Slain Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar rejected an opportunity to leave Gaza in exchange for allowing Egypt to negotiate a ceasefire-hostage deal in Hamas’s place, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Sunday. Sinwar was reportedly offered an escape deal by the Arab negotiators, which he refused.
According to the Journal, Sinwar had hoped that the war his 7 October attacks had ignited would draw Iran and its proxies into a regional war with the Jewish state. “I’m not under siege, I’m on Palestinian soil,” Sinwar reportedly told Arab mediators in a message, soon after the war began, according to The Jerusalem Post.
October 7 attack on Israel
The Hamas leader who was killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip was the mastermind behind the October 7 attack on Israel that sparked the war. He rose to the top position in August after the killing of the previous leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in an explosion in Iran that was blamed on Israel.
Sinwar was born in 1962 in a refugee camp in the Gaza town of Khan Younis. He was an early member of Hamas, which was formed in 1987. He eventually led the group’s security arm, which worked to purge it of spies for Israel.
Israel arrested him in the late 1980s, and he admitted to killing 12 suspected collaborators, a role that earned him the nickname, “The Butcher of Khan Younis.” He was sentenced to four life terms for offences that included the killing of two Israeli soldiers.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on Thursday said that the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar marks the “beginning of the day after Hamas,” but warned that the death would not mark the end of the war in Gaza unless Hamas surrenders and frees all the hostages.
Hamas leaders killed
A senior Hamas official said the Palestinian militant group cannot be eliminated with the killing of its leaders. “Hamas is a liberation movement led by people looking for freedom and dignity, and this cannot be eliminated,” Basem Naim, senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, said. In a statement, he listed several Hamas leaders killed in the past and said their deaths had boosted the group’s popularity.
“It seems that Israel believes that killing our leaders means the end of our movement and the struggle of the Palestinian people,” Naim said. “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.”
(With agency inputs)
Comments
0 comment