Killing of Sinwar ‘severe blow’ to Hamas
Israel’s killing of Sinwar is a “severe blow” to the Palestinian group, Hasan Barari of Qatar University says.
“It was unexpected that he would die at this moment… It could demoralise the movement in the short term, but the idea of resistance is rooted in the Palestinian society,” he said. “So, it is not about Sinwar himself, but it is about the fact that Israel has been occupying part of Palestine for a long time.
“Sinwar was saying that the Israelis were expecting the Palestinians to behave as a kind of obedient to the occupation, so he resisted that,” he stressed, adding that Hamas will recover from Sinwar’s death by appointing a new leader soon.
Sinwar’s killing will not change anything on the ground
What people have been asking is whether Sinwar’s death will end the war. That’s the priority that remains across Gaza, whether people agreed with Sinwar or not.
They want the war to end and to be able to go back to their homes and an end to the mass killing of people. The way it’s been perceived, even by those who opposed Sinwar’s strategies, is that he was blessed with a warrior’s death, fighting oppression.
But the death of one person won’t change anything on the ground.
Official says Hamas ‘cannot be eliminated’, does not confirm Sinwar killing
A senior Hamas official says the Palestinian group cannot be eliminated with the killing of its leaders. “Hamas is a liberation movement led by people looking for freedom and dignity, and this cannot be eliminated,” Basem Naim, senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, told AFP.
In a statement, he listed several Hamas leaders killed in the past and said their deaths had boosted the group’s popularity. “It seems that Israel believes that killing our leaders means the end of our movement and the struggle of the Palestinian people,” Naim said.
“Hamas each time became stronger and more popular, and these leaders became an icon for future generations to continue the journey towards a free Palestine.”
Qassam Brigades says Sinwar ‘ascended facing the enemy’
The armed wing of Hamas has also issued a statement mourning Sinwar, saying he “ascended facing the enemy, not retreating”. “It is a source of pride for our movement to put leaders before soldiers, and for its leaders to lead the caravan of martyrs of our people,” Qassam Brigades said.
Iran’s foreign minister hails Sinwar’s ‘selfless struggle for liberation of Palestinians’
Abbas Araghchi has issued a statement after Hamas’s confirmation of Sinwar’s killing, saying the leader of Hamas “bravely fought to the very end on the battlefield”.
“Yahya Sinwar did not fear death but sought martyrdom in Gaza,” the Iranian foreign minister wrote on X. Araghchi said Sinwar’s fate was a “source of inspiration for resistance fighters across the region, Palestinian and non-Palestinian”.
“We, and countless others around the world, salute his selfless struggle for liberation of the Palestinian people.”
In Gaza, Sinwar seen as a man ‘blessed with a warrior’s death’
A lot of people have been talking to us about their reaction to the death of Yahya Sinwar, and in fact, how people feel is mixed.
The majority of people hope that this will bring an end to this war and end to the mass bombardment and the return of displaced people to their homes in northern Gaza and other parts of the Strip. And also a full withdrawal of the Israeli military.
There’s also this group of people who are just coming to terms with the fact that this is what Yahya Sinwar wanted. When he started this, the Al-Aqsa flood, this is the fate that he was after.
Seeing him, seeing the image emerging from the site where he was staying, speaks a thousand words. The man was not in tunnels.
He was not hiding. He did not surround himself with captives as the Israeli prime minister and the Israeli military pushed forward for a whole year – that he protected himself by surrounding himself with these captives.
He was there by himself, no captives. He fought till the last breath of his life. He even threw a stick at a drone that was inspecting the place to check who was inside the building.
That’s the image. He is largely being perceived as a person who has been blessed with a warrior’s death – fighting colonial oppression across the Gaza Strip.
