Yahyah Sinwar
 Yahyah Sinwar    (politician, freedom fighter, “terrorist”) | ||||||||||
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| Alma mater | Islamic University of Gaza | |||||||||
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Yahyah Sinwar is a Palestinian politician who has been leader of Hamas, the Sunni Islamist political and military organisation that controls the Gaza Strip, since 2017.[1]
Born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Egyptian-ruled Gaza in 1962, his family was expelled or fled from Al-Majdal Asqalan (Ashkelon) during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He finished his studies at the Islamic University of Gaza where he received a bachelor's degree in Arabic Studies.
For orchestrating the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians he considered to be collaborators in 1989, he was sentenced to four life sentences by Israel, of which he served 22 years until his release among 1,026 others in a 2011 prisoner exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Yahyah Sinwar was one of the co-founders of the security apparatus of Hamas. In 2017, he was elected as Hamas' leader, succeeding Ismail Haniyeh, and claimed to be pursuing "peaceful, popular resistance" the following year, a position which was later abandoned. He was re-elected as Hamas leader in 2021, and was subject to an assassination attempt by Israel that year.
In September 2015, Yahyah Sinwar was designated a terrorist by the United States government, and Hamas and the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades have also been designated terrorist organisations by the United States, the European Union and other countries including the United Kingdom. Israel is reported to have placed a $400,000 bounty on Yahyah Sinwar.[2]
References
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