How Hamas Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar has survived the Gaza war: ‘Like a cornered rat’
Yahya Sinwar, the top Hamas official in Gaza and one of the masterminds of the Oct 7 terror attacks, is believed to still be alive — hiding like a “cornered rat” in the tunnels of the Palestinian territory, despite the Israeli military naming him enemy No. 1.
While the majority of Hamas’ top officials who have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces, Sinwar has survived by staying radio-silent and using Israeli hostages and innocent Palestinians as human shields to protect him, said Colin Clarke, a counter-terrorism expert at New York-based Soufan Group.
“He’s likely still in Gaza, deep within the tunnel network and surrounded by hostages to secure his safety,” Clarke said. “Sinwar is someone who is out for his own survival.
“It’s his ultimate goal, like a cornered rat.”
Clarke, who also works at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, said Sinwar, 61, is likely using a network of couriers to pass along his commands — which have repeatedly stalled cease-fire talks with Israel.
The “primitive method,” as Clarke put it, allows Sinwar to avoid using cellphones, which the Israeli military is expert at tracking.
“Israel has a very high-tech network scanning for Hamas leaders, and he’s managed to avoid that,” Clarke said. “He’s clearly gone primitive.”
Retired Gen. Jack Keane, the former vice chief of staff of the United States Army who now serves as chairman of the Institute for the Study of War, said he believes Sinwar has likely scurried back to Khan Younis in the north of the Gaza Strip.
It’s believed he spent much of the war hiding in Rafah in the south until Israel launched military operations in the final Hamas stronghold city.
“Any movement is done with the utmost secrecy because it risks outing his location to the IDF,” Keane said.
Going radio-silent also means Sinwar is likely not actively commanding Hamas’ remaining units in Rafah, as holding real-time military meetings would leave him exposed like the more than a dozen battalion leaders who have been killed by the Israeli military since Oct. 7.
The Israeli military had flagged Sinwar’s radio silence back in February after the IDF advanced into Khan Younis and raided the Hamas leader’s home.
Clarke surmised that Sinwar is simply hoping to ride out the war inside Gaza’s tunnel system despite the mounting deaths of his troops and Palestinians caught in the middle of the conflict.
In May, Israel said 14,000 Hamas terrorists had been killed, along with 16,000 civilians.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claimed that 37,500 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war. The group does not differentiate between terrorists and civilians.
Sinwar, himself, seemed to suggest he didn’t care about the death toll in leaked communications revealed by the Wall Street Journal, where the Gaza chief touted civilian deaths as “necessary sacrifices” to keep the war raging.
“As long as he and Hamas survives this, he’s won,” Clarke said.
“And the more deaths the better for him since he can use it to garner backlash against Israel.”
Sinwar was last seen fleeing through the tunnels with his family on Oct. 10, according to reports.
Clarke said the only way for Israel to locate him is to repeat a tried-and-true tactic, getting someone on the inside to rat him out.
But convincing a Palestinian to turn on Sinwar might be harder than expected, given the Gaza chief’s brutal history cracking down on traitors.
Before being Hamas’ top official in Gaza, a young Sinwar was known as “The Butcher of Khan Younis” for his relentless and brutal slaughter of suspected informants for Israel within the terror group’s ranks.
Sinwar, who was born in a Khan Younis refugee camp, was eventually arrested in 1988 and convicted of killing two IDF soldiers and four Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel.
Despite the life sentence, Sinwar only spent 23 years in jail and was released in 2011 as one of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners freed in exchange for captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.
“His capture and the years he spent in jail built up his reputation, his ‘street cred,’ and that helped him rise among the ranks when he returned to Gaza,” Clarke said.
Just a year after he was freed, Sinwar was elected as a member of Hamas’ political bureau, with his popularity and ruthlessness garnering a large following in the ranks of the brutal Islamist terror group.
Sinwar eventually became the de facto leader in 2017, partly because Israel eliminated many of his rivals and superiors, Clarke said.
“Israel is among the best at tracking down terrorists and taking them out, and in a way, Sinwar’s accession to power was a product of Israel’s own success in taking out extremists,” he added.
But Israel didn’t just free Sinwar and take out his enemies, they also saved his life, according to Yuval Bitton, the former head of the Israel Prison Service’s intelligence division.
Bitton, a dentist who treated Sinwar, told Channel 12 in October that Israeli medics removed a tumor from the Gaza chief’s brain back in 2004.
“We saved his life and this is his thanks,” Bitton said, referring to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.
With Post wires
