Hamas leader boasts that civilian deaths HELP their cause (2024)

The leader of Hamas has claimed that civilian deaths in Gaza and continued fighting are helping his cause despite mounting global pressure to strike a ceasefire deal with Israel.

Yahya Sinwar, in recent messages to Hamas mediators, branded civilian deaths as 'necessary sacrifices' that he seemingly believes put pressure on Israeli leadership.

'We have the Israelis right where we want them,' Sinwar penned in a message to his negotiators that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

More than 37,000 people have been killed in Gaza,mostly civilians, since the start of the war, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry.

Hamas accepted a UNresolution backing a plan to end the war with Israel and said it is ready to negotiate details, but Sinwar's internal messages seemingly contradict proposed plans for a ceasefire.

Sinwar has sent dozens of messages demonstrating blatant disregard for human life and implying that he believes Israel has more to lose from the war than Hamas, the newspaper reported.

In one message to negotiators in Qatar, the Hamas leader allegedly said that civilian deaths were 'necessary' innational-liberation conflicts, citing how thousands of Algerians died fighting for independence from France.

He also reportedly told Hamas political chiefIsmail Haniyeh that the deaths of his three sons, who were killed in an Israeli airstrike, and other Palestinians would'infuse life into the veins of this nation, prompting it to rise to its glory and honour.'

Sinwar planned and authorised the October 7 attack that sparked the war, but he was apparently surprised by the brutal acts Hamas members committed against civilians.

'Things went out of control,' he wrote in an early message to ceasefire negotiators addressing how gangs took women and children as hostages, according to The Wall Street Journal. 'People got caught up in this, and that should not have happened.'

But as the war has progressed, his perspective has apparently shifted with Sinwar advising in February that Hamas leadership should not make concessions with Israel and instead push for a permanent end to the war.

He alleged that 'high civilian casualties would create worldwide pressure on Israel' and claimed Hamas was prepared for further attacks.

Sinwar added: 'Israel's journey in Rafah won't be a walk in the park.'

Other messages allegedly sent by Sinwar have suggested he is willing to die for the cause, with him reportedly telling other Hamas leaders that they 'have to move forward on the same path we started or let it be a new Karbala'.

A senior Hamas member on Tuesday said the group accepts a UN resolution backing a plan to end the war and that they are ready to negotiate terms.

But Qatari and Egyptian mediators have not received formal replies from Hamas or Israel to the truce proposal, an official close to the talks told Reuters.

Both sides have also reportedly suggested the plan fit their clashing goals, raising doubt whether any genuine headway towards a deal had been made.

Discussions also touching on post-war plans for Gaza will continue over the next couple of days, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Tel Aviv after talks with Israeli leaders.

Blinken met Israeli officials on Tuesday in a push to end the eight-month-old Israeli air and ground war against Hamas that has devastated Gaza, a day after President Joe Biden's proposal for a truce was approved by the UN Security Council.

Ahead of Blinken's trip, Israel and Hamas both repeated hardline positions that have scuttled previous rounds of truce mediation, while Israel has pressed on with assaults in central and southern Gaza, among the bloodiest of the war.

Biden's proposal envisages a ceasefire and phased release of hostages in exchange for Palestinians jailed in Israel, ultimately leading to a permanent end to the war.

On Tuesday, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri, who is based outside Gaza, said it accepted the ceasefire resolution and was ready to negotiate over the specifics.

This required a formula stipulating the total withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and a swap of hostages held in Gaza for Palestinians jailed in Israel, he told Reuters.

'The US administration is facing a real test to carry out its commitments in compelling the occupation to immediately end the war in an implementation of the UN Security Council resolution,' Abu Zuhri said.

Blinken said the Hamas statement was 'a hopeful sign' but definitive word was still needed from the Hamas leadership inside Israeli-besieged Gaza. 'That's what counts, and that's what we don't have yet.'

After Blinken left for Jordan, a senior Israeli government official, who asked not to be identified, said the published proposal would enable Israel to achieve its war goals.

The official repeated Israel's longstanding stance that Hamas' military and governing capabilities in Gaza must be annihilated, and all hostages freed with Gaza posing no threat to Israel in the future.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's retaliatory air and ground onslaught in Gaza has killed at least 37,164 Palestinians, the Gaza health ministry said in an update on Tuesday, and reduced most of the narrow, coastal enclave to wasteland, with malnutrition widespread.

The US is Israel's closest ally and biggest arms supplier but, along with much of the world, has become sharply critical of the huge civilian death toll in Gaza and the destruction and humanitarian calamity wrought by the Israeli offensive.

In the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Palestinians reacted warily to the Security Council vote, fearing it could prove yet another ceasefire initiative that goes nowhere.

Blinken, speaking later in the day at a conference in Jordan on the humanitarian response for Gaza, announced $404million in aid for Palestinians and called on other donors to also step up.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told the gathering on the Dead Sea that nations should force Israel to stop what he called the use of hunger as a weapon and remove obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza.

But fighting continued with little respite on Tuesday as Israeli forces stepped up strikes on Gaza's southern city of Rafah, skirting the border with Egypt, a day after four soldiers were killed by a blast in a booby-trapped house claimed by Hamas.

Biden has repeatedly declared that ceasefires were close over the past several months, but there has been only one, week-long truce, in November, when over 100 hostages were freed in exchange for about 240 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

Israeli forces rescued four hostages held by Hamas in a commando raid into a crowded urban refugee camp in central Gaza on Saturday during which 274 Palestinians were killed by heavy Israeli firepower, according to Gaza's health authorities.