An earthquake in his life and an earthquake in his death...the legend of Sinwar

Abu Ibrahim passed away in a legendary and majestic end. He became the first Palestinian president to be martyred in a battle he fought face to face on the front lines, not in an assassination.

Yahya Sinwar was in the most dangerous place in the world, on Ibn Sina Street in the Sultan neighborhood west of Rafah, an area that was evacuated five months ago. He was not hiding in tunnels or disguised among the displaced, as the Israeli trumpets claimed, but rather he was in the heart of the field, engaged among the fighters, not surrounded by hostages, or a human shield, or even a battalion of his own guards.

After clashing with the occupation forces and being injured by shrapnel, Yahya Sinwar took refuge in one of the abandoned, almost destroyed houses, leaning on a chair, while bleeding from his right arm. With his left hand, he threw two hand grenades at the occupation soldiers, preventing them from advancing behind him inside the house. They sent a procession to follow him inside the place, and he was rebuking them with a stick he picked up from the ground.

We saw him wearing his military uniform, masked with a keffiyeh, with gunpowder in his hands, and a war quiver on his chest. He carried nothing in his pocket except a rosary, a small booklet of supplications and prayers, 800 shekels, and his famous pistol that he took from an Israeli officer who tried to spy on Hamas in 2018.

After the Israeli march located him, he was hit in the head by a shell that killed him. It all happened by pure chance, not as a result of surveillance or penetration, even those who clashed with him were members of an infantry battalion, not special forces.

The Israelis did not discover his true identity until several hours later, when they tried to identify the bodies of the dead. Then the great surprise occurred, and they found themselves in front of the body of the majestic man who had defeated them and shaken their feet in the Al-Aqsa Flood.

One of the drawings, which depicted him holding his cane next to Hanthala Naji al-Ali, turned into a silent advertisement for thousands of Arab accounts that chose it to express their affection for him and their support for him. The cane itself became an icon that is used as an example of resistance.

The websites circulated a statement issued by the Abu Taha family, the owners of the abandoned Rafah house where Abu Ibrahim lived (and it was said that it would be demolished as a result), in which they expressed their pride in his presence in their home and that the last stick he used to resist the occupier was from the house. Not many days passed before the Arabic proverb added the saying: “I threw with Al-Sinwar’s stick,” to indicate that you did what you had to do with all your courage and strength, refusing to surrender.

This is just a drop in the bucket of feelings of warmth and respect that are still being expressed in various forms of expression in the Arab world, to an extent that I am unable to enumerate them.

But my main observation - which I hope I am wrong about - is that this Arab enthusiasm was more expressive of the enthusiasm of the societies than it was of the orientations of the authorities, some of whom, but not all, had negative positions towards the resistance.

This is what its media platforms have unfortunately expressed all the time. The most prominent of all happened after the killing of Sinwar, when one of those channels with a position adopted a report that it broadcasted on its screen, accusing the resistance leaders of terrorism.

Because it was shocking and blatant, it sparked a wave of resentment and anger from the Arab public opinion, which reached the relevant executive authorities in the sister country. They quickly intervened and deleted the report, and announced that they had referred those responsible for preparing it for investigation. This is a step that is undoubtedly appreciated.

It was surprising that the matter was so confusing to many that the lines and boundaries between the perpetrator and the victim, and between the killer and the killed, were blurred for them.

(Al Jazeera Net)