Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinouar, is named new leader of the Palestinian movement

Minutes after his appointment was announced, a salvo of rockets was fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, claimed by the armed wing of Hamas.

“Islamic resistance movement Hamas announces appointment of leader Yahya Sinwar as head of movement’s political bureau”the Palestinian movement revealed in a statement published on Tuesday, August 6, a week after the assassination in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh. Leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement in Gaza since 2017, Yahya Sinoua spent his entire career in the shadows, in Israeli prisons where he spent 23 years, then within the Hamas security apparatus.

He is, at 61, the architect of October 7. That day, hundreds of commandos descended on kibbutzim, military bases and a rave party in Israel, which was experiencing its worst attack on civilians since its creation in 1948.It’s his strategy, he’s the one who set up the operation”explained to AFP Leïla Seurat, researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Political Studies in Paris. The ascetic man, with white hair, but thick black eyebrows, “imposed his tempo to change the balance of power on the field and took everyone by surprise”according to her.

The one who is now “the face of the devil” where the “death on borrowed time”according to the Israeli military, has not appeared in public since October. “He is the ultimate security man” who, with a “leader charisma”, “makes decisions with the utmost calm”Abu Abdallah, a former Hamas cellmate, told AFP in 2017. A few minutes after his appointment was announced, a salvo of rockets was fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, claimed by Hamas’ armed wing.

On the Israeli side, theForeign Minister Israel Katz responded to the announcement in a message posted on the social network X.The appointment of arch-terrorist Yahya Sinwar as head of Hamas, replacing Ismail Haniyeh, is an additional reason to eliminate him quickly and wipe this despicable organization off the map.”he wrote.