YAHYA SINWAR, 56, has spent his entire adult life in prisons: the concrete Israeli sort and the open-air prison that is Gaza. Yet Mr Sinwar is now, arguably, the most influential man in the Palestinian territories. On May 16th, two days after Israeli soldiers killed about 60 Palestinian protesters at the border fence, Gazans huddled around televisions to learn if the violence would push their scarred enclave into another war. They were not listening to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, or even Ismail Haniyeh, the nominal leader of Hamas, the jihadist group that runs Gaza. They were watching Mr Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, who may one day represent all Palestinians.
He was under pressure from militants to avenge the dead. But Mr Sinwar announced on Al Jazeera that Hamas would pursue “peaceful, popular resistance”. (Less publicly, the group discouraged people from returning to the border fence.) It was an unexpected...Continue reading
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