The Hamas terrorist organization is moving to hide the identity of its new leader following the elimination by Israel of “absolute leader” Yahya Sinwar earlier this week, according to sources quoted this weekend in a report by the Saudi Asharq Al-Awsat news outlet.
Sinwar was eliminated about three months after the assassination in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh, former head of the Hamas political bureau. Footage released Saturday night by the IDF showed Yahya Sinwar fleeing with his wife and children into the tunnel network, carrying the supplies needed to live beneath the surface, just hours before the launch of the deadliest attack on the State of Israel and its Jews, by thousands of Hamas-led terrorists from Gaza, since the Holocaust.
“The movement’s leadership is moving towards making this exceptional decision regarding the identity of the new head of its political bureau and keeping the name secret most likely due to the security challenges facing the movement,” the Hamas sources told the news outlet, adding there is a general internal Hamas consensus about the move in Gaza and abroad.
The source said the step was being taking to prevent Israeli assassination of the organization’s newest leader and said it “allows work to proceed more smoothly, will maintain public order and cohesion within the movement, and preserve the hierarchy.”
Hamas is working to “confuse” Israel about who is making decisions over ceasefire and hostage release negotiations, the source said.
Among the candidates to succeed Sinwar is Mohammed Darwish (Abu Omar Hassan), head of the terror organization’s Shura Council, who has recently begun to appear in official meetings abroad. Darwish lives abroad and is considered close to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Another candidate is Khalil al-Hayya, believed to be Sinwar’s deputy and a long-time political official in Gaza who currently leads the negotiating team in ceasefire and hostage release talks.
Al-Hayya declared in a speech following Sinwar’s elimination that the terror organization will continue its current path “until the aspirations of our people for comprehensive liberation, return, and the establishment of a Palestinian state on all Palestinian national soil with Jerusalem as its capital are achieved.”
He also announced that “the occupation prisoners held by the resistance will not return unless the aggression on Gaza stops, the withdrawal from it is stopped, and our heroic prisoners are released from the occupation prisons.”
Khaled Meshaal, a former Hamas political bureau chief who now leads the international Hamas organization and currently living in luxury in the Qatari capital of Doha; Moussa Abu Marzouk, born in Rafah, one of the founders of Hamas and the first head of the Hamas political bureau; and Mohammed Nazzal, born and raised in Amman, and currently serves as a member of the Hamas political bureau, are all under consideration as well.
All that having been said, it is interesting that no one has mentioned the likeliest candidate: Sinwar’s brother, Muhammad, who leads the Al Qassam military wing and previously was the head of terrorist organization’s supply and manpower division,. The younger Sinwar brother is believed to have created the massive subterranean tunnel network in which his older brother Yahya Sinwar has been hiding.
