"What a blessing it is that my bones become shrapnel that blow apart the usurping Zionist Jews," a suicide bomber said in a video released by Hamas this summer after his failed mission in Tel Aviv, which killed only him. But the attack signaled a change, the Wall Street Journal reports. Hamas had quit carrying out suicide missions a couple of decades ago after they proved a political failure—killing people on the streets of Israel but not leading to concessions from the government. Some leaders of the militant group feared the political cost was too high.
That changed when Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israrel, assumed full control of Hamas in August. Arab intelligence officials say Sinwar sent an order to a senior operative: Now is the time to revive suicide bombings. Although internal support for the change is not unanimous, the intelligence sources say no one risked opposing it once Sinwar was in charge. He ascended to the top position after Israel killed the previous Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, per the Journal.
The group has been divided for years between those who support killing civilians to destabilize Israel and those concerned about maintaining political legitimacy in its quest for a Palestinian state. Sinwar is in the former camp. "Under Sinwar, Hamas can be expected to be a much clearer-cut, hard-line fundamentalist organization," said Matthew Levitt, an analyst at the Washington Institute think tank. (More Hamas stories.)
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