Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed on Wednesday that Mohammed Sinwar, one of Hamas’s most senior leaders, was killed in a recent airstrike.
Sinwar was the latest on a long list of senior Hamas leaders the Israeli military has killed, including Sinwar’s brother, Yahya Sinwar, who was the mastermind behind the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack in Israel that ignited the war.
“We changed the face of the Middle East, we pushed the terrorists from our territories, we entered the Gaza Strip with force, we eliminated tens of thousands of terrorists, we eliminated (Mohammad) Deif, (Ismail) Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Sinwar,” Netanyahu told Israeli lawmakers.
Hamas has not confirmed Mohammed Sinwar’s assassination.
Mohammed Sinwar, born in 1975 in a Khan Younis refugee camp, was the leader of the Khan Younis brigade until 2016. He was reportedly referred to as “the shadow” by the Israeli military for his elusiveness and ability to evade capture over multiple decades in Hamas’s ranks.
He was believed to be as hard-line as his brother. Yahya Sinwar was singled out as the primary mastermind behind the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in which Palestinian militants stormed the border and killed about 1,200 people, hundreds of whom were civilians, and kidnapped another 250 others. Hamas is still holding slightly less than 60 people, about a third of whom are believed to still be alive.
It’s unclear how Sinwar’s death could complicate the ceasefire negotiations, in part because his and other senior leaders’ deaths have left a void in the group and further decentralized its leadership infrastructure.
Alternatively, a new leader could emerge who could be a more moderate voice, though this belief was not borne out following the assassination of Yahya Sinwar in October.
Netanyahu has vowed not to end the war in Gaza until all the hostages have been released, Hamas has been completely demilitarized, and it is no longer a part of the governing body of the Gaza Strip.
President Donald Trump’s Middle East special envoy, Steve Witkoff, also said on Wednesday that the United States is preparing to finalize a new ceasefire proposal.
TRUMP SHARPENS PUTIN CRITICISM IN WARNING AS HE WEIGHS SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA: ‘PLAYING WITH FIRE!’
“We are on the precipice of sending out a new term sheet that hopefully will be delivered later on today,” Witkoff said in the Oval Office. “The president is going to review it. And I have some very good feelings about getting to a long-term resolution, a temporary ceasefire, and a long-term resolution, a peaceful resolution, of that conflict.”
Mohammad Sinwar came into prominence following the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006. Hamas held Shalit for five years before agreeing to release him in exchange for more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners, one of whom was his brother, who was serving a life sentence at the time.