 "Houthi supporters raise a poster of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli troops in Gaza, during an anti-Israel rally in Sanaa, Yemen, Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. (Photo: AP)")
Hamas is down in the Gaza Strip but not out.
Hamas has been traying rebuild itself in Gaza under a new leader.
The new leader is Mohammed Sinwar, a senior Hamas commander the younger brother of slain former Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar.
Following the Israeli killing of Yahya , even as the Hamas central leadership of the group in Qatar formed a council to the run the group, the Hamas personnel in Gaza converged around Mohammed and made him the de facto leader of Hamas in the Palestinian enclave, according to Wall Street Journal.
Under Mohammed, Hamas has been waging a sustained insurgency in Gaza against Israeli military.
In more than a year of war, Israel has battered Hamas in Gaza and has reduced it to a mere shadow of its former self.
Before the war, Hamas had organised itself into 24 battalions and Israel believed it had around 30,000 personnel. Now, the battalion-system stands dismantled. Israel says it has killed around 17,000 Hamas terrorists and imprisoned thousands of them. Most of the group’s famed leaders —previous chief Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya, and former military chief Mohammed Deif— have been killed. The group’s allies in the region, Iran and Hezbollah, have also been battered — Hezbollah in a monthslong war that saw almost the entire leadership getting wiped out and Iran in two rounds of aerial battles.
Yet Hamas has thousands of terrorists and Mohammed appears to be organising them into a potent force.
What’s Hamas like under Mohammed Sinwar?
While Israel claims to have killed most of Hamas terrorists, the war has also created a fresh bunch of recruits who have been eager to join the war against Israel.
The Journal has reported that Hamas under Mohammed is roping in these recruits to fashion improvised bombs from unexploded ordnance littered throughout Gaza and launch hit-and-run attacks by organising them into small cells.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsHamas is recruiting new fighters with promises of more food, aid, and medical care for young men and their families, Arab officials told the Journal.
The stolen humanitarian aid is used to reward such recruits and co-opt civilians to work with the militant group, said Arab officials.
These new terrorists are made to use guns and anti-tank weapons that require little military training, according to the newspaper.
The attacks have been costing Israel. Over the past week, 10 Israeli soldiers have been killed in one area of northern Gaza alone. Moreover, in recent months, Israel has been forced to return to fight in areas where it had previously defeated Hamas.
The Israeli military says that Hamas has recruited hundreds of people in recent months and while such recruitment is taking place all over Gaza, it has a particular focus on northern Gaza, as per the newspaper.
Arab officials told the newspaper that Israel has told them that such recruits could be in thousands.
Who is Mohammed Sinwar, Yahya Sinwar’s younger brother?
Mohammed is now said to be the de facto leader of Hamas in Gaza.
Mohammed is believed to be around 50-years-old, around 10 years younger than his brother Yahya.
While his career has a trajectory similar to Yahya —both of them joined Hamas at an early age— there are some key differences. For one, unlike Yahya, Mohammed never spent much time in Israeli captivity.
This has worked in his favour as, unlike Yahya, the Israeli security establishment does not have a deep understanding of Mohammed, according to Journal.
Even though he has been a senior figure in Hamas for decades, he has largely worked behind the scenes and has acquired the nickname ‘Shadow’, Arab officials told the newspaper.
Before the war elevated him to his current role, Mohammed was the Hamas’ head of logistics and manpower and one of the top commanders of Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, according to the think tank Counter Extremism Project (CEP).
In recent years, Mohammed has been engaged in coordinating efforts of various Palestinian terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and working with Hezbollah and Iran in the conflict with Israel.
In an interview with Al Jazeera in 2022, Mohammed said that Palestinian groups in Gaza set up a joint command centre in the war with Israel in 2021 and held meetings throughout with Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
While Mohammed has worked behind the scenes for most of his life, the CEP says that he is believed to be behind the abduction of Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in 2006, who has released by Hamas in a massive prisoner swap in 2011. In the swap, around 1,000 prisoners were released by Israel in lieu of Shalit, including Yahya, who went on to become the leader of Hamas in Gaza in 2017 and overall leader of Hamas in 2024.
Yahya is believed to be the mastermind of the October 7 attack that triggered the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Arab officials told the Journal that Mohammed has proved to be “as stubborn as his older sibling in pushing for a permanent ceasefire that ensures Hamas’ survival”.