New Hamas leader makes rare public appearance

The new leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, made his first public appearance since his election for the inauguration of a mosque on Friday, winning praise from his predecessor.

His Islamist terror movement, which has run the Gaza Strip for the past decade since seizing control from Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah, invited the media to attend the opening of the Gaza City mosque without announcing Sinwar’s participation.

Sinwar himself made no statement at the event, but his predecessor Ismail Haniyeh paid tribute to the former prisoner who spent 25 years “in the jails of the (Israeli) occupation.”

“This is a source of pride for Hamas and for its prisoners,” Haniyeh told the crowd.

“The Zionist media are trying to… make a distinction between the military and political figures (in Hamas), but we tell them we are all fighters and that in the face of the occupation we are all military,” the former premier said.

Haniyeh is considered a supporter of a relatively moderate element in Hamas, while Sinwar is a top commander in its armed wing and strong advocate of armed struggle against Israel.

The former premier is seen by many observers as the most likely successor to Hamas’s overall leader Khaled Mashaal, who currently lives in Qatar.

Sinwar, 55, was sentenced to life in 1989 for murdering Palestinian collaborators with Israel, and spent 22 years in Israeli prisons before being released in the 2011 prisoner exchange deal for IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.

In September 2015, Sinwar was added to the US terrorism blacklist alongside two other members of Hamas’s military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades.