Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu turned down 11 chances to kill Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, months before the terror group’s October 7, 2023, attack, Channel 12 reported Wednesday, citing a senior defense official.
Netanyahu’s office vehemently denied the report, saying the premier was in favor of taking out Sinwar, but “security leadership stopped it.”
Sinwar, who served as the leader of Hamas in Gaza since 2017, was the architect of the October 7 attacks, during which terrorists kidnapped 251 hostages and killed some 1,200 people in Israel, sparking the war that devastated the Strip for over two years. He was eventually killed in October 2024 during IDF operations in Rafah, over a year after the war begam.
According to the official quoted by Channel 12, in February and March 2023, the Shin Bet succeeded in ascertaining Sinwar’s location nearly a dozen times. The report noted that during these months, Hamas launched rockets into Israel three separate times.
The agency informed Netanyahu each time they were able to locate Sinwar, the report said, telling him that it was prepared for “high-level elimination operations.”
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Despite the security agency’s repeated recommendation that he order the strikes, Netanyahu refused to greenlight an assassination, the source said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) and Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, on April 4, 2023. (Kobi Gideon/GPO)
He would not even convene officials to discuss the possibility of a strike, the report added.
Last year, Channel 12 reported that then-Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar asked Netanyahu to approve Sinwar’s assassination on October 1, 2023, six days before the terror group invaded southern Israel and started the Gaza war, but Netanyahu ignored the request.
The Prime Minister’s Office denied Wednesday’s report, stating it had matters backward and that Netanyahu “demanded repeatedly to eliminate the Hamas leadership, but the security leadership stopped it.”
“This is well documented in minutes of the discussions,” Netanyahu’s office said.
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