The Pride and Admiration of Palestinian Civilians

"In recent negotiations, Haniyeh had played a big role in trying to convince Sinwar to accept a ceasefire proposal with Israel."

"Israel's elimination of senior Hamas leaders who cannot easily be replaced has likely had a qualitative impact on the movement."

"More fundamentally, though, the killing of senior figures such as Arouri and Haniyeh appears to have tipped the movement in a more hardline direction."

Hugh Lovatt, expert on Israeli-Palestinian conflict, European Council on Foreign Relations 

"The killing of Haniyeh already brought negotiations back to the drawing board."

"This next chess move by Hamas makes negotiations even trickier."

Lina Khatib, expert on conflict, Chatham House, London

Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip Yahya Sinwar speaks during a rally marking Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day, in Gaza City, April 14, 2023. (Mohammed Abed/AFP)

 

So much for the considered opinions of 'experts' in the field of caustic, violent relations among Palestinian terrorist groups with the Jewish State they pledge to annihilate. The newly-named Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, who planned in exquisite detail a broad-scale bloody atrocity that effectively broke an existing  ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, insists as a bargaining tool to permit the return of the still-living Israeli hostages he holds in Gaza, that a permanent ceasefire be implemented.

 

A terrorist group, on its backfoot, that had willingly and deliberately for public relations purposes with the West in mind, submitted its own civilian population to retaliatory harm by installing itself within said population, using it as a shield to protect its command centres, weapons depots and terrorist operatives, feels entitled to dictate to the state military conducting defensive raids in Gaza and with the intention of destroying the terror group's capacity for further atrocities against Israeli civilians, how it will agree to end the conflict.

 

Formally inducted as the Hamas supreme leader following the assassination of once-Palestinian prime minister with the Palestinian Authority, and latterly as the head of its rival Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar now undertakes to unravel the chaos he elected to sow on October 7. He effectively owns the bloodiest event in the long-standing Israeli-Hamas conflict having masterminded it. Now it becomes his job and his alone, to somehow extract Hamas from the noose he hanged it with.

 

A more ruthless, committed terror-commander would be hard to come across. He remains deeply hidden in Gaza, in an as-yet-undiscovered tunnels, no doubt, where the remaining Israeli hostages are likely also being held. Having once boasted to interrogators that he had twelve suspected Palestinian collaborators killed, his deep streak of brutality is legendary. Israel has more than ample reason to regret having included this wretched excuse for a human being in a prisoner exchange, after he had spent several decades in Israeli prisons.

He had collaborated deeply with Mohammed Deif -- another assassinated figure devoted to the destruction of Israel -- building the Hamas military, and both are thought to have collaborated on the details of the October 7 invasion of southern Israel that saw thousands of Palestinian terrorists flood into Israel from Gaza for the express purpose of slaughtering as many Israeli civilians as they could, while committing mass rapes and horrendous mutilations of helpless women. Nor did they hesitate in immolating infants along with their parents and siblings in their kibbutz homes.

 

David and Varda Goldstein hold photos of their 3 grandchildren, Gal, Tal and Agam, and their mother, Chen, kidnapped on Oct 7th deadly Hamas attack.  Amir Levy/Getty Images

With Yahya Sinwar as senior commanding leader of Hamas, demands for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli incarceration for crimes against humanity; full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza; and a permanent ceasefire will represent the Hamas position before they will consider releasing the remaining hostages they hold, as well as the bodies of Israeli civilians and soldiers killed by Hamas, for a barter-exchange.

Saleh Arouri, another elite Hamas leader was also eliminated in a targeted Israeli airstrike in Beirut at the turn of the year. The number of high-placed leaders that Israel has successfully eliminated speaks to those that are left as a dire need to limit movements and contacts to preserve their miserable lives. Lives, however, whose exploits in killing Jews through a series of raids have become the pride of ordinary Palestinian civilians who give Hamas and its sister terror-groups their full admiration and trust.

Video showing an UNRWA worker driving a white UN jeep, and abducting the body of Jonathan Samerano, who was killed by Hamas terrorists on October 7. (Screenshot)