Hamas, the Palestinian political-military organization that rules in Gaza surrounded by Israel Defense Forces, has elected a new leader, Yahya Sinwar, in the place of Ismail Haniya, in power since 2005. ADVERTISING Hamas, the Palestinian political-military organization that rules in
Hamas, the Palestinian political-military organization that rules in Gaza surrounded by Israel Defense Forces, has elected a new leader, Yahya Sinwar, in the place of Ismail Haniya, in power since 2005.
Gaza Palestinians, with whom Israel has fought three wars in recent years, constitute the hard core of on-the-ground resistance to Israel’s rule of the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. The West Bank is perforated by a growing multitude of Israeli settlements, with populations totaling an estimated 500,000 or so. The West Bank risks attempted Israeli annexation, if the “one Israel,” as opposed to the two-state, Israel and Palestine resolution of the problem of who gets the Palestinian territory, prevails. Israel withdrew its settlements from Gaza in 2006, and there is little or no talk of restoring them there, even by Israeli extremists.
Sinwar, 55, would be more on the military than the political side of the Hamas movement. He spent 23 years in Israeli prisons in the wake of the first Palestinian intifada; he was freed in 2011 when the Israelis exchanged 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for an Israeli soldier held by Hamas. There is reason to expect Hamas to take more violent action under his leadership, in part to help him establish credibility.
Sinwar is expected also to reach out on behalf of Hamas to Fatah, the party of most Palestinians in the West Bank. They are led by 81-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, whose term as president of the Palestinian Authority expired in 2009. It may also be that Hamas, having just carried out elections of its own, albeit secret, will seek to bring about Palestinian elections in the West Bank as well. Steps toward Hamas-Fatah unity could serve to enable the Palestinians to present a united front, missing until now, in negotiations with the Israelis, if they resume.
Pointing to a more tempestuous future, absent meaningful negotiations, Sinwar is believed to lean more toward the Iranians than to the Egyptians as patron and source of aid for Hamas, and also has ties to forces loosely linked to the Islamic State, fighting the Egyptian government in the Sinai Peninsula. The IS has not yet chosen to pit itself more than verbally against Israel.
In any case, whatever it means for the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Hamas now has a new and probably more vigorous leader.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
