Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip Yahya Sinwar was one of the main planners of the terror organization's attack on Israel on October 7, but he did not expect its consequences to be "so dangerous," Esmat Mansour, a close associate of Sinwar's who once shared a cell with him in Israeli prison, told Sky News Arabic on Friday.
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Mansour, a resident of the West Bank village of Deir Jarir near Ramallah, was a member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
In 1993, at the age of 18, he aided several of his relatives in the murder of Israeli national Haim Mizrahi from the West Bank settlement of Beit El, and was sentenced to 22 years in Israeli prison.
Mansour claimed that if Sinwar had known what the consequences of the massacre would be for Hamas and the Gaza Strip, he "would never have planned it that way."
Mansour explained that Hamas' October 7 attack was supposed to be a "strategic operation" aimed at lifting the Israeli siege on Gaza, releasing Sinwar's friends from prison and turning him into the "leader of the Palestinian people and Hamas."
However, according to Mansour, Sinwar's calculations "did not go as planned." Israel's response was "uncontrolled without any justification," referring to the Israeli ground incursion into the Strip.
Mansour also said that Sinwar "wanted to make a change," but "he didn't expect the operation to get this complicated and go as far as it did and give Israel all the reasons and excuses to break all the rules."
Mansour explained that Sinwar "tried several times to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority, to establish good relations with Egypt, and to get Israel to lift the siege on Gaza." However, he concluded, that Sinwar "did not succeed. Then he had to make a strategic change to carry out such a massive operation."