Washington – Ma’an – The New York Times revealed that Israel was able to monitor calls made by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar from inside the tunnels with the help of American eavesdropping devices, but it was unable to locate him.
The newspaper quoted many officials in Israel and the United States as saying that both countries had pumped enormous resources into trying to find Sinwar.
Immediately after the October 7 operation, Israeli military intelligence and the Israeli internal security service, the Shin Bet, formed a cell whose sole mission was to find Sinwar.
The newspaper added that since the beginning of the war, Sinwar was able to “exit the tunnels more than once in complete secrecy and without being detected, and he was not spotted until after his return to the tunnels.”
The CIA also set up a task force, while the Pentagon sent special operations forces to Israel to advise the Israeli Defense Forces on the impending war in Gaza.
The United States provided Israel with ground-penetrating radar to help
track Sinwar and other Hamas leaders.
This radar was used to help map hundreds of miles of tunnels under Gaza, as well as new images and Israeli intelligence gathered from captured Hamas fighters and a large trove of documents, to build a more accurate picture of the tunnel network.
Sinwar has long since abandoned electronic communications and has so far avoided sophisticated intelligence ambushes, American and Israeli officials said. He is believed to remain in contact with the organization he leads through a network of human couriers, and ‘how this system works remains a mystery.’
In the first weeks of the Gaza war, when Sinwar was still using mobile and satellite phones from time to time to talk to Hamas officials in Doha, American and Israeli spy agencies were able to intercept some of those calls but could not pinpoint his location.
According to the newspaper, Israeli, Qatari, Egyptian and American officials indicated that communicating with Sinwar has become more difficult. While he used to respond
to messages within days, the officials said that getting a response from him has taken much longer in recent months, and that he has sometimes used some of his deputies as his agents in negotiations.
Source: Maan News Agency
