Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s mass murderer, wore clothes sewn from UN food sacks as a kid

The 22 years that Yahya Sinwar spent in Israeli jails steeled his resolve and transformed him into a leader of Hamas. During his stint in the jail in Ashkelon, he would play table tennis bare foot. Ashkelon is the place from where his parents fled to Gaza during the Intifada in 1948. Sinwar said he wanted his “feet to touch the land of Palestine”.

Sinwar wasn’t just another Palestinian emotional for his homeland. He was the mastermind of the October 7 massacre in which Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 people in Israel. He became infamous as the ‘Butcher of Khan Younis’ for torturing and killing around a dozen people accused of spying for Israel. He was a mass murderer.

“The mass murderer Yahya Sinwar, responsible for the massacre and atrocities of October 7, was eliminated… by IDF (Israeli military) soldiers,” Israeli Foreign Minister, Israel Katz said in a statement.

Sinwar’s cruelty towards Palestinians is seldom discussed.

“Yahya Sinwar’s cruelty towards Palestinians is rarely talked about,” said satirist and columnist Kamlesh Singh on X. Singh is popular as ‘Tau’ in Aaj Tak Radio’s Teen Taal podcast.

The Hamas chief was shot down by the Israeli military on October 16. Israel’s military has released drone footage of Sinwar’s last moments.

The video shows Sinwar seated on a sofa in a destroyed apartment, and his head and face are covered by a scarf. The walls of the building appear to be blown away by shelling, and Sinwar was covered in dust, with a severe injury to his right arm. As the drone approaches him, he is seen throwing a stick at it.

These were the last moments of the Hamas chief.

Last month, the US, an ally of Israel, charged Sinwar and other Hamas leaders with “financing, directing, and overseeing a decades-long campaign to murder American citizens and endanger the national security of the United States”.

“On October 7, Hamas terrorists, led by these defendants, murdered nearly 1200 people, including over 40 Americans, and kidnapped hundreds of civiliansâ€æ Yahya Sinwar and the other senior leaders of Hamas are charged today with orchestrating this terrorist organization’s decades-long campaign of mass violence and terror — including on October 7,” Attorney-General Merrick Garland said.

But before becoming the chief of the terror-organization, Hamas and the planning of the October 7 massacre in Israel, Sinwar served multiple prison sentences and was part of multiple negotiations between Hamas, Israel and even Iran.

REFUGEE CAMP, ISRAELI PRISONS STEELED SINWAR’S RESOLVE

Born in a refugee camp in Khan Younis that Sinwar was born in 1962. Gaza was under Israeli occupation then.

He once said that his mother made clothes from empty UN food-aid sacks, Gaza resident Wissam Ibrahim, who met Sinwar, told Reuters.

An impoverished childhood and the 22 years in Israeli prisons gave him a high tolerance for suffering. He was arrested in 1988 and handed four life terms for the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinian spies.

“Prison builds you,” Sinwar told an Italian journalist, according to a New York Times report. It was in prison that he realised what he believed in and the price he was willing to pay for it, the report said.

In prison, he also penned a semi-autobiographical novel — The Thorn and the Carnation — and described Israeli forces bulldozing Palestinian houses “like a monster crushing its prey’s bones”, according to Reuters.

It was in jail in 1992 that he emerged as a leader by organising a strike of Palestinian inmates, surviving days on just salt and water. He extracted from the Israelis what he sought.

Sinwar married after walking out of jail and has three children.

He has said very little about his family in public except that the first words his son ever spoke were “father”, “mother” and “drone”.

SMUGGLED PHONES INTO PRISON, CARRIED OUT HAMAS ACTIVITIES FROM JAIL

Sinwar was first arrested in 1982 when he met other Palestinian activists in the Fara prison. When arrested again in 1985, on his release, he tried to find collaborators with Israel in the Palestinian population. This was called the Hamas police.

His ruthless killing of suspected collaborators earned him the title the ‘Butcher of Khan Younis’.

In 1988, Sinwar planned the killing of two Israeli soldiers and the murder of four Palestinians who were supposedly collaborating with Israel.

During his interrogation he admitted to strangling one of these men with his hands and another with a kaffiyeh.

The other two were killed in a violent interrogation and shot.

Here, he was sentenced to four life sentences in 1989.

Even from prison, he managed to carry his operations. Hamas operatives even threw off a victim’s body out of prison cell and asked guards to “take the dog’s head”.

He even attempted to escape from the prison multiple times.

From smuggling phones into prison to using his lawyer to send messages outside, Sinwar managed to carry Hamas activities from the Israeli prison.

He also took this time to learn — Hebrew and history.

An Israeli daily, Maariv, even reported that during his time in prison, Sinwar did fifteen courses through Open University of Israel in seven years. Most were on the history of the Jews, the Holocaust and Zionism and on Israeli democracy.

A search of his prison cell in 2004 led to finding a copy of his novel, reports the New York Times.

AROUND 1,000 PALESTINIAN PRISONERS RELEASED FOR AN ISRAELI

Finally, in 2011, Sinwar walked out of jail after nerve-wracking negotiations with Israelis for the release of 1,000 prisoners, including himself, in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

In November 2012, during an Israeli operation in the Gaza strip, Sinwar met Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani in Iran. After Sinwar became the clear leader of Gaza after 2017 elections, he developed close relations with Iran.

This was the only time he set foot in Tehran.

He was introduced to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by Ismail Haniyeh, reports the Tehran Times.

“Brother Yahya Sinwar spent 25 years of his life in an Israeli prison. He had been sentenced to 430 years in jail,” he said.

Sinwar even helped repair ties between Hamas and Tehran, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The Hamas chief was also behind the torture and killing of the Qassam Brigades’ Zeitoun Battalion commander Mahmoud Ishtiwi in 2016, on charges of embezzling funds and homosexuality and giving Israel information, according to an Irish Times report.

In February 2017, when Sinwar became the leader of Hamas in the Gaza strip, taking from Ismail Haniyeh. He rejected any reconciliation with Israel.

“We would rather die as martyrs than die out of oppression and humiliation,” and even said “We are ready to die, and tens of thousands will die with us,” reported NYT.

Finally, in 2022, reports discuss how Hamas under Sinwar began preparing a surprise attack on Israel. It even tried to convince Hezbollah and Iran to participate in it.

After the assassination of Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh by Israel, Sinwar had taken over Hamas completely.

Many said that this would be the beginning of an era of hardliners. Sinwar even called the Haniyeh group in Qatar who were more apprehensive of the October 7 attack as ‘hotel guys’, reported the Washington Post.

But Israel had deployed all its intelligence and military to look for Sinwar and eliminate him. He was Israel’s primary target or enemy number 1, according to several media reports.

Now, with him gone, a chance for talks might be availble, some experts believe.

“With progress toward a ceasefire-for-hostages deal to pause the war stubbornly stuck for months, senior [US] administration officials had hung onto hope that Sinwar might one day be taken out — opening doors in the talks that simply would not be available otherwise,” reported CNN.

Israel has now got one of its top enemies after a year-long hunt. The killing of Sinwar provides the opportunity for Hamas and Israel to scale down the attacks.