'Yahya Sinwar will die a martyr': What is Hamas's Gaza chief endgame?

A Wednesday NBC report echoed recent assessments that the IDF is likely closing in on Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, but experts differed in their estimations of when Sinwar expects to meet his end and on what terms.

The report comes after the IDF found cages deep under Khan Yunis in which hostages are believed to have been held, a possible indication of the whereabouts of the terrorist leader, who is believed to have surrounded himself with hostages as human shields.

“It is a fair assumption that Sinwar and Hamas leadership were close to where those hostages were kept— and then they all moved on,” said Jonathan Conricus, a former IDF spokesman who is now a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies thinktank. “I think being close to hostages has saved his life more than once.”

The article noted, however, that “Israeli forces… cannot rule out the possibility that [Sinwar] may have crossed into Egypt through a tunnel.”

The Kfir Brigade operates in Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip January 22, 2024 (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON’S UNIT)

The Kfir Brigade operates in Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip January 22, 2024 (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON’S UNIT)

Does Sinwar want to make it out alive? 

Different defense analysts and Israeli leaders gave different assessments of Sinwar’s end-game with respect to his own life and the lives of the hostages.

“He’ll keep some of the hostages forever,” Jacob Nagel, a former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is quoted as saying. “This will be his insurance policy that no one will kill him.”

Gershon Baskin, the Israeli diplomat and former mediator between the Jewish State and Hamas, said he is more inclined to expect a fight to the death.

“This is not Yasser Arafat in 1982 escaping to Beirut with the Palestinian Liberation Organization,” Baskin said, citing Hamas’s religious fundamentalism.

“I believe Sinwar knows he will die a martyr,” he added. “This is Hamas’s distorted version of Islam. Life on earth is short, and paradise is eternal.”