For months, Israel has portrayed the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as holed up in the militant group’s fortified tunnel network under Gaza, shielding himself from Israeli bombs.
But when many Palestinians in the strip watched the Israeli drone footage of Sinwar’s killing, they saw the Hamas chief above ground, dressed in military fatigues and with one arm partially severed, using his remaining hand to attack the drone with the only weapon he had — a stick.
“Even people who were angry about Hamas, when they saw . . . he had been killed during clashes and not hiding in a tunnel, as Israel was always claiming, they felt sorry and sad for him,” said Mohammed Sobeh, speaking from Khan Younis in Gaza.
“Sinwar’s death will raise his popularity.”
Many Gazans blame the Hamas chief for inciting Israel’s wrath with the October 7 attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel, according to Israeli officials, and triggered the devastating Gaza war. They say Sinwar provoked Israel into unleashing the greatest catastrophe on Palestinians since 1948.
Israel’s assault has killed about 42,500 people in Gaza, according to health authorities in the shattered strip, which is now stalked by the threat of famine and disease.
But the footage of Sinwar’s final moments on Thursday looked to many in Gaza like a defiant last stand against Israel, eclipsing some of the criticism he faced from Palestinians.
Raw footage of Yahya Sinwar’s last moments: pic.twitter.com/GJGDlu7bie
— LTC Nadav Shoshani (@LTC_Shoshani) October 17, 2024
Since Sinwar’s killing, “what I’ve heard and seen is that, again, most of the Palestinians in Gaza have a lot of respect for him,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, associate professor of political science at Gaza’s Al-Azhar University, now visiting scholar at Northwestern University in Illinois, US.
“They think he just died fighting in the frontline of the battle against Israel, like many other Hamas fighters,” he said. “Criticism of Sinwar just disappeared completely today.”
Arabic social media has been filled with praise from Hamas supporters for the ruthless militant leader. “Sinwar was martyred on the ground of Rafah in the heart of the battle,” Youssef Issa Abu Medhat said. “He was not pulled from the tunnels. He was not arrested in his underwear.”
Abbas Araghchi, foreign minister of Iran, which supports Hamas, said on X that Sinwar “bravely fought to the very end on the battlefield”. “His fate — beautifully pictured in his last image — is not a deterrent but a source of inspiration for resistance fighters across the region,” he wrote, adding a still image of Sinwar from the drone video.
The reaction in Israel to the dramatic news of Sinwar’s death, which included the grainy drone footage and a graphic image of the Hamas leader’s lifeless body amid the ruins of a bombed-out house, was sharply different.
Across the country, a sense of jubilation broke out over news that the architect of the deadliest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust had been killed. Israeli authorities were also quick to emphasise that no hostages seized by Hamas on October 7 were in the area or harmed.
On the streets and in messages shared on WhatsApp and other platforms, the dominant emotion was one of satisfaction that Israel had “brought justice” to its biggest nemesis, as defence minister Yoav Gallant put it.
The Israeli military also offered a different interpretation of Sinwar’s final moments, portraying him as injured and alone, holding 40,000 shekels in cash and a pack of Mentos candy.
“Sinwar died while beaten, persecuted and on the run — he didn’t die as a commander, but as someone who only cared for himself,” Gallant said, adding that this sent a “clear message” to Israel’s other enemies as well as the Gazan people.
The killing of Sinwar, and the assassination by Israel of many of Hamas’s other leaders, creates a power vacuum in the militant group.
Abusada said Hamas would probably struggle to replace Sinwar, while also pointing out that Israel had killed many of its previous leaders and cautioning that his death was unlikely to cause the group to collapse.
“This isn’t going to put an end to Hamas or Palestinian resistance against Israel,” he said.
But for many in Gaza, the overwhelming feeling at Sinwar’s death is neither jubilation nor grief, but simply exhaustion.
“I thought I would feel happy if Sinwar was killed,” said Mohammad Nafiz, a 28-year-old in Khan Younis. Instead, he added, “it feels mixed and weird”.
Sinwar’s death comes after a year of carnage in Gaza, where a renewed Israeli offensive in the north of the territory over the past two weeks has killed dozens of people every day. Israeli human rights groups say the Israeli military appears to be implementing a plan to lay siege to northern Gaza and starve out its remaining inhabitants, which Israel denies.
“People in Gaza’s greatest concern is stopping the war,” said a 42-year-old man in northern Gaza, who asked not to be named.
“As for the assassination of Sinwar and other Palestinian leaders, it’s expected,” he added. “This doesn’t surprise us as Palestinians. All we care about is ending the war.”
Additional reporting by Malaika Kanaaneh Tapper