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Alameen Templeton
Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who unleashed Al-Aqsa Flood and led from the ground in Gaza has been killed, Israel’s military has claimed.
Zionist media and the Israeli public are jubilant while the White House says his alleged death is a chance for a ceasefire.
Palestinian sources have not yet confirmed the Israeli claims. Al-Mayadeen is reporting the Hamas war room say they intend escalating operations. Iran says, if true, Sinwar’s passing will not end the resistance.
Questions remain
Israeli media reports say Basem Naim, a senior Hamas official living in exile, circulated a statement Friday afternoon that seemed to confirm Sinwar’s death. “It’s very painful and distressing to lose beloved people, especially an extraordinary leader like Yahya Sinwar,” it read. “But what we are sure of is that we are eventually victorious.”
Moments later, Naim deleted the statement and then resent it with Sinwar’s removed, unconfirmed reports said.
Media reports say Sinwar was shot Thursday by chance, by a random patrol, who did not know who he was. They only realised it was Sinwar after they approached his body.
Mysteriously, the Israelis claim he was carrying his ID document. It’s a bit like the September 11 hijacker’s ID being found amid the wreckage of the World Trade Centre. Sinwar, the most recogniseable face of Hamas, would have no need to carry an ID, as if he was hoping to get through an Israeli checkpoint.
Some Palestinian sources suggested the Israelis may be lying as usual, trying to provoke a denial from Sinwar that might reveal his location.
Chasing shadows
The Israelis with help from the US and UK have been searching for him for months. But all the latest spying technology and artificial intelligence advantages have failed.
The Guardian reports Sinwar’s last reported sighting had been just a few days after October 7, when he when he accompanied the release of a group of hostages from a tunnel.
In fluent Hebrew, perfected over more than 22 years in an Israeli prison, Sinwar reassured them that they were safe and would soon be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.
Sinwar remained in Gaza, directing attacks against invading Israeli forces and still maintaining a barrage of missiles into Israel on October 7 this year.
Negotiators in Cairo suggested cutting a deal in which Sinwar would go into exile. “Such theories underestimated the ideological zeal of a man who rose through Hamas ranks as the executioner of suspected informers,” the Guardian says.
“Ram Ben-Barak, a former deputy director of the Mossad, had predicted that after Sinwar’s fall “someone else will come”.
“It is an ideological war, not a war about Sinwar,” Ben-Barak said.
‘Will not end the war’
Another Mossad officer said: “After almost 50 years of assassinations, we understand this is a basic part of the game. Sometimes it is necessary to assassinate a very prominent leader. But when you start to think it will be a gamechanger and that an ideological organisation will collapse because you kill one of its leaders, that is a total mistake.
“You cannot create a fantasy. It will not end the war.”
The New York Times says US president Joe Biden Friday described the alleged death as “a moment of justice” that presented “an opportunity to seek a path to peace — a better future in Gaza without Hamas.”
His comments came as his administration is supposedly renewing efforts to reach a cease-fire in Gaza and jump-start stalled talks. How they’re going to do that without Hamas, or who they’re going to talk with instead, was not explained.
Hamas has made it clear, with or without Sinwar, they are only interested in implementing the Israeli-sponsored “peace deal” offered on July 2 that Tel Aviv then promptly walked away from. It has insisted there can be no further talks until Israel is compelled to stand by its agreements.
Playing to the crowd
That has still not changed. An observer said it seemed Biden was talking to the uninformed US electorate, rather than to any genuine desire to end the Gaza genocide: “Forty two thousand dead Palestinians were wiped out without any chance to defend themselves. When is their moment of justice going to arrive?”
The New York Times reports Biden said US foreign minister Antony Blinken would go to Israel in the coming days to discuss “securing Gaza” and planning for governing and rebuilding the territory after the genocide.
Biden has given the Israelis a 30-day window to finalise their terror campaign that has turned northern Gaza into a kill zone, where Israel has given itself the authority to wipe out anything that moves.
Reuters reports the Zionists sent another army unit to support the ongoing Jabalia massacre, where the Lawnmowers have trapped 50 000 people inside the largest of Gaza’s eight refugee camps.
Residents say tanks are blowing up roads and houses as they thrust deeper into the camp. Israeli tanks had reached the heart of the camp, using heavy air and ground fire, residents said.
Open genocide
The army was destroying dozens of houses on a daily basis, sometimes from the air and the ground and by placing bombs in buildings then detonating them remotely.
Reuters says Israeli forces have isolated the far northern Gazan towns of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia, and Beit Lahiya from Gaza City, blocking movement except for those families heeding evacuation orders and leaving the three towns.
Meanwhile, the metastising war on the Lebanon border is sucking in more combatants while Israeli air strikes and artillery are targeting civilians in towns and villages scattered across southern Lebanon and the suburbs of Beirut
The Israeli military announced Friday it was calling up an additional brigade of reservists to join the fight. Parts of at least five military divisions are trying to expand the genocide beyond Israel’s borders, with some troops fortifying the perimeter and others joining Israel’s ground invasion in southern Lebanon.
Lebanese resistance said they had destroyed 20 Merkava tanks since the invasion began and had killed at least 50 officers and soldiers and wounded about 500 in close combat fighting.
The Israeli military has announced new evacuation warnings for nearly two dozen towns and villages in southern Lebanon. That means it has given itself the right to kill anyone who doesn’t obey.
At least one million people in Lebanon — around a fifth of the population — have already been displaced by the Israeli offensive, according to the U.N.
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