What does the selection of Sinwar as the head of Hamas mean? | News

About a week after the martyrdom of the head of the political bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Ismail Haniyeh, the movement surprised the world by choosing Yahya Sinwar as a successor to the martyr Haniyeh.

The Israeli Broadcasting Authority considered the selection of Sinwar as “a message to Israel that he is alive and that the Hamas leadership in Gaza is strong, existing and will remain.”

Israel knows that Sinwar knows it better than it knows him, and he carries great symbolism in the Israeli consciousness that it created itself, according to Dr. Muhannad Mustafa, an expert in Israeli affairs. Since the Al-Aqsa flood, many security men in Israel have come out to talk about Sinwar and their memories of him.

All the Israeli speakers agreed that Sinwar is “a very smart man, very tough, and most importantly, a man with great organizational capabilities who understands the Israelis.” Mustafa adds sarcastically that every former official “who wanted to become famous would go out to the media and say that he sat with Sinwar.”

Analysts believe that the goal of all this description and giving this aura to the man is for Israel to achieve a victory if it succeeds in assassinating him, by saying that it has eliminated “terrorism” and to show the public that it has triumphed over “the devil and the ghost.”

Hard core cat

In no context can the course of the war on Gaza and the steadfastness of the resistance be separated from the movement’s choice of Sinwar to lead the movement at this political and vital stage, whether in the history of the movement or the history of the Palestinian revolution.

The decision also comes as a message of defiance to Israel, according to locals: “If you assassinated the man whom some of your politicians called the moderate, then we have brought you the toughest, most stubborn, most ruthless and most radical man in Hamas.”

Hamas's decision also came to demonstrate that the chain of command and organizational capacity were restored with remarkable speed despite the damage caused by Haniyeh's assassination, and it comes as a clear message that the movement is cohesive and that it is able to choose a head for its political bureau.

According to its internal regulations, Hamas is a Shura movement with three regions: abroad, headed by Khaled Meshaal, in the West Bank, headed by the late Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri, who was replaced by his deputy Zaher Badarin, and in the Gaza Strip, headed by Sinwar.

Analysts believe that the selection of Sinwar – whom Israel was unable to defeat – is a message to it that the policy of pressuring the leadership by targeting families, as happened with Haniyeh, or pressuring the movement by assassinating its leaders, as also happened with Haniyeh, will not weaken the movement. And here is Tel Aviv's number one wanted man, whom it was unable to reach during the war, leading the movement on the battlefield.

Researcher and political analyst Sari Arabi considered that “the selection of Sinwar was intended to make Tel Aviv feel that the assassination of Haniyeh brought a stronger person to head the political bureau, and Tel Aviv considers him its number one enemy in Hamas.”

Researcher Saeed Ziad believes that “the selection of Sinwar was considered a message from the movement that Gaza is leading the resistance and that Hamas is leading the resistance from Gaza and from the tunnel in which Sinwar is located and from which he runs his operations.”

Ziad points out that “one of the movement's messages is that the trust of the resistance leadership is in the hands of Gaza, and that we are placing the military and organizational weight in the hands of Gaza, and that Sinwar is the most capable of leading the movement in the largest battles in the history of the Palestinian people.”

Continuing the approach

According to Hamas, Sinwar was present during the process of negotiating the ceasefire deal and making the decision. The movement also indicated that “the team that followed the negotiations during the presence of the martyr Haniyeh will follow them during the presence of Sinwar.”

While the negotiation process is important for the movement to stop the bloodshed carried out by the occupation to pressure the resistance by killing civilians, military analyst Jalal al-Abadi believes that “this is the time of the gun, not the time of negotiation and diplomatic solution, and the flood of Al-Aqsa is a battle of fate and the first real decisive battles between us and Israel.”

Researcher and political analyst Sari Arabi points out that anyone who “studies Sinwar’s speeches will realize that the man had a vision, a plan, determination, and insistence to carry out an exceptional operation that would change the strategic situation on the Palestinian, regional, and global levels,” meaning the Battle of the Flood of Al-Aqsa.

This is what prompted researcher Saeed Ziad to say that Sinwar, “with his extreme intelligence, is able to carve out major strategic paths that neither Gazan society nor Palestinian society has known before,” noting that Sinwar “built a fortress of resistance in Gaza, but he was able to move the conflict to a completely different square, where he was able to employ force at a critical moment in the enemy’s weak spot and was able to reach the Battle of the Flood of Al-Aqsa.”

To understand what Sinwar and his comrades did on October 7 and the launch of the Battle of the Flood of Al-Aqsa, Avi Issacharoff, Middle East analyst at the Times of Israel, said that Hamas had chosen “the most dangerous person to lead it,” which demonstrates the impact of the Flood of Al-Aqsa on Israel and the region.