Sinwar to Nasrallah: 'Our movement will remain steadfast'

Letter sent by Hamas leader to Hezbollah's chief is their first public communication since Sinwar assumed top post

Yahya Sinwar speaks during a meeting in Gaza city in April 2022. He has been in hiding since Israel launched its war in Gaza on October 7 last year. AFP

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Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar recently sent a letter to the Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah thanking him for his support for the Palestinian armed movement, Hezbollah said on Friday. The letter is the shadowy leader’s first public communication with Hezbollah since he took command of Hamas following his predecessor Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran in July.

Mr Sinwar – who was one of the main orchestrators of Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that instigated Israel’s war on Gaza – is believed to be hiding in Hamas’s vast network of tunnels in the coastal strip. In the letter, Mr Sinwar thanked Mr Nasrallah for his condolences following Mr Haniyeh’s death in an attack believed to have been carried out by Israel but not officially acknowledged by Israeli authorities.

Mr Sinwar also thanked Hezbollah and the “the resistance axis” – a coalition of Iran-backed groups across the Middle East – “for your support, backing and engagement in this battle”. He vowed that Hamas would continue to resist the “Zionist project in defence of our nation and our sanctities … until the occupation is defeated and swept away from our land, and an independent state with full sovereignty is established with Jerusalem as its capital”.

Hezbollah declared its support for its ally Hamas in the Gaza Strip on October 8, the day after Hamas's unprecedented infiltration into southern Israel that left about 1,200 people dead. Israel has responded with a deadly war against Hamas in Gaza that has killed more than 41,100 people, razed much of Gaza to the ground and displaced about 90 per cent of the population.

Since then, Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups across the Middle East have rallied behind Hamas by waging a military pressure campaign in an attempt to deter Israel from its invasion. Israel and Hezbollah have since been locked in a controlled war of attrition that has sparked fears of a major regional war.