Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Brigadier General Dan Goldfus revealed in a recent interview with Channel 12 that his troops were mere minutes away from capturing Yahya Sinwar, the elusive leader of Hamas, after discovering his hiding place within a Gaza tunnel.
As reported by Vered Weiss of the World Israel News, the 98th division of the IDF had been actively tracking Sinwar when they stumbled upon an underground compound where he was believed to have been holed up.
“We were close. We were in his compound. The coffee was still hot,” General Goldfus recounted, underscoring the narrow margin by which Sinwar evaded capture. “There were weapons scattered around, and a significant amount of money was left behind.”
When pressed by the interviewer on whether they missed Sinwar by just minutes, General Goldfus confirmed, “Minutes, really.”
Sinwar, who has risen to the helm of Hamas following the assassinations of military commander Mohammed Deif and political leader Ismail Haniyeh, is still believed to be hiding in Gaza’s extensive tunnel network. In February, the IDF released video footage of one such tunnel that Sinwar and other Hamas leaders had reportedly used as a refuge during the ongoing conflict.
The assassination of Mohammed Deif was confirmed by the IDF on August 1st, after an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis weeks earlier. Israel insists that Deif was killed during a meeting with Rafa Salameh, the head of Hamas’s Khan Younis forces, although Hamas continues to deny his death.
While Israel has not publicly taken responsibility for the death of Ismail Haniyeh, it is widely believed that the Mossad orchestrated the operation. Haniyeh died in an explosion in a Tehran guest house, with suspicions pointing to IRGC operatives recruited by Mossad to plant the bombs. Following Haniyeh’s assassination on Iranian soil, Tehran has issued severe threats of retaliation against Israel.
Yahya Sinwar, along with Deif and Haniyeh, was one of the masterminds behind the October 7th massacre. Sinwar is known to rely on couriers to communicate, deliberately avoiding electronic methods to prevent Israeli surveillance. However, intelligence suggests that a courier may have inadvertently provided the information that led to the fatal strike on Mohammed Deif.
