An Assault Rifle, an UNRWA Passport, and $11K in Cash: What Sinwar’s Possessions Say About His Pre-Death Movements

‘Having access to a humanitarian passport … could possibly provide access to humanitarian corridors to evacuate a crisis zone,’ one expert says

When Israeli forces examined Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s body after killing him in a surprise ground operation on Thursday, they discovered several curious items, including grenades, an assault rifle, nearly $11,000 in cash, and a passport belonging to an employee of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

Those items, experts told the Washington Free Beacon, suggest Sinwar may have been attempting to flee the embattled Gaza Strip when Israeli forces stumbled upon him inside a house in the territory’s Rafah neighborhood, Hamas’s stronghold along the border with Egypt.

While it is unclear exactly what Sinwar was up to in that home, the documents in his possession hint at an escape plan.

“One big question is whether he was planning to try and run for it and run out of Gaza,” said Jonathan Conricus, a 24-year Israel Defense Forces veteran who now serves as a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank. It’s particularly curious, Conricus said, given that Sinwar is known to have had access to the sophisticated Hamas-built tunnel network running beneath Gaza and could have used it to flee into Egypt. The IDF worked earlier this year to demolish many of those cross-border tunnels, complicating a prospective Sinwar exit.

The presence of an UNRWA passport in Sinwar’s belongings is another blow to the humanitarian aid agency’s already ailing image. The United States and other Western countries froze aid to UNRWA after reports revealed that several of the agency’s employees had participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror massacre. Since that time, Hamas has repeatedly been caught siphoning off aid and continuing to use UNRWA facilities for safe haven and even operational planning.

“Having access to a humanitarian passport—even if expired in 2017—could possibly provide access to humanitarian corridors to evacuate a crisis zone,” said Riza Kumar, a research analyst with the Counter Extremism Project, a nonprofit policy group. “Given that only two others died alongside Sinwar, his small entourage suggests he was attempting to make moves that wouldn’t be so easily detected.”

Sinwar was killed alongside his longtime bodyguard and another senior Hamas member responsible for handling the terror leader’s communications with the outside world. It is possible the UNRWA-issued passport and various Palestinian government IDs found at the site of Sinwar’s death could have helped the small cohort of terrorists make their way to safer territory as Israeli forces patrol Rafah, hunting down Hamas’s remaining militants.

“The fact Sinwar felt compelled to leave his secure subterranean hideout and emerge into the Tal as-Sultan streets, with only two other fighters in support, suggests a severe disintegration of Hamas command-and-control structures,” Kumar said. “Likely Sinwar had also lost confidence in his senior commanders in taking such a risk.”

At the same time, Kumar said, “carrying the passport of a much younger man, with a 1984 [birthdate], probably rules out the notion of [Sinwar’s] intending to use it or flee across the Egypt-Gaza border.”

UNRWA says that it had no knowledge of Sinwar’s whereabouts and that the presence of its employee’s passport at the scene does not mean the aid group was in communication with Hamas’s now-former leader.

“I confirm that the staff member in question is alive,” UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X. “He currently lives in Egypt where he traveled with his family in April through the Rafah border.” The organization would not comment beyond this statement when reached Friday by the Free Beacon.

But Sinwar’s access to such a sensitive UNRWA document is still raising questions months after the organization was forced to admit that its employees not only played a role in the Oct. 7 attacks but also helped Hamas hide hostages.

“UNRWA is totally compromised. Every part of UNRWA is connected with Hamas, benefits Hamas, and in many cases, works for Hamas,” said Conricus.

Anne Herzberg, a human rights lawyer and NGO Monitor legal adviser, noted that the discovery of UNRWA documents “is indicative of the corruption and failure of that U.N. agency specifically, but the humanitarian aid industry in Gaza more generally.”

Sinwar was also carrying Mentos candies when he was killed, items only available by having access to the tons of humanitarian aid being pumped into Gaza by UNRWA and international donors.

That type of item, Conricus said, only “comes in through the humanitarian aid, so obviously he had access, through his people or someone else, to get access to Mentos.”

The former Israeli soldier also noted a curious omission from the goods found on Sinwar’s body: a Quran.

“Even the most junior Hamas fighters, usually when they die, you find them with the Quran,” he said, describing Sinwar’s lack of one as “exceptional.”

Also discovered on Sinwar’s body were a stack of letters between him and his 10-year-old son. Their contents, reported in the Israeli media, include personal discussions of family life and radical jihadi rhetoric. The terror leader’s son sent his father drawings of dead Israeli soldiers, and Sinwar, in turn, wrote about the need to destroy Israel through armed war.