In October 2023, Yahya Sinwar seemed he did not have long to live. The Hamas leader was just a "dead man walking," claimed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the army. He would pay for having orchestrated the largest massacre of civilians in Israel's history, on October 7. Over the past eight months, Israel has destroyed the enclave and most of Hamas's military and government structures but has failed to kill or capture Sinwar.

Worse still, the man is still imposing his terms on the ceasefire negotiations, due to resume in the last week of May. He demands that Israel announce the end of its war and there be international guarantees that the army will withdraw from the enclave. Without his agreement, no deal is possible: The movement's leadership in exile will accept nothing without his green light.

Shortly after October 7, a Hamas security camera recorded Sinwar's silhouette at the bottom of a tunnel. At least, Israel maintains this, and the ghost resembles him: the same stunted wiry body, the same jagged profile, the same quiet stride. The man, aged 62, was plunging into the depths of the enclave, holding one of his children by the hand, according to Israeli intelligence, behind his wife and his younger brother, Mohammed, a senior member of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the movement's armed wing.

"Do you know who I am?" During those early days of the war, Israeli bombs rained down on Khan Yunis and Sinwar planted himself in front of a group of Israeli hostages in a tunnel. Among them was Margalit Moses, a retired schoolteacher who had been captured at the Nir Oz kibbutz and taken to the Hamas leader's hometown. She heard Sinwar, "that arrogant dwarf," promise that they would soon be freed, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, on the occasion of a short truce in November 2023, she told the press. Other of her neighbors remain in Gaza or have died there.

Between January and April, the army claimed that Sinwar was on the run, being pursued by its commandos in Khan Yunis. In February, an officer with his face blurred showed on camera the hideout that Sinwar had left in a hurry: the kitchen where his aides fed him, his toilets, the mattresses of his guards and large bundles of cash drawn from his safe.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant portrayed the Hamas leader as fleeing from one hideout to another, driven half-mad. "He is out of touch with his surroundings (...) The Hamas-Gaza station does not answer, there is no one to talk to as leadership on the ground. That means there is a tender for who will manage Gaza," he said.

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