A discrepancy within the official Israeli account of Yahya Sinwar’s remaining moments has emerged since his demise which seems probably so as to add gas to the martyr’s cult quick creating across the Hamas chief.
The Israeli post-mortem carried out on Sinwar concluded that he died from a gunshot wound to his head, at odds with the preliminary Israel Protection Forces (IDF) model which implied he was killed by a tank shell fired into the wrecked constructing the place he made his final stand.
The IDF launched footage of a tank firing on the constructing in Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan refugee camp, and the army spokesperson, R Adm Daniel Hagari, stated: “We recognized him as a terrorist inside a constructing, fired on the constructing after which went in to look.”
Nonetheless, based on Chen Kugel, the director of Israel’s nationwide forensic institute, who carried out the post-mortem, the reason for demise was a bullet wound to the pinnacle. In an interview with the New York Times, Kugel didn’t speculate on who fired the deadly shot, whether or not it was throughout a skirmish with Israeli troopers earlier than the tank spherical was fired, or after he was discovered within the rubble of the constructing, or by Sinwar himself in order to not be taken alive.
Sinwar had a pistol with him, which some Israeli experiences stated had beforehand belonged to an IDF army intelligence officer, Mahmoud Hir a-Din, a Druze from the Galilee area, who was killed throughout a secret mission in Gaza in 2018.
The intrigue surrounding Sinwar’s demise has fuelled a martyr’s cult that unfold explosively throughout social media from the second the Hamas chief was confirmed useless.
The truth that he was killed in fight fatigues and a fight vest after firing and hurling grenades at Israeli troopers, even lashing out at an IDF drone with a wood baton thrown along with his one remaining working arm in a remaining gesture of defiance, units Sinwar aside from his predecessors who had been assassinated whereas they had been on the run.
When the long-serving Hamas chief Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was assassinated by missiles fired by an IDF helicopter gunship in 2004, he was being pushed alongside in a wheelchair after prayers in a Gaza mosque.
There was little of his physique left to {photograph}, however imagined photos of the deadly missile strike grew to become a part of the iconography which nearly immediately appeared on partitions throughout the occupied territories, together with photographs of the white-bearded chief ascending to heaven. Photos of Yassin are nonetheless frequent in Gaza and the West Financial institution, usually exhibiting him within the firm of newer martyrs.
Sinwar left a war-ravaged fighter’s corpse behind, offering a remaining picture corresponding to these of Che Guevara, the Argentinian physician who fought in Cuba’s revolution however who finally died at the hands of the Bolivian military in 1967, and have become an icon for his trigger. After Guevara was shot, his physique was laid out on a desk to be photographed, his open eyes staring vacantly on the digicam.
Sinwar’s successors within the Hamas management celebrated the truth that he died in fight, within the phrases of his deputy, Khalil al-Hayya: “Dealing with and never retreating, participating within the frontlines and shifting between fight positions.”
An excerpt from a notable poem by the Palestinians’ most celebrated poet, Mahmoud Darwish, is circulating on the web together with the declare that it foretold Sinwar’s finish.
The strains from Reward for the Excessive Shadow say: “Besiege your siege … there isn’t any escape. Your arm has fallen, so choose it up and strike your enemy … There is no such thing as a escape and I fell close to you, so choose me up and strike your enemy with me … You are actually free, free and free.”
Darwish wrote the poem at one other low level for the Palestinian trigger, in a ship taking him and different activists and militants from Beirut to Tunisia after Israel’s devastating war in Lebanon in 1982 aimed toward destroying the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.
Darwish’s poetry remembers the horror of the shelling of Beirut and the massacres of Palestinians and Lebanese Shia Muslims on the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon at the moment. The themes of mass demise within the face of worldwide indifference and inaction, mixed with the eager for somebody to strike again, resonate with Palestinians right this moment after Gaza’s destruction.
Sinwar’s warrior’s demise appears sure to ensure him the highest place within the Palestinian pantheon, obscuring the truth that, earlier than 7 October final 12 months, as a brutal enforcer of Hamas loyalty, he killed way more Palestinians than Israelis, killing suspected informants in probably the most grotesque method. Final 12 months’s murderous assault on Israeli civilians in southern Israel left Gaza open to ferocious Israeli reprisals and Palestinian civilians uncovered, ravenous and susceptible whereas Sinwar’s fighters hunkered in tunnels properly stocked lengthy earlier than with meals, water and drugs.
To additional assist form his desired narrative, the Hamas chief left behind a textual content, within the type of a 2004 autobiographical novel, The Thorn and the Carnation, written in Israeli jail and smuggled out in sections.
Sinwar’s alter ego within the guide, Ibrahim, is a zealot dedicated to the trigger who expects Palestinians to be “able to sacrifice all the things for his or her delight, dignity, and beliefs”. Why negotiate with Israel, Ibrahim asks, when Hamas might “impose different guidelines of the sport”?
That’s what Sinwar thought he was doing with the 7 October assault, and what he clearly hoped can be his legacy. The parable surrounding him, which he cultivated assiduously whereas nonetheless alive, appears sure to stay on by way of 1000’s of posters and avenue murals.
His legacy has additionally been to “change the principles of the sport” however it’s removed from clear but whether or not the change favours the Palestinians.