The commander of the 98th brigade in the Israeli occupation army, Dan Goldfus, claimed that Israel was just meters and minutes away from arresting the head of the political bureau of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar.

Goldfus said in an interview with Israel's Channel 12: "We were close. We were in his compound; we reached an underground compound. We found a lot of money there, the coffee was still hot. And weapons were scattered everywhere," he alleged.

In recent months, the occupation army has claimed several times that it was getting closer to Sinwar, but the latter escaped each time.

In February, the army broadcast a video that it alleged showed Sinwar in a tunnel under Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, surrounded by "his wife and two or three" of his children.

After the assassination of the head of Hamas's political bureau, Ismail Haniya, in Tehran last month, Sinwar was chosen to succeed him.

While the Israeli broadcasting authority considered Sinwar's selection "a message to Israel that he is alive and that Hamas's leadership in Gaza is intact," many observers saw that Hamas had closed any backchannels for the success of negotiations.

However, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Sinwar was and still is the primary decision-maker regarding ceasefire negotiations in Gaza.