News - Hamas leader is alive and has been contacted, media report

Yahya Sinwar, the head of the political bureau of the radical Palestinian movement Hamas, is alive and has been contacted after a long silence, according to an Israeli official, reports Walla news portal. As per the interlocutor of the aforesaid portal, Sinwar has resumed contacts with the Hamas representatives in Qatar in recent days and has conveyed messages to them. The Israeli official said it was not clear exactly when the Hamas leader sent these messages, but noted that his messages did not indicate a softening of his position on negotiations for the release of hostages in the Gaza Strip. Sinwar resumed contacts with Qatar "after a long break," Walla noted. In recent weeks, the portal's security sources have said the Hamas leader is "unreachable," noting that he has not sent any messages even after the Shiite Hezbollah movement’s leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut.