Sinwar’s ‘megalomania’ disturbs even Palestinians, Hamas leaders

JERUSALEM – Being one of the only terrorist leaders left standing – or perhaps crawling in his tunnel would be more appropriate imagery – Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has apparently become so metaphorically drunk on his own power – and apparent resistance to airstrikes – he has instructed his minions to resume suicide bombings of Israelis.

Considering Israeli intelligence thought the architect of the so-called “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation on Oct. 7 had been killed – an assessment U.S. intelligence did not happen to share – and prompted by his disappearance from view for a while, when even the notes he passed to underlings seemed to dry up, Sinwar has reportedly reappeared swinging.

Senior Biden advisor @brett_mcgurk tells Jewish leaders: Sinwar remains the decision maker. He remains, we believe, alive and in a tunnel underneath Gaza, holding hostages and likely with hostages in his vicinity.

— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) October 9, 2024

The Wall Street Journal ran a report citing Arab and Hamas officials, revealing there were concerns about Sinwar’s “megalomania” from top terrorist leaders, which included both Khaled Mashal, and prior to his elimination in an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse in Tehran, Ismail Haniyeh. Arab intelligence officials say he sent a directive to a senior operative: “Now is the time to revive suicide bombings,” according to the Journal.

A few days later, an unassuming, bespectacled Palestinian man walked around Tel Aviv streets with a backpack filled with explosives. His bomb detonated prematurely, killing only himself, but it was a stark reminder of the potential to return to the dark days of the second intifada between Sept. 2000 and Feb. 2005, when Israelis didn’t know if they could get on a bus, go to a restaurant or a nightclub for fear of being caught up in another suicide bombing.

There was apparently some unease among the Hamas leaders about a return to tactic of suicide bombing, and they preferred to eschew it, thinking it might make the organization a political pariah. Despite the catastrophic implications – both moral and physical – of what a widespread campaign of suicide bombings would mean, it is possible to see some logic in it. Israelis’ opinion of Hamas is already subterranean, such was the barbarity and viciousness of the Oct. 7 massacre. And the IDF is clearly doing all it can to take Sinwar out, like it has Haniyeh and Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah before him. From a wider, more Western perspective, it isn’t clear how much of a pariah Hamas will become for reinstituting such a tactic. Israel and Israelis are already seen as fair game, evidenced by the denials of the atrocities of a year ago.

As with most groups there are individuals within it who view the overall strategy and the tactics needed to realize it in disparate ways. Sinwar is, and always has been, a hardliner, an uncompromising, soulless and extremely violent man, who sees maximal civilian casualties as a way to get Israel to first bend, and ultimately break. He seems to have won out against less radical elements, who wish to retain a patina of political legitimacy in the hopes of one day establishing a Palestinian state.

“Under Sinwar, Hamas can be expected to be a much clearer-cut, hard-line fundamentalist organization,” said Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute think tank, who wrote a book on the group, and was quoted in the Journal article.

The communications between Sinwar in Gaza and Meshal and Haniyeh in Doha, the latter two dismissively known as the “hotel guys,” reveals a fascinating portrait of a fundamental difference of approach to the pursuit of Palestinian statehood. Sinwar, the tough, grizzled, and uncompromising former prisoner, living among his people in Gaza vs. the political leaders with tailored suits, gilded hotel rooms, and a comfortable life. While both Sinwar and Haniyeh drew Hamas closer to Iran – not an obvious or easy move – the latter was concerned that the former would be too extreme to win the backing of more moderate Arab states.

As for Oct. 7, Haniyeh and his coterie in Qatar were not fully aware of what Sinwar and Hamas’ commando units had in store for southern Israel and Israelis on that black Sabbath. While they publicly praised the attack – famously bowing down in their expensive suits on the plush carpet in Haniyeh’s hotel room – privately, there were serious misgivings about Sinwar. Haniyeh was supposedly warmer to the potential of a ceasefire deal to release hostages and end the war; Sinwar, in a position he still holds today, is uninterested in that prospect.