This article was first published on the People’s Dispatch on October 17, 2024.
The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and the Israeli Security Agency (Shabak) issued a joint statement on Thursday, October 17, announcing the assassination of the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance movement Hamas, Yahya Sinwar. The statement clarified that investigations were still underway to verify whether the body, which the IOF found in Gaza after engaging in armed clashes with Palestinian resistance fighters in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip the day earlier, was of Sinwar.
Israeli Army Radio said in an initial statement that three men were killed in the clashes, and that the available visual evidence suggested that Sinwar was one of the slain men. Israel announced that they would conduct a DNA test to give secondary confirmation of the identity of the body. Israel has samples of Sinwar’s DNA because he was formerly imprisoned in Israeli jail. Hours after the initial announcement, the Israeli Army issued another statement confirming the assassination of Sinwar relying on a dental X-ray image. Meanwhile, Hamas has yet to confirm Sinwar’s assassination .
Why is the assassination of Sinwar important for Israel?
Since the October 7 “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” Israeli officials had declared Yahya Sinwar the most wanted person, alleging he was the mastermind of the operation. Israel has also claimed that Sinwar was leading the ceasefire and the prisoner-for-swap negotiations for Hamas during the one-year-old Israeli aggression on Gaza, and has claimed that his assassination would change the course of negotiations in a way that may make releasing Israeli captives easier. It was also suspected that Sinwar assumed leadership of Hamas following the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31.
Israel had set three primary goals for the war on Gaza that include eliminating Hamas, securing the return of Israeli captives from Gaza, and ensuring that the Gaza Strip would not pose any security threat to Israel. With none of these goals achieved, it seems that it is now betting that the assassination of Sinwar means the termination of Hamas, and that the end of the war is imminent.
The circumstances of Sinwar’s death
According to analysts, the details published by Israeli media outlets so far confirms that Sinwar was killed after engaging in a direct armed confrontation with IOF soldiers during an Israeli ground operation in Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah. Media reports also suggest that the soldiers clashed with Sinwar and his companions without recognizing his identity until he was killed. This would indicate that Sinwar was not killed in a targeted assassination by Israeli special forces based on intelligence information.
It is noteworthy that despite Israel’s intelligence and military might, it was unable to assassinate their “most wanted man,” who according to what his own death shows, was not even hiding out but was engaged in active combat against Israeli forces.
Refuting Israeli propaganda
Sinwar’s own death refutes many claims made by Israeli media and officials. The fact that he was killed in Rafah, contradicts a previous Israeli hypothesis, that the Hamas leader was taking Khan Yunis as a stronghold. Moreover, the images circulated of Sinwar’s body along with the details provided by the IOF refute Israel’s propaganda, which had falsely depicted Sinwar as hiding out in tunnels, surrounding himself with Israeli captives as human shields, with an explosive suicide belt around his waist.
Sinwar’s last image instead showed him wearing a tactical vest, with rifle magazines and grenades in its pockets, while the IOF confirmed that the Palestinian resistance leader was fighting his enemy face-to-face aboveground. The site where Sinwar was killed also proves that he was not hiding among Palestinian civilians.
Sinwar confirmed with his death that he was ready to sacrifice his soul for his people and his land. The iconic Palestinian resistance leader Yahya Sinwar has stated on several occasions that being assassinated by Israel is not something he fears in the slightest. In a press conference held in 2021, Sinwar was asked by journalists about Israel’s recurrent threats to assassinate him. Sinwar’s response was, “The greatest gift the enemy could give me is to assassinate me, I would rather be martyred.”
Assassination of leaders further ignites resistance
For more than 100 years, countless Palestinian resistance leaders have been assassinated while fighting the colonizers of their land. Palestinian patriotic leaders sacrificed their lives to expel the British colony during the first half of the 20th century, and to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine from 1948 until today.
For Palestinians, the assassination of resistance leaders has never been the end of resistance and liberation movements. In a televised speech that he delivered on the anniversary of October 7, Hamas’ spokesperson Abu Obaida emphasized this concept:
“When have assassinations ever been the end of liberation and resistance movements anywhere in the world, especially in the history and the present of our Palestinian and Arab revolution? If assassinations were victories, anti-colonial resistance would have ended since the assassination of Sheikh Ezz al-Din al-Qassam in the woods of Ya’bad in Jenin ninety years ago, and if assassinations were victories, Al-Qassam Brigades would not have carried out ‘operation Al-Aqsa flood,’ 20 years after the assassination of Hamas’s and Qassam’s prominent founders.”
American Lebanese journalist Rania Khalek echoed such sentiments in a post she wrote on social media on Thursday, commenting on what The New York Times (The NYT) said on Sinwar’s assassination.
“‘The death of Mr. Sinwar would raise hopes of an end to the conflict.’ They don’t get it. Israel’s genocidal project isn’t about this or that leader. It’s about stealing land and dominating the natives,” Khalek wrote.
“This ‘conflict’ (as The NYT calls it) will never end as long as Israel remains a settler colony carrying out an expansionist genocide. The natives will always fight back,” she added.
Featured photo: Yahya Sinwar. Source: People’s Dispatch.
