Middle East & Africa | A report from the strip

A surprising power shift inside Hamas

Its remaining hard men inside Gaza are losing their grip 

An Israeli soldier walks through a tunnel at the European Hospital in Khan Yunis
What lies beneathPhotograph: Getty Images
|KHAN YOUNIS|5 min read

THE NARROW tunnel still reeked of decomposing bodies. A section was blocked by rubble created by two Israeli air strikes on May 13th. Israeli troops opened the tunnel only when they reached the spot, at the entrance to the European Hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, nearly four weeks later. Five bodies were found in an underground room beneath the emergency ward of the main hospital in Gaza’s second-largest city. On June 8th one was identified as that of Muhammad Sinwar, the military chief of Hamas.

Explore more

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “A surprising shift within Hamas”

From the June 14th 2025 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition
A Kenyan reads a morning newspaper with reports on the U.S. election on front page

Donald Trump’s approach to Africa is very, well, African

What a meeting with five leaders says about his administration’s interest in the continent

US President Donald Trump, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during a dinner at the White House in Washington, DC

Ending the war in Gaza is still fiendishly difficult

Donald Trump and Israel’s generals are pressing Binyamin Netanyahu to make a deal


A billboard with the Hebrew slogan "a time for war, a time for settlement; now is the time for the 'Abrahamic Covenant'" is displayed in Tel Aviv on June 26, 2025

The Israel-Iran war has not yet transformed the Middle East

Peace deals may be elusive, and Gulf states fear the war is far from over


Kenya’s president is bad news for Kenya and Africa

William Ruto’s tenure is a how-to guide for sowing cynicism about democracy

Iran’s “axis of resistance” was meant to be the Shias’ NATO

But today transnational political Shiism is struggling for its survival

Israel’s weird war clock: 12 days for Iran, 21 months in Gaza

Making peace with the Palestinians looks much harder than with Iran’s regime or Shias in Lebanon