He deceived "Israel" for decades.. How did the occupation fail to anticipate Sinwar every time?

Over the decades of confrontation, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has devoted his life since he was a young man to fighting the occupation. He began his career in the early eighties in the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza and as head of its student bloc at the Islamic University. He then became one of the most prominent founders of the Al-Majd security apparatus, and then one of the most prominent founders of the Al-Qassam Brigades, which would later take on different phases.

The man entered prison as a young man and came out as an old man after more than 20 years, during which he understood the enemy well and prepared for his long battle that he would fight 12 years after his release from prison in 2012 in the “Shalit” deal, to die a martyr in the Battle of the Flood of Al-Aqsa that he launched and presented himself as a soldier in it, carrying his quiver, brandishing his weapon and fighting until his last breath despite his severe wounds.

And every time during the confrontation, Israel failed to anticipate Sinwar, who became a “terrifying ghost” haunting the Israelis. You find the Israeli press writing about the man with a mixture of awe, fear, and admiration, and they try to evade this admiration and fear by trying to distort and demonize him. However, one of the psychological experts in Israel summed up the matter simply and clearly, saying that “Sinwar played with the Israelis for years, and he and Hamas won the psychological war.”

How did Sinwar think and understand "Israel"?

Sinwar has been able to deceive Israel and manipulate the minds of its leaders for decades. His strength lies in his deep understanding of the Israeli mentality and their weaknesses, which has enabled him to outperform them psychologically and militarily on many occasions. Israeli Professor Rafi Karso, a professor of neurology who has a radio program and a health advice column in the Israeli newspaper Maariv, says that Hamas presents itself to the world as a peace-seeking movement by publishing pictures of its detainees being released and waving goodbye to its fighters.

However, Carso disagreed with the Israeli broadcasters who claim that Yahya Sinwar is mentally ill, as he believes that his personality is complex and that he is far from stupid. Carso pointed out that some Israeli media outlets accuse Sinwar of mental illness all the time, although they do not provide anything to prove this, and do not rely on a reliable examination to make this claim.

The Israeli professor believes that this may be due to the fact that Sinwar is waging an effective psychological war on Israel. He and his men have learned to penetrate the minds of Israelis and the minds of the entire world after he was able to launch surprise after surprise, and plant anxiety in them. He is still successful in penetrating the minds of people in Israel weeks after the war.

Carso cites some of the phrases used by Israeli broadcasters when talking about Sinwar as evidence of his psychological warfare, such as that he “left us without air or an outlet,” and “destroyed our nerves”; “made Israel like a mixture in a cauldron,” and the bottom line is that the Israelis have become his playthings, according to the Israeli doctor.

After his release in a prisoner swap in 2012, Sinwar convinced many Israelis that he was a pragmatic leader who favored calm and focused on consolidating Hamas’s rule in Gaza. Some Israeli officials, including journalists such as those writing in the Jerusalem Post , even saw Sinwar as “a leader with whom we can negotiate.”

However, Sinwar was actually planning, since the first day he left prison, to carry out a unique operation targeting "Israel" in an unprecedented manner, namely the "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation, which caused a huge shock inside Israel.

Sinwar became a member of Hamas's political Shura Council after his release from prison, and was elected in 2017 as the leader of Hamas in Gaza. He was re-elected with a huge victory in 2021, becoming the number one man in the Strip, where he was responsible for the military file within the movement's political council, and was able to break down barriers between the political and military wings and was the link between them.

During his years as head of Hamas, Sinwar - in his suit that he could not bear to wear, as he said in a press interview - was deceiving "Israel" throughout these years, trying to convince them that he was seeking calm and achieving prosperity for the Palestinians and bringing in more humanitarian aid in exchange for not engaging in wars with "Israel" as happened in several confrontations between the Islamic Jihad movement and the occupation in recent years, as the Israelis thought that the man did not want wars and Hamas was neutralized from entering into any confrontation, while he was planning an unprecedented attack. Through the psychological warfare that he waged through the media and public positions, the man was able to deceive "Israel" until the surprise came on the morning of October 7, 2023.

Surprise Flood of Al-Aqsa

On October 7, 2023, Sinwar and the military commander of the Qassam Brigades, Muhammad Deif, had drawn up plans that aimed to strike the Israeli depth in a way that had never been struck before.

The big surprise was that Israel, despite all its advanced intelligence tools, was unable to predict this operation. Israeli reports even say that Sinwar was able to manipulate Israeli eavesdropping devices and make them believe that they were in control of the situation, while he was preparing for this major attack.

The man launched Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa and dealt an unprecedented blow to the occupying state, and was able to carry out this operation successfully. Israeli investigators and analysts say that they know Sinwar retrospectively, and say that his sole goal is "to destroy Israel", after he became the most wanted man in "Israel" in the Battle of Flood of Al-Aqsa; Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, refers to him as "a dead man walking on earth", and the Hebrew media celebrated the discovery of "Sinwar's shoes" during the military operation he launched on the city of Khan Yunis.

The occupying state accused Sinwar of running things from behind the scenes, and of relying on an integrated system of tunnels and secret communications to conceal his movements. For an entire year, Israel failed to reach him or stop him despite the intensive surveillance it was carrying out, with America and European countries helping Tel Aviv around the clock.

Since the start of the ground operation on the Gaza Strip after October 7, 2023, the Israeli army has published recordings showing the leader of the Hamas movement inside one of the tunnels, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted on December 6, 2023, during the invasion of Khan Yunis, that the army had reached Sinwar’s house and surrounded it, but he was not reached.

The New York Times quoted four Israeli officials as saying that for more than a year, the Israeli security establishment, with the support of the United States, devoted enormous resources and collected reams of intelligence in its pursuit of Yahya Sinwar, who was described as having surrounded himself with dozens of Israeli prisoners to protect himself and negotiate with them inside a tunnel deep underground. But in the end, the man was unexpectedly engaged during a routine sweep in southern Gaza on October 17, 2024.

The Last Confrontation: Sinwar Fights on the Ground!

In the last confrontation in which Sinwar was martyred in a house in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood in Rafah on Wednesday, October 16, Israel was surprised that Sinwar was not hiding in the tunnels as they expected, but was fighting directly on the ground with his soldiers. This surprise was shocking to the Israeli leaders, as Sinwar showed courage and determination to stay with his forces until the end, in a scene that the enemy did not expect.

Israeli officials said the unit was on patrol in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday when soldiers came across a small group of militants and engaged them with drone support. In the exchange of fire, the three Palestinian gunmen were killed after an artillery shell was fired at the building where the militants were hiding. Later, during a search, the soldiers noticed that one of the bodies bore a striking resemblance to the Hamas leader.

The occupation army, through its spokesman, Daniel Hagari, admitted that the killing of the head of the political bureau of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, was “a coincidence,” as he said: “We did not know that he was there. At first, we recognized him as an armed man inside one of the buildings, and he was seen, masked, throwing a wooden plank towards the drone seconds before he was killed.”

Al-Sinwar was martyred wearing his quiver and carrying his weapon, clashing with the occupation soldiers above the ground. The Israelis were shocked that this man, who is considered the leader of a Palestinian resistance movement, was fighting himself while wearing his military uniform, and throwing what he found in front of him at an occupation army drone that was tracking him inside the destroyed house that was bombed, as his right hand was bleeding, while he resisted until the end with his other hand, in a legendary scene that is rarely seen in a political leader. The man showed the world his ability to confront “Israel” not only in politics but also on the ground. Al-Sinwar was, as he always was, one step ahead of the occupation, and he was not expected even in his death and final confrontation.

Source: Arabi Post