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Israeli doctors saved the life of Hamas' Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar when he was in prison in the country, Orit Adato, Israel's former prison commissioner, said, The Times of Israel reported.
Adato told the publication that Sinwar survived a brain tumor thanks to an operation carried out by Israeli doctors while serving multiple life sentences for the kidnapping and murder of two Israeli soldiers in 1988.
Responding to claims that Palestinian prisoners were held in inhumane conditions in Israeli prisons, Adato noted Sinwar's case and said it was the only reason he's alive today.
"When they say they are not being treated well, I would ask you and others to give a phone call to one specific person, Yahya Sinwar, who is alive nowadays just because of life-saving surgery he was given," she said.
Israel says Sinwar was the mastermind of the October 7 terrorist attacks that killed 1,400 people, and he is their top target in decapitating the Hamas leadership.
Avi Issacharoff, an Israeli journalist specializing in Palestinian affairs, told Al Jazeera that Israeli prison officials told him that Sinwar was treated for head surgery around 2006, after suffering severe pain, which made him panic.
Sinwar, 60, became the leader and member of the political bureau of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in 2017, according to the think tank the European Council on Foreign Relations.
He has spent 24 years in prison and has been arrested by Israel multiple times, per the think tank. He left prison as a fluent Hebrew speaker after he was released in a prisoner swap for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011.
He is thought to be one of the key figures linking Hamas' politburo with its armed faction, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, it adds.
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Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht recently called Sinwar a "dead man walking" after accusing him of playing a pivotal role in organizing the October 7 attacks that killed around 1,400 people in Israel and saw around 200 hostages taken into Gaza.
"I do believe that Deif committed the plan but the real mind, the brain of this attack was mainly Yahya Sinwar," Michael Milshtein, a former intelligence officer in the Israeli army, told The Wall Street Journal.
"He really understands how the Israelis will behave, and how they think, and how they will respond," he added.
The Times of Israel reported that security sources outside Gaza believe Deif and Sinwar are now sheltering in a network of tunnels in the enclave built to resist the intense bombing campaign launched by the IDF after the terrorist attacks on communities and military bases in southern Israel.
Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, according to The Jewish Virtual Library. He pursued Arabic studies at the Islamic University of Gaza.
In the 1980s, Sinwar's job was to kill Gazans who collaborated with Israel, per The Economist.
In 2015, the US Department of State designated him a terrorist.
