After two days of prolonged negotiations in Doha, Hamas appointed Yahya Sinwar as its new chief, changing Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Tehran final week.
Sinwar has been the group’s chief in Gaza since 2017. He’ll now change into the chief of his political faction.
A senior Hamas official instructed the BBC that Sinwar was unanimously chosen by Hamas management to guide the motion.
The information comes amid rising tensions within the Center East, with Iran and its allies threatening retaliation for Haniyeh’s killing, which they blame on Israel. Israel has but to remark.
Over two days in Doha, Hamas leaders held intensive conferences to finalize the selection of the group’s subsequent chief.
Many choices have been mentioned, however in the long run solely two names got here up: Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Hassan Darwish, the latter of the Shura Normal Council (accountable for the elections) The mysterious determine who chairs the Hamas Politburo).
The committee voted unanimously to pick Sinwar, which a Hamas official described to the BBC as “a message of contempt for Israel”.
“They killed Haniyeh, a versatile man who was open to options. Now they must take care of Sinwar and the navy management,” the official mentioned.
Earlier than his dying, Ismail Haniyeh was considered by regional diplomats as a practical determine in comparison with others in Hamas and a key driver of the group’s political outreach.
Yahya Sinwar, alternatively, is taken into account one in every of Hamas’s most excessive figures.
Sinwar is presently on the prime of Israel’s most needed listing. Israeli safety companies consider he deliberate and carried out the assault on October 7, 2023, which killed greater than 1,200 folks and took 251 folks again to Gaza as hostages.
Israeli Overseas Minister Israel Katz mentioned in an announcement: “The appointment of prime terrorist Yahya Sinwar as the brand new chief of Hamas, changing Ismail Haniyeh, is a step in direction of shortly eliminating him and eradicating this evil group from the One other compelling purpose to be wiped from the face of the earth.
“Yahya Sinwar is a terrorist who’s accountable for one of the crucial brutal terrorist assaults in historical past,” IDF spokesman Maj. Gen. Daniel Hagari instructed Saudi Arabian information channel Al Arabiya.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken mentioned in June that Sinwar, who had not been seen in public for the reason that October assault, was believed to be hiding “10 ranges underground” in Gaza.
Sinwar was born in 1962 within the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Gaza.
Within the late Nineteen Eighties, Sinwar established a Hamas safety wing referred to as Majd, one in every of whose targets have been Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel.
He spent most of his life in Israeli prisons and was sentenced to 4 life sentences after his third arrest in 1988.
Nevertheless, in 2011, he was one in every of 1,027 Palestinian and Israeli Arab prisoners launched by Israel in alternate for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who had been imprisoned by Hamas for greater than 5 years.
The 61-year-old was appointed head of the group’s Gaza political bureau in 2017 and has held the place to today.
The US positioned Sinwar on its “worldwide terrorist” blacklist.
