Yahya Sinwar, who officially took over as the leader of Hamas‎, was born in 1962. He is the current Palestinian leader of the Hamas organization in the Gaza Strip, according to Wikipedia, having taken over from Ismail Haniya in February 2017.

He is one of the co-founders of the Hamas security apparatus and was the second most powerful figure in the organization.

Childhood – How he was elected leader of Hamas

Born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Egyptian-occupied Gaza in 1962, his family was expelled from Ashkelon during the Arab-Israeli war in 1948. He completed his studies at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he received a BA in Arabic Studies.

Orchestrating the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians he considered accomplices in 1989, he was sentenced to four life terms by Israel, of which he served 22 years until his release in a 2011 prisoner swap with an Israeli soldier. In 2017, he was elected leader of Hamas and claimed he would pursue a “peaceful, popular resistance,” a position he later abandoned.

He was re-elected leader of Hamas in 2021. In September 2015, Sinwar was designated a terrorist by the United States government. Hamas and the Ezzedine Al-Din al-Qassem Brigades have also been designated terrorist organizations by the United States, the European Union and several countries and organizations.

On 15 May 2021, an Israeli airstrike was reported to have hit the home of the Hamas leader, with no immediate details of any casualties or injuries. The strike took place in the southern Gaza Strip of Khan Younis amid ever-escalating tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. However, in the week that followed, he appeared in public at least four times.

The most obvious and bold was in a press conference on May 27, 2021, when he stated (on live broadcast) that he would walk home after the press conference and called on the Israeli Defense Minister to make a decision on whether to kill him or not. in the next 60 minutes, until he gets home. Sinwar spent the next hour wandering the streets of Gaza and taking pictures in public.

The death of his brother

The brother of Hamas leader Yahya Shinwar was reportedly killed in an Israeli airstrike just hours after Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi threatened to kill all of the terror group’s leaders and their subordinates.

“Palestinian media confirmed that the brother of Hamas leader Yahya Shinwar was killed by an Israeli airstrike earlier this evening (Thursday evening) in his apartment building in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis,” it said on Arabic social networks.

It is noted that a few hours earlier Halevi had said that “we will hit hard and dismember the leaders of Gaza”.

“Whoever is left in charge will understand very well that you don’t do such things in the state of Israel,” the IDF chief said.

And referring to the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Shinwar, he said that “this heinous attack was decided by Yahya Shinwar, the ‘ruler’ in Gaza, which makes him and all his organs under him dead.”