‘Sinwar storm’ is coming for Israel, claims new Hamas leader

Yahya Sinwar, who was killed in Gaza by Israeli forces last week, “kicked up a storm” against Israel that would eventually “lead to its destruction,” the acting leader of Hamas said.

Paying tribute to his former colleague via video link at a memorial service in Istanbul on Monday, Khaled Mashal added that Israel “sought to impose a bleak fate on Sinwar, yet God bestowed upon him a legacy of dignity; he lived with unwavering courage and died with honour."

Israel released footage of a man it claims to be Sinwar sitting in a chair with a wounded arm swatting away a drone before the IDF killed the Hamas leader.

In his video address, Mashal said that Hamas “will remain loyal to its path of martyrs, its principles, its values, and its strategies in leadership and resistance,” continuing that the group, which is classed by the UK, US and EU as a terrorist organisation, “has endured the journey of resistance for decades”.

However, Mashal is currently only taking over as acting head of the Hamas political bureau outside of Palestinian territories, having left after the Six-Day War in 1967. He hasn’t lived there since.

Sinwar, who masterminded the 7 October attacks which killed over 1,200 Israelis, was the latest of multiple senior Hamas officials killed in the conflict, which has also killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Gazan Ministry of Health.

His death leaves a power vacuum with no obvious successor in the territory, where two-thirds of the infrastructure has either been damaged or destroyed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also vowed to continue the offensive in Gaza, saying the war is “not over yet," despite increasing calls for a ceasefire from international allies, including the US, and the families of hostages who remain in Gaza. 101 hostages are still captive there, more than 60 of them are still alive, according to Israeli authorities.

The IDF has also continued its ground invasion of Lebanon after killing Hezbollah's long-time leader, Hassan Nasrallah, at the end of September, as the Israeli government mulls how to respond to an Iranian attack in response to Nasrallah’s death. According to experts, Israeli government officials see this as an opportunity to completely neutralise Iran and its allies.

Mashal’s comments suggest that Hamas will not give up the fight either.

A seasoned leader

Khaled Mashal is used to taking up leadership positions in Hamas, having served as Chairman of its political bureau twice before.

Born in 1956 in Silwad in the Jordanian-controlled West Bank, Mashal’s family fled to Jordan and then Kuwait after the Six-Day War in 1967. In Kuwait, he joined the conservative Muslim-Brotherhood movement while still at school, which started his path in radical politics.

After working as a physics teacher in Kuwait, he became one of the founding members of Hamas when it was formed in 1987, becoming the chairman of its Political Bureau for the first time in 1996, a post he would retain until 2017.

A year after taking up the post, he was almost killed in a botched assassination attempt by Israeli security forces, Mossad, which he later describes as “a loud noise in my ear ... like a boom, like an electric shock.”

For a time, Mashal was seen as a moderate figure within Hamas, open to a "permanent ceasefire" with Israel in return for a Palestinian state in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank. A position widely seen as untenable now.

Following the death of Ismail Haniyeh in an explosion in Tehran in July, Mashal again took over as chairman of the Political Bureau until he was succeeded by Sinwar. Taking over after Sinwar’s death, Mashal is said to have grown more hardline.