The Israeli army no longer wants to see him as anything more than a "dead man on borrowed time". Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, is at the top of the list of targets it intends to liquidate in response to the October 7 massacres. "We believe that he was the designer, the financier, the organizer," said IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, "and that he was the one who finally gave the green light." Mohammed Deif, the commander of the Ezzeddine al-Qassam Brigades, is also in the crosshairs. But this ghostly figure, whom Israel has been tracking in vain for thirty years and of whom no recent photos are known, is now supplanted in the role of public enemy number one. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says Yahya Sinwar is hiding in the bowels of Gaza. In the name of Hamas' 1300,<> victims, but also to exorcise what the Israel Hayom newspaper describes as "the greatest manipulation in the country's history," he vowed to "eliminate" it.
Close-cropped hair, sparse beard...
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