some Palestinians may compare -- Sinwar’s ‘warrior death’ -- to the final image of Che Guevara, the Argentinian doctor who fought in Cuba’s revolution but who ultimately died at the hands of the Bolivian military in 1967 and became an icon for his cause
After Guevara was shot, his body was laid out on a table to be photographed, his open eyes staring vacantly at the camera
Sinwar’s successors in the Hamas leadership celebrated the fact that he died in combat, in the words of his deputy, Khalil al-Hayya:
Quote
"Facing and not retreating, engaging in the frontlines and moving between combat positions”
Sinwar left a war-ravaged fighter’s corpse behind
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish
An excerpt from a notable poem by the Palestinians’ most celebrated poet, Mahmoud Darwish, is circulating on the internet along with the claim that it foretold Sinwar’s end
The lines from "Praise for the High Shadow" say:
Quote
“Besiege your siege … there is no escape. Your arm has fallen, so pick it up and strike your enemy … There is no escape and I fell near you, so pick me up and strike your enemy with me … You are now free, free and free”
Darwish wrote the poem at another low point for the Palestinian cause, in a boat taking him and other activists and militants from Beirut to Tunisia after Israel’s devastating war in Lebanon in 1982 aimed at destroying the Palestinian Liberation Organisation
Darwish’s poetry recalls the horror of the shelling of Beirut and the massacres of Palestinians and Lebanese Shia Muslims at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon at that time
The themes of mass death in the face of international indifference and inaction, combined with the longing for someone to strike back, resonate with Palestinians today after Gaza’s destruction
Yahya Sinwar’s ‘warrior death’ and legacy
Sinwar’s warrior’s death seems certain to guarantee him the top place in the Palestinian pantheon obscuring the fact that before 7 October 2023 last year as a brutal enforcer of Hamas loyalty, Sinwar killed far more Palestinians than Israelis, killing suspected informants in the most gruesome manner
Last year’s murderous attack on Israeli civilians in southern Israel left Gaza open to ferocious Israeli reprisals and Palestinian civilians exposed, starving and vulnerable while Sinwar’s fighters hunkered in tunnels well stocked long before with food, water and medication
To further help shape his desired narrative, the Hamas leader left behind a text, in the form of a 2004 autobiographical novel "The Thorn and the Carnation" written in Israeli prison and smuggled out in sections
Sinwar’s alter ego in the book, Ibrahim, is a zealot committed to the cause who expects Palestinians to be,
Quote
“ready to sacrifice everything for their pride, dignity, and beliefs”
"Why negotiate with Israel?" Ibrahim asks, when Hamas could “impose other rules of the game”?
1. That is what Sinwar thought he was doing with the 7 October attack and what he clearly hoped would be his legacy 2. The myth surrounding Sinwar which he cultivated assiduously while still alive and 3. seems certain to live on through thousands of posters and street murals
Sinwar's legacy has also been to,
Quote
“change the rules of the game”
but it is far from clear yet whether the change favours the Palestinians
