Who is Yahya Sinwar, the artist behind Operation Al-Aqsa Flood?
9 Min Read
This article traces the history of Yahya Sinwar from his early days as a revolutionary youth to his two-decade-long sentence in Israeli prisons climbing up the ranks of Hamas to organize the groundbreaking Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
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Martyr Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas' Political Bureau. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Zeinab El-Hajj)
"Life imitates art," the late Irish literary artist Oscar Wilde iconically writes in a piece published back in the 19th century. "The self-conscious aim of Life is to find expression, and Art offers it the beautiful forms through which it may realize that energy," he writes. Wilde makes an interesting thesis in the philosophy of art: the aesthetic appeal of art-making can also be found in lived experience. Life through the conscious efforts of humans can be presented in beautiful forms characteristic of the fine arts: replacing the seeming dullness of life with awe.
Literary devices, for example, like foreshadowing (hinting at the dramatic ending early on while the plot is still unfolding), and irony of fate (the pleasing contrast between the anticipated and the eventual outcome) are some of these beautiful forms through which life can be made awe-inspiring.
Introduction
Aesthetics is justifiably considered an unseemly theoretical framework for approaching the recent political events and figures in Palestine. However, when deciding to write on Yahya Sinwar, I chose to opt for Aesthetics to bring into focus the admirable and awe-inspiring character of Sinwar against the backdrop of the vilification campaign he has been subjected to by Israeli and Western media.
Read more: Sinwar using psychological warfare against Israeli society: Haaretz
Sinwar, like many Palestinian artists who have doubled as revolutionaries, admirably triumphs the liberation of his people in a beautiful framing. As opposed to the others, however, Sinwar is a very practical and materialistically consequential artist. His masterpiece was not a poem or a painting but a revolution in real-time. I think of Yahya Sinwar as an artist and Al-Aqsa Flood as his masterpiece.
Yahya al-Sinwar Foreshadowing Al-Aqsa Flood
October 7th will be forever marked as a watershed moment in the history of the colonial state in which young fighters circumvented the high-tech Israeli security measures: breaking the zionist siege enforced on Gaza and revolting against their occupiers.
According to estimates by the French news website Media Part, in the span of only 6 hours, Resistance fighters managed to inflict cataclysmic destruction on the colonial state, neutralizing 1000, leaving more than 2,000 injured, and taking hundreds captive.
"This abominable attack was decided upon by Yahya Sinwar," the IOF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said shortly after the operation.
Sinwar, whose name literally translates to the fisherman or the crafter of fishing hooks in Arabic, was seen to be at the crest of the Al-Aqsa Flood when it came crashing down on the Zionist colonial state.
A report written by Reuters earlier this month recalls a speech made by Sinwar back in 2022 uncannily foreshadowing the events of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in his choice of wording.
In a speech addressing the Israeli security establishment on December 14 last year, during a popular ceremony in Gaza celebrating the 35th anniversary of Hamas' establishment, Sinwar specifically threatened the Israelis with an impending "flood".
"We will come to you, God willing, in a roaring flood. We will come to you with endless rockets, we will come to you in an unceasing flood of fighters, we will come to you with millions of our people, like an incessant tide," Yahya Sinwar said in a televised speech in front of a crowd in Gaza.
Reuters notes that by the time of the speech, Sinwar along with Mohammed al-Deif, the commander of the al-Qassam Brigades, had already hatched secret plans for October 7.
Looking back at it in retrospect, Sinwar's statements, which were interpreted as empty threats and exaggeration, turned out to be a warning of the imminent operation. The Israeli establishment misinterpreted it as a hyperbole when it was foreshadowing.
Yahya Sinwar: Revolution & Armed Resistance
Early Days as a Young Revolutionary
Sinwar is originally from the coastal city of Askalan whose indigenous Palestinian population made a livelihood out of the fishing industry before being dispossessed by Zionist militias.
He was born in the Khan Younis camp in Gaza to refugee parents who had been forcibly displaced in the Nakba of 1948. Yahya was heavily involved in political activism since his early years. As an undergraduate, he led the Islamic Bloc at the Islamic University of Gaza where he received a Bachelor's degree in Arabic Studies.
In 1982, Sinwar, at the age of 19, was arrested for the first time for being involved in revolutionary anti-Zionist activism. He would serve a few months in Israeli prisons where he would grow even more dedicated to the Palestinian revolution.
After serving a few months in Israeli prisons, Sinwar left prison more dedicated and better connected after meeting other Palestinian revolutionaries in prison.
In 1985, he was arrested again. During his second sentence in Israeli prisons, he met Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the founder and leader of Hamas, which would be established a few years later. His affinity with Yassin would grant him an aura of honor and would pave the way for his ascension within the ranks of Hamas.
Upon his release later in 1985, Sinwar would work extensively in political organizing: upscaling his activism into organized armed action. That year Sinwar would co-found the Al-Majd organization. The armed group, which would later coalesce into Hamas, was dedicated to ridding Gaza of traitors. Sinwar, at the helm of the Al-Majd group, would fish out local collaborators and spies, and execute them.
Sinwar's security work back then was part of the accumulated efforts in the unfolding strategy of consolidating Gaza as the stronghold of resistance, the Archimedes point of Palestinian liberation.
In 1988, aged 25, Sinwar was arrested for the third time and sentenced to life in prison for foiling Israeli espionage and subversive measures in Gaza.
Sinwar's 23-year sentence in Israeli prisons
Forcefully separated from the praxis of the liberation movement, Yahya Sinwar spent the prime days of his adulthood in Israeli prisons.
From afar, he witnessed the quick unfolding of history, the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, the slow consolidation of US hegemony, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2000, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Oslo Accords which neutralized the PLO in 1993, and the subsequent proliferation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank; all of which must have infuriated him with restlessness to resume his praxis of revolution.
Correspondingly, he also witnessed the liberation of South Lebanon in 2000, the liberation of Gaza in 2005, the victory of the Lebanese resistance against Israeli aggression in 2006, the consolidation of the regional Resistance Axis' alliance, the First Intifada, and the Second Intifada which must have invigorated him with fervor to resume his praxis of revolution.
Additionally, the game-changing Hamas election victory in Gaza in 2006 must have had him teeming with the satisfaction of a victor seeing the fulfillment of a strategic end he had long worked for; the intermediate victory of consolidating Gaza as the stronghold of resistance.
From Liberated Prisoner to Liberator of Prisoners
In 2011, Sinwar was liberated with a batch of 1,027 others in a prisoner exchange deal between the Palestinian Resistance and the Israeli occupation.
During his homecoming celebrations in Gaza City, Sinwar expressed his wishes that the Resistance would liberate all remaining prisoners in Israeli jails.
After joining Hamas, he rose quickly within the ranks, replacing Ismail Haniyeh as the Political Chief of Gaza in 2017.
Yahya Sinwar, one of the longest-serving Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, today spearheaded the revolutionary efforts to liberate his kinswomen and kinsmen.
Sinwar who was himself liberated along with 1,027 other Palestinians in exchange for one abducted Israeli soldier in 2007, was then in charge of dozens of Israeli soldiers and settlers held captive in Gaza, until his martyrdom.
Six years after leaving Israeli prisons, which were governed by Netanyahu's 2017 government then, he was able to exercise leverage against Netanyahu and his war cabinet to liberate all Palestinian prisoners.
After wishing for the Resistance to liberate all Palestinian prisoners remaining in Israeli jails, six years later, Sinwar drew the plan and enforced the conditions for the liberation of every last Palestinian imprisoned by the Israeli occupation.
In 2018, Sinwar led the Great March of Return in an attempt to peacefully break the siege on Gaza and was met with brute Israeli force massacring peaceful protesters. Three years later, Sinwar led Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and successfully broke the siege.
In 2024, following Ismail Haniyeh's martyrdom in an Israeli attack in Tehran on July 31, Sinwar was elected to lead Hamas' Political Bureau in his stead.
While wielding his weapon and bravely confronting the Israeli occupation forces in the Strip, Yahya Sinwar was martyred on October 17, 2024. He fell alongside fellow fighters, embodying the spirit of resistance he had championed for years in the struggle for justice and freedom. Sinwar was martyred as a free man, resolutely refusing to submit to the occupation until his last breath.
Read more: Hamas ready for 'immediate' all-for-all prisoner swap with 'Israel'
