Hamas consolidates power under alleged Oct. 7 mastermind after spate of Israeli assassinations

TEL AVIV — Yahya Sinwar, the alleged mastermind of the Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel, is the undisputed leader of Hamas after the militant group’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated and Israel confirmed it had killed Mohammed Deif, the military chief.

Until now, Sinwar has remained largely out of the spotlight, a shadowy figure believed to be hiding in Hamas’ labyrinth of tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip. But his appointment as the group’s political leader has left many wondering what it could mean for the ongoing cease-fire and hostage release talks.

For Basem Naim, a senior Hamas official, Sinwar’s promotion suggests it’s business as usual for the group. “The selection of Sinwar represents harmony within Hamas,” he told NBC News in a statement Tuesday, adding that the group had “chosen a leader at the heart of the ongoing battle.”

The group announced his appointment as political leader Tuesday, saying in a statement that he was unanimously voted in after deliberations by its Shura Council — a consultative body that elects Hamas’ politburo with members in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Israeli prisons, and the broader Palestinian diaspora. There was no real competition.

It means Sinwar, who was already in charge of the day-to-day governance of Gaza, will now take the top job as political leader of the group he joined in 1987.

His appointment came six days after Haniyeh was killed in an explosion in Tehran, shortly after he attended the inauguration ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Israel has been widely blamed for the strike, which also killed Haniyeh’s bodyguard, but has not officially commented on the attack.

Unlike Haniyeh, who lived mostly in Qatar, playing Hamas’ envoy to the outside world and presiding over the cease-fire talks, the last known sighting of Sinwar was in a video filmed three days after Oct. 7.

“Whoever decided to assassinate Ismail Haniyeh does not care about the hostages,” said Thabeet Elhmour, a Palestinian political analyst and writer based in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis. “This will not help in embracing the mediator, especially since reports have indicated we were very close to a prisoner exchange deal.”

That view was echoed by Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a foreign policy analyst with Al-Shabaka, a transnational think tank.

“Haniyeh’s presence in Qatar enabled him to represent Palestinians at an international level,” he wrote in a recent analysis. “His assassination lays bare the reality that the Israeli regime is not interested in a cease-fire any time soon.”

In a separate interview with NBC News on Thursday, Kenney-Shawa’s colleague Fathi Nimer said, “Sinwar being the new leader means that there is consensus among the Shura Council that they are behind him and his policies.” He added that it sent “a message that Hamas is still united, and its network is still capable of organization and deliberation, despite months of bombing and assassinations.”

Hamas’ new leader is already facing pressure to go to the negotiating table. But while he remains in the tunnels below Gaza, mediators say it can take several days to exchange messages with him, complicating the process.

Were Sinwar to emerge from hiding or send other representatives to the talks, Gershon Baskin, an Israeli hostage negotiator, said he expected Sinwar to be “less compromising” than Haniyeh.

He said Sinwar’s elevated role is “not good” for the 115 hostages who remain in Gaza, the majority of whom were taken on Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people and took around 240 people captive, according to Israeli tallies. Several have since been freed and around 100 were released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in late November. Forty-two are believed to be dead.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza since then has killed nearly 40,000 people, according to health officials in the enclave. Those figures do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

“Rather than trying to sideline Sinwar in selecting a new leader for Hamas, the Hamas Shura Council has elevated Sinwar, sending a message to the Palestinian people and to the world that they must fight to the death and make no compromises,” Baskin said.

But he struck a more optimistic tone after the leaders of the United States, Egypt and Qatar on Friday jointly demanded both Hamas and Israel resume the stalled talks, with a new round of discussions set to take place in either Doha, Qatar, or the Egyptian capital, Cairo, on Aug. 15.

President Joe Biden, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said in a statement that “only the details” of carrying out a cease-fire and hostage release remain to be thrashed out.

Israel said it would attend, while Hamas has yet to comment.

Baskin said the statement reflected the take-it-or-leave it approach he has publicly and privately advocated for. “The main part — telling Israel and Hamas — enough is enough and the rules of the game are changing — is what the three mediators essentially did,” he said. “Now they need to put their bridging proposals on the table.”

On both sides of the divide, ordinary people are hoping for an end to the conflict.

In southern Gaza, Ahmed Shoraab said he hoped Sinwar would “look for solutions to end this war,” adding that people were “suffering.” Another man, Abou Nasar El-Saoud, said he feared that “a truce will be hard to reach.”

Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, the parents of Israeli American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, said they were hopeful that a deal could be struck to end the fighting and secure the release of their son and the other people held captive.

Hamas released a video of their 23-year-old son, whose left arm was severed below his elbow, in April, but they said they hadn’t gotten any updates on his whereabouts or his physical condition since then.

“We’re always trying to be optimistic,” said Goldberg. “We’re always trying to be hopeful, and we are in a constant state of trauma.”