identified the body believed to be yahya sinwar's in an operation that killed multiple hamas militants, an israeli official told nbc news. speaking before the hamas leader was confirmed dead, the official said that soldiers weren't specifically looking for sinwar. there was a “serious exchange” during a heavy gun battle, the official said. no hostages were found in the vicinity. chantal da silva the israeli military said thursday it is “checking the possibility” that hamas leader yahya sinwar, accused of being the architect of the oct. 7 terror attack, was among three militants killed in gaza during its operations in the enclave. sinwar was declared hamas’ new political head in august following the assassination of ismail haniyeh in iran, where he was attending the inauguration of president masoud pezeshkian. read the full story here. © 2025 nbcuniversal media, llc
• hamas leader yahya sinwar, believed by israel to be chief architect of the militant group’s deadly october 7, 2023, terror attack that set off the war in gaza, was killed by israeli forces, officials said. • prime minister benjamin netanyahu said sinwar’s death marked “the beginning of the day after hamas.” he vowed that israel would continue fighting hamas in gaza until all hostages are returned home. • in a call discussing sinwar’s death, netanyahu and us president joe biden agreed there was an opportunity to advance the release of the hostages in gaza. us officials said they would redouble their efforts with mediators to push for a ceasefire deal. • despite optimism that sinwar’s death could bring a gaza deal closer to fruition, two sources told cnn that israel’s approach to iran and its proxies in other countries are seen as “distinct” operations. israel’s pending retaliation against iran could come within days, one source said. our live coverage of the conflict in the middle east has moved here. hamas leader yahya sinwar, believed by israel to be chief mastermind of the october 7, 2023, terror attack that set off the current war in gaza, was killed by israeli forces. many global leaders in the west expressed hope that his death signals the beginning of the end of the war in gaza and could provide an opportunity for the release of the more than 100 hostages still being held by hamas. more than 42,000 palestinians have been killed since israel’s military operation in gaza began and nearly all of the strip’s 2.2 million residents are displaced amid a spiraling humanitarian crisis. here’s a look at international reaction: it was around 5:30 a.m. thursday in washington, dc, that senior us officials first got word   and photographs   from their israeli counterparts: hamas leader yahya sinwar might be dead. top israeli and american officials would stay in close contact throughout the morning as the israeli military worked to confirm that a body found in the rubble in northern rafah was sinwar. but even the pictures of sinwar’s body had senior us officials feeling confident that the mastermind of the october 7 attacks had been killed, according to a senior us official. there had been significant leads about sinwar’s whereabouts in the past, and even a few moments when us officials believed the israeli military had gotten close to the terrorist leader. that sinwar was ultimately killed in an operation that was not intended to target him made the development   coming just days after the one year anniversary of the start of the israel hamas war   all the more remarkable. “the news today did come as a surprise   a welcome surprise,” the official told cnn, describing sinwar’s death as a “hugely significant, momentous moment.” president joe biden said that for the israeli people, sinwar’s death was comparable to osama bin laden’s death for americans in 2011. but us officials are reticent to make any predictions about what that will ultimately mean for the volatile region.