Hamas has appointed Yahya Sinwar as its new overall chief, succeeding Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Tehran last week following two days of intense negotiations in Doha.
Sinwar, who has led Hamas in the Gaza Strip since 2017, will now head its political wing.
A senior Hamas official informed the BBC that Sinwar was chosen unanimously by the Hamas leadership to lead the movement.
This announcement comes amidst escalating tensions in the Middle East, with Iran and its allies threatening retaliation for Haniyeh’s killing, which they attribute to Israel. Israel has not made any public comments on the matter.
Over the course of the meetings in Doha, Hamas’s top figures debated various scenarios for the group’s next leader.
Ultimately, the decision came down to two candidates, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Hassan Darwish, the head of the General Shura Council, which elects Hamas’s Politburo.
The council unanimously selected Sinwar, sending “a message of defiance to Israel,” according to a Hamas official.
“They killed Haniyeh, the flexible person who was open to solutions. Now they have to deal with Sinwar and the military leadership,” the official added.
Ismail Haniyeh had been seen by regional diplomats as a pragmatic figure within Hamas, crucial to its political outreach.
In contrast, Yahya Sinwar is regarded as one of the group’s most extreme members.
Sinwar is currently at the top of Israel’s most-wanted list. Israeli security agencies accuse him of masterminding the October 7, 2023, attacks that resulted in over 1,200 deaths and 251 hostages taken to Gaza.
In a statement on X, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said, “The appointment of arch-terrorist Yahya Sinwar as the new leader of Hamas, replacing Ismail Haniyeh, is yet another compelling reason to swiftly eliminate him and wipe this vile organisation off the face of the Earth.”
Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Rear Adm Daniel Hagari told Al-Arabiya, “Yahya Sinwar is a terrorist, who is responsible for the most brutal terrorist attack in history.”
Since the October attacks, Sinwar has not appeared in public and is believed to be hiding deep underground in Gaza, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
A former US National Security Council official, Javed Ali, noted that Sinwar’s leadership could complicate ceasefire and hostage release negotiations, describing him as “much more inflexible and much more difficult to negotiate with.”
Born in the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza in 1962, Sinwar founded the Hamas security service known as Majd in the late 1980s, targeting alleged Palestinian collaborators with Israel.
Having spent much of his life in Israeli prisons, Sinwar was sentenced to four life terms in 1988.
He was released in a 2011 prisoner exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held captive by Hamas for over five years.
Sinwar, now 61, was appointed head of Hamas’s political bureau in Gaza in 2017, a position he held until his recent promotion. He is listed on the US blacklist of “international terrorists.”
