Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has reestablished contact with hostage-ceasefire deal mediators in Qatar after weeks of silence that had stirred speculation he might have been killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza, according to multiple reports Monday.
Sinwar cut off contact because he believed Israel was uninterested in reaching a deal, unnamed sources with knowledge of the negotiations told the Channel 12 news site.
A senior Israeli official told the Walla news site it does not seem that Sinwar has in any way softened his positions on a hostage-and-ceasefire deal. Hamas has demanded a complete withdrawal of the military from Gaza and a permanent end to the war, while Israel has refused any arrangement that would allow the terror group to retain control of the Strip and rebuild its military strength.
“In the past, there was [former Hamas leader Ismail] Haniyeh and he was eliminated. Now there is Khaled Mashaal and he is much more difficult than Haniyeh,” the officials told the hostage families, according to the report.
Haniyeh was killed in Tehran in July, in an assassination blamed on Israel, though Jerusalem has not confirmed or denied its involvement.
The New York Times reported Saturday that Sinwar’s long-running assessment that he will not survive the Gaza war has strengthened in recent weeks and that he believes a regional war would force Israel to scale back operations in Gaza — potentially precluding the need to release hostages to secure a ceasefire in the embattled Strip.
Channel 12 said Friday that government ministers have largely put the hostage issue on the back burner, as Israel has stepped up its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon over the past two weeks in a bid to stem the Iran-backed terror group’s incessant rocket attacks on the north.
Sinwar’s former Shin Bet security service interrogator told The Daily Mail on Monday that the Hamas leader was carrying 25 kilograms (some 55 pounds) of dynamite in footage of him walking through a tunnel days after the October 7 massacre.
The footage, released by the Israel Defense Forces in February, showed Sinwar walking through a Gaza tunnel with several of his family members and was the first and only publicized visual of the terror leader in the wake of October 7.
Kobi Michael also claimed that Sinwar had surrounded himself with “at least 20 hostages.”
“A few times we have had the chance to kill him, but if we do, he will kill all the hostages around him,” he said, predicting that Sinwar would never surrender, and is “dreaming” about remaining as the leader of Hamas and ruler of Gaza.
“He’s thinking now about the next massacre. That man must be killed,” Michael said.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
Reuters
