Jerusalem
CNN
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that he had killed Mohamed Singhwar, the elusive de facto leader of Hamas in Gaza.
Singwar is the brother of former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli forces in southern Gaza in October.
Netanyahu made the presentation during his speech in the Israeli Parliament Knesset as the country was marked 600 days after the attack on Hamas on October 7, 2023.
CNN reached out to Hamas for comment.
“We changed the face of the Middle East, pushed terrorists out of our territory, entered the Gaza Strip with strength and eliminated tens of thousands of terrorists.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) carried out a massive strike at European Hospital in Karnnis on May 13, the day after Hamas released Israeli-American soldier Edan Alexander.
At the time, the IDF said it had attacked “command and control centre Hama sterolists” in the hospital’s underground infrastructure. A senior Israeli official and two sources familiar with the issue told CNN at the time, targeting Mohammed Sinwar at the time.
The strike killed dozens and dozens more, Gaza’s Palestinian Health Ministry said at the time.
Hamas rejected allegations about Singwar’s death at the time, saying in a statement that he was “permission to confirm or reject anything that has been made public.”
Singwar’s death will take away the capable and determined commander from Hamas. But many analysts say it won’t bring the end of the conflict near. If no new leaders appear and Hamas mediators do not have Hamas interlocutors in Gaza, they can even complicate negotiations with Israel.
Israeli officials thought that Mohammed Singwar was just as hard-liner as his brother Yahya, but he was far more experienced in the military. According to the IDF, he ordered the group Khan Younis Brigade until 2016.
Since the start of the war he remained largely hidden, along with many of the senior leaders of Hamas in Gaza. In December 2023, IDF released a video of what Mohammed Singwar said was driving through a tunnel in Gaza. In February 2024, IDF told West Khan Eunice that he found his office.
Netanyahu vowed to continue the war until Israel destroyed Hamas’ military and governing capabilities. To that end, Israel has chased Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, with Singwar as the latest target.
In July, the IDF killed the group’s military leader, Mohammed Deif, on a strike to the Israel-designated humanitarian belt in southern Gaza. Two weeks later, Israel assassinated Tehran Hamas political leader Ismail Honey. Then, in October, Israeli forces killed Yahiyasinwar in Rafa, in southern Gaza. His death left his brother Mohamed as the de facto leader of Hamas in Gaza, placing him straight in the Israeli crosshairs.
Since his brother’s death, Singwar has been outstanding among the leaders of Hamas’ military wing in Gaza. He was closely involved in Hamas’s plan for the October 7 attack. More than 1,200 people were killed in Israel, with about 250 others being held hostage. It is said that a video of him in a tunnel that is said to be heading to Israeli territory has surfaced a few weeks later.
By most accounts, Singwar decided to continue the fight mercilessly despite the loss of thousands of fighter jets on the wings of Hamas forces and the serious suffering of Gaza civilians, as well as sporadic street protests in Gaza against Hamas.
Some commentators believe that Mohammed Singwar lacks the broader authority that Yahiya enjoyed. Haaretz security analyst Amos Harel wrote that “the responsibility for leadership in Gaza shared with Az Al-Din Al-Haddad, the commander north of the strip.”
Mohammed Shehada of the European Council of Foreign Relations says his death will complicate the negotiation process as Hamas reorganizes the reduced leadership within Gaza. Without those leaders, Hamas would be more separate and it would be more difficult to carry out a ceasefire, he says.
Media outlet Ynet commentator Avi Issacharoff says if Sinwar dies, “it could open the door to a more practical voice within Hamas leadership, including Khalil Al-Hayya, others involved in negotiations with Qatar and Americans.”
The balance between its leadership and overseas negotiators is always difficult to assess, but Shehada said Hamas negotiators “a perfect representation of the movement” and had already made countless concessions on their extremely late post-conflict roles, including the permission of international peacekeepers and the abandonment of governance.
Faced with the Israeli government, not ready to negotiate beyond a temporary ceasefire, “they are the most generous now,” Shehada says.
There is abundant evidence that Mohammed Singwar is as hard-pressed as his brother.
In a rare interview with Al Jazeera in 2021, Singwar said: He spoke after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) launched more than 4,000 rockets at Israel.
Speaking in the silhouette, Singwar spoke of the expansion of Hamas’ ambitions.
“Tel Aviv has been on the table since the first day of the battle. Striking Tel Aviv is easier than drinking water.”
By the time he was killed, he had accumulated 30 years of military experience.
I live in the shadows
Singwar was born in the Khan Eunice refugee camp in 1975 and was first arrested for extremist activities as a teenager. He became the leader of Hamas’ Khan Eunice Brigade and is said to have played a key role in the Hamas campaign in 2006, which captured Israeli soldier Girad Shalit, according to the Counter Extremism Project.
Muhammad Shehada says that Singwar lived in the shadows more than his brothers and others in Hamas leadership, and had a more strict security environment.
According to Michael Barak, director of the Global Jihad Research Program at Israel’s Institute of International Terrorism, in 2022, “After an assassination attempt in 2003, he disappeared and did not play a public role at his father’s funeral.”
Evidence from the past few months suggests that he was a capable tactician. Many times, Israeli forces had to return to the area of Gaza where they had previously washed their way for Hamas fighters.
Hamas lost as many as 20,000 fighter jets, according to Israeli military assessments in January, but maintained its presence in many parts of Gaza, occasionally firing rockets at Israel. In a report last month, the International Crisis Group think tank said despite these losses Hamas had recruited thousands of fighter jets.
But Shahada says that Israeli campaigns have seriously degraded Hamas and are now more like a guerrilla group than a threat to its neighbors. Killing Singhwaal doesn’t change that, he says.
Despite Singwar’s death, Yaakov Amidler, former national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said “it is likely that they will need to continue fighting for at least a year to clean up the remaining strips of Hamas’ rule, terrorists and infrastructure.” Only then did Amidler tell the Jewish News Syndicate that he could introduce Gaza to a new form of government.
Shehada believes that an attempt to kill Singwar the day after Israel releases Edan Alexander, the US and Israeli hostage, will make Hamas difficult for mediators and the US to trust what they say.
But what happens next in Gaza may depend as much on the Israeli government as pressure is being put on Washington to end the conflict as well as Hamas leaders.
“Whether he is alive or dies is no longer a central question. The flow of war depends entirely on a different factor: (We) President (Donald) does what he will do – whether he will succeed in imposing his terms on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
