‘Crazy people’ led by Sinwar destroyed Gaza
"I have not seen anyone in the Gaza Strip who supports Sinwar; nobody likes Sinwar. There are people who, day and night, pray that God will free us from him," says Yousef al-Mansi.
(THE TIMES OF ISRAEL) Former Hamas communications minister Yousef al-Mansi heavily criticised the current leadership of the terror group in Gaza as a group of “crazy people” led by Yahya Sinwar, in footage of his interrogation published by the Shin Bet security agency on Sunday.
“They destroyed the Gaza Strip. Set it back 200 years,” al-Mansi, who served under the Strip’s former ruler Ismail Haniyeh – currently the head of Hamas’s political bureau – and in several other roles, said in translated excerpts provided by the Shin Bet. “There is no opportunity to live.”
Israel has labelled Sinwar – who rules the enclave and has been marked as the mastermind of Hamas’s devastating October 7 onslaught – a “walking dead man,” along with the rest of the terror group’s senior leadership.
In the 14-minute video published by the agency, al-Mansi said, “People in the Gaza Strip say that Sinwar and his group destroyed us, we must get rid of them.”
“I have not seen anyone in the Gaza Strip who supports Sinwar; nobody likes Sinwar. There are people who, day and night, pray that God will free us from him,” he said, adding that if he were in Gaza now, he would go and demonstrate against Sinwar.
Al-Mansi said that Gaza’s ruler has “delusions of grandeur”, and that he “feels like he is above everyone else. Acts only as he thinks. He makes decisions without consulting anyone”.
The former Hamas minister said the October 7 massacre was “the opposite of Islam”.
“What they did is unacceptable according to logic, religion or intellect. Those who are responsible for this are Sinwar and his group,” he said, according to the excerpts, adding that the entire Gaza Strip was paying the price for the onslaught.
Meanwhile, Hamas battalions in the Jabaliya and Shejaiya neighbourhoods in the northern Gaza Strip were on the verge of collapse Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Monday, amid ongoing heavy fighting in and around the terror stronghold of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, and rocket fire on central Israel during the day.
“We have encircled the last strongholds of Hamas in Jabaliya and Shejaiya, the battalions that were considered invincible, that prepared for years to fight us, are on the verge of being dismantled,” Gallant said at a press conference Monday.
He said hundreds of Hamas operatives had surrendered to Israeli troops in recent days, which “shows what is happening” to the terror group.
The military and the Shin Bet said on Monday that forces have arrested more than 500 terror operatives in the Gaza Strip in the last month. They have been taken for questioning by the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504 and the security agency.
According to the joint statement, more than 140 of the operatives were arrested since the ceasefire ended on December 1.
Some of the operatives were arrested while hiding in civilian buildings, including schools and shelters for civilians, the IDF said, adding that some 350 are members of Hamas, and a further 120 are members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The photos issued by the IDF on Monday showed fully-clothed detainees, unlike other photos coming out of Gaza in recent days showing suspects stripped down to their underwear, sights that caused backlash.
On Sunday, both National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi and IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari criticised the dissemination of photographs showing arrested terror suspects after they were searched for explosives, and vowed to stop the circulation of such images.
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