Yahya Sinwar, who has died aged 61 according to the Israeli authorities, was the leader of Hamas, the political and military organisation that controls the Gaza Strip, and the architect of the October 7 2023 attack on Israel in which 1,400 were killed, thousands injured and 240 abducted to Gaza.
On the morning of the attack, at 6.30am, hundreds of Hamas gunmen pulled down the fence separating Israel from the Gaza Strip, crossed into Israeli territory and surprised the Israelis. They then drove into Israeli towns and villages, broke into houses and, for hours, roamed around, killing Israelis and burning down their houses. It took the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) many hours to comprehend the extent of the Hamas attack before they rushed to the rescue.
The Hamas invasion was planned by Sinwar, and the Israelis, who had known him for almost 40 years, failed to read him properly. They wrongly believed, on the eve of the attack, that Sinwar was more concerned about solidifying his leadership in Gaza and extracting economic concessions for his people than physically attacking Israel.
This belief was partly based on Sinwar’s own assurances that the organisation he was leading, Hamas, had no intention of attacking Israel, as, in his words, “We understand that Israel sits on 200 nuclear warheads, and it has the most advanced air force in the region. We know that we don’t have the ability to dismantle Israel.”