The Journal. - The Brutal Calculation of Hamas’s Leader

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Yahya Sinwar is the Hamas leader inside Gaza who allegedly plotted the October 7th attacks. According to private messages reviewed by the WSJ, Sinwar believes that a rising Palestinian death toll—and the international condemnation it brings—is in the best interest of his cause. WSJ’s Rory Jones walks us through Sinwar’s strategy. Further Reading: - Gaza Chief’s Brutal Calculation: Civilian Bloodshed Will Help Hamas  - The Hamas Leader Who Studied Israel’s Psyche—and Is Betting His Life on What He Learned  Further Listening:  - Why Israel and Hamas Could Be Headed Into a Forever War  - Inside the White House's Scramble to Avert a Bigger Middle East War  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The leader of Hamas in Gaza is a man named Yahya Sinwar. And recently, our colleague Rory Jones has been able to review dozens of Sinwar's private messages with ceasefire negotiators, Hamas members outside of Gaza, and others. Throughout this conflict, even though Sinwar is a hunted man and he's largely been running from the Israeli military, he has been communicating. And we've been tracking that and tried to tie all that together and provide a picture of a man that is leading this war in Gaza for Hamas. The picture the messages paint is a complicated one.

Gaza is in ruins. An estimated 37,000 people are dead, according to Palestinian officials. But according to those messages, Sinwar believes Hamas is winning. In one message that Rory saw, Sinwar recently said, quote, we have the Israelis right where we want them.

In some ways, it's like shocking, isn't it? It's like there's this guy that's being hunted. He's hiding in this sort of renowned tunnel network. You know, on the surface, you might be like, it doesn't look like you've got the Israelis where you want them. From the messages, Sinhwar seems to believe that Israel has more to lose from the war than Hamas does. He seems to think that the more Palestinians die, the more people pay attention. He thinks it's in Hamas's interest and the interest of the Palestinian cause to have these numbers of people dying because of the negative impact that has on Israel. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Monday, June 17th. Coming up on the show, the story of Yahya Sinwar. Take to the fields of the USA for your next vacation. Ready to kick off? Discover exciting games and events. Plus, find amazing hidden gems in cities full of adventures, delicious food, and diverse cultures. You'll love it so much you'll want to extend your stay beyond the matches. Get the ball rolling on your soccer getaway. Head to visittheusa.com. Yahya Senwar's life has been shaped by a bloody conflict with Israel, a state that he says has no right to exist.

In a speech in 2021, he shook his fist as he urged his supporters to fight for the cause. In that speech, he called for an invasion of Israel. The U.S. has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization, and Sinwar himself as a terrorist. Sinwar's parents were displaced from their home in the 1948 war that established the state of Israel. He was born in the 1960s and spent his childhood in a refugee camp in Gaza. He lived in what was initially a makeshift home of, you know, of corrugated metal

roofs. The people in the refugee camp were very reliant on the United Nations for handouts. War defined Sinwar's childhood. As the conflict continued, and Israel took more Palestinian territory, Gaza has been occupied by Israel for most of Senwar's life. And so he grows up in this sort of environment of conflict and violence and occupation of Israeli forces. In the 1980s, Senwar was a young man when uprisings broke out across Muslim-majority nations, like in Iran and Afghanistan.

And the movements were inspirational to Sinwar and other Palestinians. At the end of the 80s, you have not only this sort of period of revolutionary fervor and an interest in Islamism, but you also have an eruption generally, a boiling over of Palestinian frustration. And so young people growing up at that time under Israeli occupation became increasingly nationalistic

and they became increasingly frustrated with their lives under Israeli rule. Around this time, Sinwar joined Hamas, a newly formed organization that was dedicated to armed resistance against Israel. Hamas wanted the creation of a Palestinian state in its place. And Sinwar moved up quickly within the organization. He becomes very close in the 80s to the founder of Hamas, a guy called Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. And he works with Sheikh Yassin to create an internal security force that hunts down Palestinian informants for Israel. And not only do they hunt them down,

they murder the people they think are allegedly spying for Israel. Eventually, in the late 1980s, Israel arrested Sinwar. In his police interrogation, he confessed to multiple crimes. He talks about one particular Palestinian who he strangles to death with a scarf, a keffiyeh, which is like the symbol of the Palestinian cause

and Palestinian nationhood. And in his confession, he says, I believe that he deserved to die for what he did. And so that really indicates that he's very much a zealot. He believes in the Palestinian cause and he's willing to murder for it. Sinwar was taken to an Israeli prison, along with other members of Hamas, where his power and influence only grew.

He already has this reputation as an enforcer within Hamas. And in Israeli prisons, the different Palestinian factions are housed together. And so he quickly rises through the ranks of the Hamas hierarchy in prison to essentially become the leader of Hamas inside prison. He also reads a lot about Jewish history and he tries to understand the Israelis and the Zionist project. He learns Hebrew and he watches a lot of Israeli television and tries to understand Israelis and understand the Israeli psyche. And so this is what he's sort of doing

in his time behind bars. And Sinwar had a lot of time to study Israel. He was in prison for more than two decades. He was released in 2011 in a prisoner swap. In that exchange, over a thousand Palestinians were set free for just one Israeli soldier. Gilad Shalit,

the Israeli soldier captured more than five years ago by Palestinian militants back in Israel now with his family. The price of his freedom is the release of more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners.

Sinwar learned a valuable lesson from that experience, according to an Israeli intelligence official who spent time with him. Israelis value the lives of their soldiers and their citizens very, very highly and will do all they can to get them back. And that's partly born of the fact that they're a people's army

and everyone has to serve. And Israel believes that that is one of their strengths in society, that everyone serves in the army, and there's this sort of cohesion that comes with that. But he sees it as a weakness that he can exploit, that he can kidnap people and he can capture people, and he can hold them to ransom. After his release, Sinwar returned to Gaza,

where he now had even more influence within Hamas. And in 2017, he became its leader in Gaza. When he took control of Hamas, his goal was the same. End the Israeli occupation. His strategy initially is not to sort of wage over war with Israel. Simwa understands that he is fighting a much stronger power. He says in an interview in 2018, he says, who would want to fight a nuclear power with slingshots?

He understands that this is sort of very much an asymmetrical war. At first, Sinwar tried to bring together various Palestinian factions into a united front, but he had limited success. He seemed to make bigger gains with violence. For instance, in 2018, he supported Palestinian protests along the border with Israel. They're turned bloody, in essence. There are agitators among them,

and they start to sort of rush the fence. And then the Israeli military shoots on the Palestinians. And he leverages protests to sort of create bloodshed, I suppose. In an interview at the Time, Sinwar said, quote, we make the headlines only with blood. He says no blood, no news, essentially. So he understands that he's trying to manipulate global headlines and global diplomacy. Palestinian bloodshed made headlines, but it didn't seem to make that much of a difference when it came to international support for ending Israel's occupation. Arab states had begun to normalize relations with Israel.

Saudi Arabia, the most powerful Arab nation, and one of the biggest proponents of the Palestinian cause. It was in talks about normalizing relations. And he launched October 7 in part to break that status quo. That was one of the reasons why he did it. October 7, 2023, the day that Hamas staged his attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostages across the border into Gaza. Rory's reporting shows that another reason Sinwar wanted to do it is because he thought he could quickly get what he wanted out of Israel. He thinks that he understands Israeli society better than it knows itself. He thinks that he understands Israeli society better than it knows itself. And he thinks that one of the weaknesses in Israeli society is that they'll give up a lot to get back citizens and soldiers.

And so one of his aims is to kidnap and to take people back to Gaza and use them as leverage to extract something from Israel. And one of the big things he wants to extract is that he wants to free more prisoners in Israeli jails. One of the first things he does when he leaves prison himself is he says to those people that are left behind,

we'll come back for you, we're going to get you out. And so he's made this a personal goal of trying to free Palestinians held in Israeli jails. But according to the messages Rory has seen, October 7th didn't go exactly as Sinwar thought it would. Early on, after October 7th, he sends a message

that says things went out of control. And what he's referring to is the brutality and the atrocities that were committed on October 7th inside Israel by Hamas and other factions. And the fact that essentially sort of gangs of civilians crossed into Israel and started kidnapping people and taking them back to Gaza. Immediately after the attack, Sinwar pushed Israel for a deal. He wanted to trade the hostages in exchange for all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Sinwar seemed confident it would work, but it didn't. Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, he says we're going to destroy Hamas. Our security and the prospects of peace in the Middle East depend on one thing. Total victory over Hamas. One of its main goals is to kill Sinwar as the leader of Hamas. You know, we're going to get the hostages back, but we're going to take out Hamas and destroy any kind of ability of Hamas to threaten Israel and use its military capabilities against Israel. On top of this, Sinwar had assumed his key allies would join the fight. But they didn't. attacking Israel, planning attacking Israel. Iran has been training Palestinian fighters to attack Israel.

And so Sinwar either he misunderstands their intentions or he misleads himself about their intentions. But ultimately, Iran and Hezbollah do not get involved in a full-scale war with Israel. And so, in that sense, he miscalculates. Based on messages reviewed by the journal, Sinwar realized that his plan was failing. Israel was laying siege to Gaza,

cutting off critical infrastructure and supply lines, and leveling whole neighborhoods. And at that point, Senoir pivoted. That's after the break. This episode is brought to you by New Balance Running. We'll see you next time. New Balance has the running shoes, clothes, and accessories to push your run further and help you run your way. Find yours at NewBalance.ca slash running. New Balance. Run your way. How do stop losses work on Kraken?

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Once it became clear that Sinwar's initial demands weren't going to be met... It quickly sort of shifts into defiance, essentially. Even though Israel does a very good job, very quickly, of dismantling Hamas's military capabilities in Gaza City and moves north to south through the Strip, his messages indicate that he is becoming more confident that Israel will get caught in the mud and won't really be able to achieve its ultimate goal of taking out the entirety of Hamas.

How is it that Sinwar becomes more confident at that point when there's all this destruction going on around him? Hamas has got, like, Israel estimates 30,000 fighters. And so it's not that easy just to go in within weeks or months and just completely eradicate the group. And Sinwar knows that. And casualties among Israeli soldiers start to tick up. And he starts to become more confident that he can survive

and that Hamas can survive. While Hamas seemed to be getting crushed on the battlefield as more civilians suffered and died, international attention started to return to the Palestinian cause. and died, international attention started to return to the Palestinian cause. International condemnation starts to grow over the numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza. And as the numbers tick up, first 10,000, then 20,000, there becomes this sort of groundswell of anger and this huge amount of activism on U.S. college campuses. Whatever it takes!

Whatever it takes! To free Palestine! To free Palestine! And what you also see is a real push to get Israel to end the war. South Africa formally accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza before the UN International Court of Justice in The Hague. And this idea that the Palestinian cause is back in the zeitgeist, it's the thing again. And diplomatically, people are talking about it again. And Simran starts to achieve some of those sort of goals that he wants of breaking the status quo in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But how does he respond to the fact that so many Gazans are dying?

In one message, he references the numbers of people that died in other wars for independence. And he says these are necessary sacrifices as part of what he thinks is like part of this noble cause of pursuing a Palestinian state. For sure, he sees these civilian casualties as beneficial to Hamas. Ceasefire negotiations have been going on for months. After a brief pause in fighting last November, the sides have been at an impasse. And so, the fighting has continued.

And over a million Palestinians have been driven into Rafah, a city at the southernmost edge of Gaza. They've been living in tents and densely packed refugee camps, facing famine and without adequate medical treatment. In May, Israel and the U.S. pressured Hamas to accept a ceasefire deal. Netanyahu said, you know, if you don't sign up to this ceasefire, we're going to go into Rafah and we're going to take out Hamas's last military battalions. And instead of sort of like cowering under that pressure, Simoes sort of just lashes out and does the opposite. And Hamas kills four Israeli soldiers.

And Hamas officials publicly almost like goad Israel into going into Rafah. They're like, you know, you've been talking about it. Why don't you go in and finish the job? Israel did go into Rafah. It's attacked parts of the city with bombs and sent in troops on the job. Israel did go into Rafah. It's attacked parts of the city with bombs and sent in troops on the ground. It sort of illustrates the confidence that Simwa thinks,

how confident he's thinking at that point that Israel is just going to get bogged down and international pressure is going to grow on Israel. And he turns out to be right in that instance. At the United Nations, the Secretary General called for an end to the fighting. We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. An international court with the prosecutors there say they're going to seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Sinwa, essentially for war

crimes. The International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants for Hamas leader Yahya Sinwa and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. And so the pressure grows on Israel as a result of its operation in Rafah. The ceasefire negotiations continue, but the two sides are still very far apart. Does it seem like they're ever going to be able to reach a deal? Yeah, I mean, it seems pretty unlikely at the moment because they can't really seem to bridge the gap

between what each side wants. Netanyahu has said that we want to do a deal, an initial deal that frees some hostages, and we want to try to reserve the right to go back to the fight because Israel wants to destroy Hamas's military capabilities. Netanyahu wants to try to kill Sinwa. And Netanyahu's better political future, in a sense wants to try to kill Sinwa and Netanyahu's better political future in a sense on trying to do that. Hamas on the other hand and Sinwa what they're saying is we're open to a ceasefire deal

we will set out the steps towards freeing hostages but what we want is we want written guarantees now that this will be a permanent end to fighting. If Hamas gets a permanent ceasefire, that means it survives, which means that Sinwar emerges alive, that will be considered a victory for Hamas. What would it take for Sinwar to surrender

and give in to what Israel wants? I just can't really see any scenario in which Sinwar surrenders. In recent messages reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Sinwar compared the fight in Gaza to an ancient Muslim battle in the Iraqi city of Karbala. In that fight, those who died are still seen as martyrs. And Sinwar has said that he too is willing to die for the cause. And Sinwar sends this message saying,

you know, we've got to continue the way we've been doing over the last, you know, eight months. We have to continue on the path that we've carved out or I am willing to die for this cause or let the death of me and Hamas in Gaza become this this historic moment that will be sort of etched into history and so I don't think he's thinking about conceding or surrendering I just don't think that is what he's in in any way thinking I think he's sort of betting his life that he understands Israeli society better than it knows itself and that eventually that domestic forces, international forces

will pressure Israel to end the war and he'll survive. This episode has been updated to clarify that the Palestinian prisoners Senwar once freed are in Israeli jails, and a previous version misidentified Iran and Afghanistan as Arab countries. That's all for today, Monday, June 17th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Summer Saeed. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.