Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas’ Political Bureau, lost his life on the Gaza battlefield on 16 October.

The Israelis had claimed for an entire year that the mastermind of the 7 October attacks on Israel was hiding in the Gaza tunnels, surrounded by Israeli hostages and using them as human shields in case Israeli soldiers tried to capture or kill him.

In the end, it turned out that Sinwar was fighting the Israeli invaders above ground. He fought valiantly and courageously to the very end.

The Israeli forces who killed Sinwar did not know that the man who had successfully eluded them for more than 12 months was one of a group of three Palestinian fighters that they had come across by sheer chance.

A video that the Israelis released of his final moments, meant to discredit him before the Palestinian and Arab people, turned him into a hero who bravely fought the Israeli army to his last breath.

The video has turned him into a hero and a legend who will surely inspire many young Palestinians and Arabs to follow in his footsteps and to continue fighting the Israeli occupation of their land in Gaza and the West Bank.

The Hamas leadership confirmed Sinwar’s death on 18 October in a statement to the Aljazeera television network. Khalil Al-Haya, a senior official in Hamas, read a statement on the news channel vowing that the Israeli hostages would not be released before there is a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and that the Hamas Resistance Movement will outlast Sinwar.

He said that Israel wrongly believes that killing “our leaders means the end of” the struggle of the Palestinian people. In the meantime, Hizbullah in Lebanon vowed to intensify its attacks against Israel in retaliation for the death of Sinwar.

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Israeli people to confirm the death of Sinwar and to congratulate his countrymen on his death. He said that the Israeli people and government considered Sinwar to be public enemy number one who had planned the 7 October attacks of last year and held him and other Hamas commanders responsible for planning and overseeing the execution of the attack plan once Hamas operatives had crossed the Gaza border into Israel.

In the Israeli and Western media, Sinwar was accused of the vilest crimes against the Israelis. Netanyahu said that the “elimination” of Sinwar would not end the war, however, and promised to keep on fighting until “total victory.” The jubilation on the streets of Israel was palpable.

Thousands of miles away across the Atlantic Ocean there were congratulatory messages from US officials. US President Joe Biden, commenting on the death of Sinwar, said in a statement released on 17 October that “this is a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world.”

He went on to say that shortly after the 7 October attacks last year against Israel he had directed Special Operations personnel and “our intelligence professionals to work side-by-side with their Israeli counterparts to help locate and track Sinwar and other Hamas leaders.”

The statement then turned to the “day after,” an important element that has unsurprisingly been absent from official Israeli statements and declarations on Sinwar’s death.

The US president said that he believes there is now “the opportunity” for a “day after in Gaza” without Hamas and also for a political settlement that provides a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike. However, much work “remains before us,” he said, without giving any details as to how to achieve such a political solution and with no mention of a time frame.

When the news of Sinwar’s death broke, Biden was in Berlin meeting European leaders whose countries have provided Ukraine with weapons and financial support in its conflict with Russia. He called Netanyahu to “congratulate” him on Sinwar’s killing. The two men discussed how to use the moment to bring the hostages home and end the war, “with Israel’s security assured and Hamas never again able to control Gaza.”

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, talking to reporters en route to Berlin where he was accompanying Biden on his first visit to Berlin since January 2021, said that the US administration believes “there is a renewed opportunity… that we would like to seize.”

He said the US administration was “proud of the support that [it had] given to the IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] all along the way,” pointing out that it was with “American intelligence help that many [Hamas] leaders,” including Sinwar, “were hunted and tracked, flushed out of their hiding places, and put on the run.”

Sullivan said that the US and Israel would have to work in concert so that Sinwar’s death would deal the “kind of long-term blows to Hamas” that would end the movement’s control of Gaza.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also called the Qatari prime minister and minister of Foreign Affairs to push for a deal to free the Israeli hostages.

While the US administration and European governments were pressing for the speedy release of the hostages, putting aside the shameful gloating over the death of Sinwar, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland reported on 18 October that the war in Gaza “continues to inflict horrors” on the population, meaning the Palestinians, and the hostages “remain held in terrible conditions.”

Commenting on Sinwar’s death, he called on the “warring parties” to seize this particular juncture to silence the guns and release all the hostages.

In the meantime, UN Children’s Fund Spokesperson James Elder said on 18 October that only 82 trucks carrying food and water had been allowed into the northern part of Gaza since 2 October. He warned that the international community was “watching history repeat itself” one year after the first forced evacuations of the Gaza Strip.

He pointed out that the displaced families are being forced into so-called “humanitarian zones,” which do not in fact provide safety as they are being bombed by Israel. He referred to Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza, where a population numbering 730,000 is being sheltered in an area that had housed only 9,000 before October 2023. He said that this area represents three per cent of the Gaza Strip and consequently must be considered the “most densely populated city on the planet.”

The West, led by the US Biden administration, has turned a blind eye to the dire situation, worsening by the day, in the Gaza Strip, which is under the constant bombardment of Israeli forces. Seizing on Sinwar’s death, Western governments have showed their true colours in providing Israel with the pretext for continuing its barbaric onslaught on the Palestinians, not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank.

The disappearance of Palestinian freedom fighters like Yahya Sinwar will not dent the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people in their fight to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

We support them in this noble cause, and no amount of Western and Israeli hypocrisy will lead us, as Egyptians and Arabs, to let the Palestinians down in their historic cause. History is on their side.

In conclusion, the former chief of M16 and UK Ambassador to the UN John Sawers wrote in The Financial Times on 30 September that, “Enduring stability for Israel will ultimately only come with a political solution in the region.” There is no other alternative save the continuation of armed resistance.

The writer is former assistant foreign minister.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 24 October, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly