PNN – The prominent role of martyr Yahya Sinwar in the 2011 prisoner exchange negotiations and his near-death experience in a Zionist prison are untold parts of the life of this martyred resistance commander, according to his cellmates.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network, citing the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Yahya Sinwar was born and raised in the Palestinian camps in Khan Yunis, Gaza, after his family was displaced from the Majdal area. He received his education in schools in the Khan Yunis camp and completed his postgraduate studies at the Islamic University, where he received a degree in Arabic studies.
After his capture, he continued his security activities inside the prison and led Hamas prisoners in prisons. Esmat Mansour, a former Palestinian prisoner affiliated with the Democratic Front who spent years in Israeli prisons, says about Sinwar: When you meet Sinwar, you see an ordinary, simple, and religious person. Of course, his religious background is tangible in the formation of his relationships, and he cannot interact with you without his previous stance.
He adds that he did not accept compromise and did not see the possibility of solutions or the possibility of reaching formulas and agreements except within the framework of tactics. Abdel Fattah Doula, a former prisoner affiliated with the Fatah movement who spent years in Israeli prisons, first met Sinwar in 2006. He introduces Sinwar as a social and humanitarian personality.
Salah al-Din Taleb, a former Hamas prisoner who spent years in prison with Sinwar and was released with him, describes his first meeting with “Abu Ibrahim” as follows: His humility and cheerful relationship with the youth will attract you. At the same time, he says, the security nature of this Hamas leader distinguished him from other leaders of the movement.
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Obsession with security in prison
In the mid-1990s, the Hamas movement and its teams in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip suffered painful blows, including the assassination of a number of its leaders by the Israeli intelligence services, including Yahya Ayyash and Imad Aql, and the implementation of extensive operations to arrest the movement’s activists, and the neutralization of a large number of the movement’s operational teams. These developments created deep tremors in the movement’s pillars and had repercussions that extended to Israeli prisons. Therefore, in these circumstances, Sinwar began the “security obsession phase.”
The debate and negotiations in the Shalit case
Sinwar was in Israeli prisons in the early 1990s when the “Qassam Brigades”, the military wing of the Hamas movement, appeared on the scene and began carrying out a series of operations against Israeli army targets. Sinwar’s relationship with figures from Hamas’s military wing developed inside the prisons. After this relationship was formed and developed, and following Sinwar’s release from prison in 2011, a new chapter in Sinwar’s activities began.
The maturity of this relationship, which was formed with the military branch, led to Shalit entering a new chapter later, after the completion of the exchange and the release of “Abu Ibrahim” and his companions from prison in 2011. Yahya’s younger brother, Muhammad Sinwar, was a prominent official in the military branch and was involved in the operation to capture the Zionist soldier Gilad Shalit and hold him for years before his release under a swap agreement.
During the negotiations for the 2011 exchange operation, Sinwar gained a lot of power inside the Israeli prisons. He played a big role in the exchange negotiations, to the point where once the Zionist responsible for the Shalit exchange negotiations came to the prison and negotiated directly with Yahya Sinwar, because he knew that he had a lot of influence in the negotiation process.
Going to the end of life
As the prisoner exchange negotiations gained momentum and neared their conclusion, Sinwar fell ill with an illness that nearly took his life. This situation upset the Zionist regime’s calculations. Doleh says: “Senvar was stubborn and always refused to go to the prison administration’s treatment center.”
His condition worsened and became more dangerous, and he lost consciousness. Eventually, his friends in prison were forced to transfer him to the clinic. Sinwar’s arrival at the Be’er Sheva prison clinic that day caused great confusion in the prison administration, and a state of emergency was immediately declared in the prison, and the section where Sinwar was staying was closed.
While the Israeli regime had previously not cared about the health of Sinwar and other Palestinian prisoners, in an unprecedented incident, a helicopter immediately landed on the prison’s runway and rushed Sinwar to Soroka Hospital to be immediately put into the operating room. Doctors found a benign tumor in his head and quickly removed it. Sinwar underwent a “very complex and dangerous” surgery that nearly cost him his life.
The Israelis’ handling of Sinwar’s illness revealed their confusion over the Shalit negotiations, which stemmed from a deep fear that Sinwar’s health would cast a heavy shadow over the Shalit deal in its final stages.
Sinwar’s relationship with Saadat and Barghouti
Mansour says that in Hadarim Central Prison in the northern occupied territories, Sinwar met with prominent Palestinian leaders, including Marwan Barghouti and Ahmed Saadat. They had great respect for each other and shared a common language. Mansour says they didn’t have completely shared views, but there was a trust and respect between them that enabled them to work together.
These three individuals led strikes in prisons and formulated plans and messages for outsiders, the most important of which was the “Prisoners’ Pact for National Unity” in the spring of 2006, which was an attempt to heal the wide rift between the two poles of the Palestinian political scene, the Fatah and Hamas movements.
“Qassam and Sinwar Brigades” after 2011
After his release from prison in a prisoner exchange deal in 2011, Sinwar continued to strengthen his presence in Hamas’s military wing, in addition to his security role. He was elected to the movement’s political bureau in 2012 and immediately took charge of relations with the military wing. He eventually became head of Hamas’s political bureau in Gaza in the 2017 elections.
Early signs of Al-Aqsa Storm in the Israeli prison
Doleh says that there was always the impression about Sinwar that he was “appointed to carry out a great deed.” This impression was reinforced by the speeches and messages he repeatedly sent to prisoners in prisons. Simultaneously with Operation Al-Aqsa Storm and the beginning of the Zionist regime’s genocide in Gaza, the Zionist regime considered Sinwar a “symbol of confrontation” and held him fully responsible for Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.