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How Hamas Leader Yahya Sinwar's Behavior Has Changed
(Ha'aretz) Yaniv Kubovich - Israeli defense officials say Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar's behavior has changed in the past few months. His former pragmatism has been replaced by hasty decisions, and he has exchanged his relative humility for messianism. According to his updated Military Intelligence personality profile, Sinwar is now unpredictable. "This transformation that Sinwar is undergoing makes him a dangerous figure for us," said an Israeli defense official. Israel believes the change took place about two months before the run-up to the war in May and that the Hamas leadership elections in Gaza were the trigger. Only in the fourth round of voting did Sinwar secure victory against Nizar Awadallah, an extremist from the founding generation of Hamas. An IDF intelligence official says Sinwar understood that the criticism he faced "presented him as someone who had given up on the military option" against Israel. So "he decided to line up with the military arm of Hamas. He went to war with Israel consciously and tried to obtain greater support among his people and young people in Gaza."