Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network salutes the leadership, martyrdom and heroism of the great Palestinian leader, Yahya Sinwar, Abu Ibrahim, martyred in battle against occupation forces on 17 October 2024. Sinwar, who was martyred as he fought until the last breath alongside his comrades, advancing and not retreating, wounded, forcing a whole battalion of occupation soldiers to retreat, resisting still as they fired tank shells at him, throwing debris at a drone targeting him even though he had already lost an arm, epitomized the courage, heroism and bravery of the resistance fighter in battle against the colonialist, imperialist oppressor.
Chair of the Political Bureau of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, commander of the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood, son of the Palestinian popular classes and Khan Younis refugee camp, liberated prisoner and leader of the prisoners’ movement, struggling mujahid, refugee denied his right to return home, resistance fighter and organizational and grassroots leader, Sinwar was and remains renowned on the Palestinian, Arab and international level for his brilliance, strategic thinking, and deep commitment to the liberation of Palestine, its prisoners, its people and its land.
We extend our condolences and congratulations to the Palestinian people, Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement and its leadership, members and supporters, the resistance fighters on the front lines, all of the forces of resistance in the region, the revolutionary movements of the world, and his family and loved ones on the martyrdom of Yahya Sinwar, the hero of Palestine. He arose as a leader from the prisoners’ movement, through 23 years in Zionist prisons, and liberated by the resistance exactly 13 years ago today. In his strategic approach, his unremitting courage and heroism, his broad national approach and his refusal to abandon or compromise the principles of Palestinian liberation, he represented the promise and the role of the prisoners as leaders of the resistance and of the liberation struggle as a whole.
Yahya Sinwar was born on 29 October 1962 in Khan Younis, a Palestinian refugee from Majdal Asqelan, whose parents were forced from their homes and lands in al-Nakba, one of the over 70% of the Palestinian people in Gaza who are themselves refugees denied their right to return home. He grew up in Gaza, a cradle of resistance throughout the years and decades, where in the 1960s and early 1970s, Mohammed al-Aswad, “Guevara Gaza,” and his resistance fighters protected and controlled the Strip by night even as occupation forces aimed at control it by day; on his road to leading the resistance in Gaza to a great battle that has already changed the world.
Sinwar was part of the founding generation of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, in Gaza, from his student days in the early 1980s, when he first became active in the Islamic Bloc at the then-new Islamic University of Gaza, the first higher education institution founded in the Gaza Strip. He was Secretary of the Bloc’s Technical Committee, then the Sports Committee of the Student Council, before becoming Vice-President and then President of the Council. It was for his student activities and leadership that he was first arrested by the Zionist regime at the age of 20; he was ordered to administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial, for four months. After he was released, he was abducted once again only one week later and ordered again to six months of administrative detention. This is the same policy of pursuit of the leadership of the student movement that the occupation continues to pursue, 40 years later, on campuses throughout occupied Palestine, seeing the student movement as a site of development of the future national leadership of the Palestinian liberation movement. Again in 1985, he was arrested and held for 8 months in Zionist prisons.
In 1986, prior to the launch of the Hamas movement in December 1987, he founded Majd alongside Khaled al-Hindi and Rawhi Mushtaha, at the behest of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the leading founder of Hamas. Majd was a security framework that would develop into the movement’s internal security, tracking Zionist intelligence officers, security services, and collaborators and agents engaged in dealings with the enemy, in order to protect the people and the resistance.
He was once again seized by occupation forces on 20 January 1988, less than two months after the announcement of the formation of the Islamic Resistance Movement and some of its early operations, including the liquidation of two occupation soldiers. Sinwar was accused of leading and directing the operation to attack and kill the soldiers as well as four collaborators arrested by the resistance for spying and conspiring against the Palestinian resistance.
At that time, a zionist interrogator who was tasked with questioning Sinwar remarked that he was told defiantly, “You know that one day you will be the one under interrogation, and I will stand here as the government, as the interrogator. I will interrogate you.” After the launch of the battle of Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October 2023, Ha’aretz published a self-congratulatory interview with one of Sinwar’s former torturers. While it, as always, aims to demonize Sinwar as a confident, brave leader of the resistance who refused to crumble in the face of the interrogators, the reality of anti-colonial revolutionary consciousness nonetheless shines through in the narrative:
“He was not in awe of the interrogator – on the contrary: He was defiant all the time. I can read you what I wrote about him in the first interrogation. I kept it. ‘Definitely an anomalous figure in his personality, wisdom and level of intelligence. Religiously extreme, a believer, one who is at peace with his words and his deeds.’…He is super-intelligent…The fact that he was placed behind bars didn’t undermine his leadership abilities or affect his determination to take action against the Zionist enemy. On the contrary: In prison he simply kept working. He activated people, recruited militants.”
Sinwar endured decades of torture and brutality in the zionist prisons. Rather than allowing his soul and spirit to be crushed by the abhorrent circumstances in which he found himself in, Sinwar turned prison into a trench of combat. He withstood interrogation, torture and took the opportunity to study the enemy. During his time in prison, Sinwar achieved the remarkable feat of teaching himself Hebrew, and engaging in an extensive study of the enemy’s security system and repression apparatus. He knew well the tactics of the colonizer and its vulnerabilities and was determined to share this knowledge to develop the resistance movement as a whole. Deeply dedicated to the advancement of the Hamas movement on the structural, political and military level, he was also deeply committed to Palestinian, Arab and Islamic national unity in confronting the occupation, pursuing the development of joint resistance across all factions and advancing the relationship of Hamas with all of the resistance forces in the region, primarily those that make up the Camp of Resistance: Hezbollah and the Lebanese Resistance, the Iraqi Resistance, Yemen and its people, government, armed forces and the AnsarAllah movement, Syria and Iran. His commitment to unity in resistance and in the liberation struggle was partially developed through his time as a leader in the prisoners’ movement across political lines in confrontation with the colonizer.
He led the Higher Leadership Committee of Hamas prisoners within the Zionist prisons for two terms and was part of the leadership of collective hunger strikes in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004. He was held in multiple prisons, including Majdal, Hadarim, Bir al-Saba and Nafha prisons. He attempted to escape on multiple occasions, digging a hole in the wall of his cell in Majdal prison with a wire and a small saw, and cutting the bars from his window in Ramla prison. After these attempts, he was held in solitary confinement for four years and deprived of family visits; his father visited him twice in 13 years, while his brother was prevented from visiting him for 18 years. During his imprisonment, he survived brain cancer; later, the Zionist regime and its spokespeople publicly lamented the fact that he received medical treatment behind bars.
He aimed to translate some of the books of the occupiers, particularly on security and intelligence into Arabic, such as “Shabak Among the Ruins” by Carmi Gillon, and “Israeli Parties in 1992,” which introduced Zionist political parties. He wrote “Hamas: Trial and Error” on the development of the Hamas Movement, and the book “Al-Majd”, detailing the occupation’s security apparatus and intelligence efforts. It is in this book he also wrote about methods of interrogation of Palestinian political prisoners and the role of colonial intelligence agencies in planting and recruitng agents, in order to develop the level of knowledge and resilience within the liberation movement to resist such efforts. Sinwar was a shining example of the struggle for freedom of political prisoners. His freedom from zionist prisons was a result of his incredible will behind the bars of occupation, and the political victories brought by the resistance.
In 2004, he published his novel while in Bir al-Saba prison, “Thorns of Carnations,” which told a fictionalized personal narrative of the Palestinian struggle between 1967 and the development of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, amid the rise of the Hamas movement in its social context. Haneen Odetallah writes:
“The choice of the writer, primarily a political and military figure, to document this pivotal stage in the history of armed resistance and transmit it in this creative, novelistic form indicates that it is an attempt that goes beyond merely recounting history and its events. The historical novel is not just a reflection of the events of the past; it is a deep exploration of the philosophical and moral forces that shape historical movements….As for the writer, he is one of the pioneering figures in Hamas who witnessed its inception and contributed to its formation and development from youth to the present day. His departure from the confines of traditional historiography to address innovative dramatic struggles in history allows him to explore its philosophical dimensions; specifically, the impact of beliefs on history. In the context of the history of Hamas, this enables him to formulate a philosophy for the Islamic Resistance Movement.”
Yahya Sinwar was liberated from Zionist prisons on 18 October 2011, exactly 13 years ago today, in the Wafa’ al-Ahrar — “Loyalty of the Free” — prisoner exchange, alongside 1,026 fellow Palestinian prisoners, in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the occupation soldier captured by the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Nabih Awada captured the leadership role Sinwar played in the exchange from behind bars, including thwarting attempts by the occupation to divide the prisoners from each other, and his commitment to achieving the liberation of all of the heroic fighters serving long sentences in Zionist jails, like Ibrahim Hamed, Hassan Salameh, Ahmad Sa’adat, and Abdullah Barghouthi. “Sinwar specified from inside his prison the price for the release of Gilad Shalit. The agreement was concluded on October 11, 2011, with the Netanyahu government announcing its approval of the deal with Hamas which achieved the liberation of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, including Yahya Sinwar,” Awada wrote. Sinwar always firmly recognized the necessity of and remained committed to securing prisoner exchanges in order to liberate all of the Palestinian prisoners held in Zionist jails. In 2015, he was officially appointed by Hamas to hold the file of prisoner exchanges and captives held by the resistance.
When he exited the Zionist prisons, he was greeted with a hero’s welcome, and resumed his leadership role in the resistance, directly from his leadership in the prisoners’ movement. Upon his release, he married Samar Mohammed Abu Zamar and had one son, Ibrahim, and immediately took up tasks of leadership. In 2012, he was elected member of the Political Bureau of Hamas, with responsibility for its military wing, the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and coordinating between the political and military leadership of the movement, playing a particularly distinguished role in resisting the 2014 zionist assault on Gaza. In 2017, he was elected as the chair of the Hamas movement in Gaza, and re-elected in 2021. His home was bombed and destroyed by occupation airstrikes in 2012, 2014 and again in 2021, yet he refused to retreat in his positions in any way and frequently spoke publicly about his commitment to remain on the front lines of struggle and his welcoming of martyrdom for Palestine. As was befitting of his status as a son of the popular classes of Palestine, he lived a modest life like that of his people. He was filled with compassion for his people and all of the oppressed of the world at the same time that he confronted the oppressors with fiery speeches and escalating military developments.
Sinwar was one of the leaders and originators of the Great March of Return in 2018-2019, the mass marches of Palestinians to the colonially imposed “border” to demand their natural and internationally recognized right of return. As demonstrated in his commitment to the liberation of the prisoners, here he once again emphasized the fundamental principles of the Palestinian cause — breaking the siege on Gaza, yes, but inextricably linked to the return of Palestinian refugees expelled from their lands during al-Nakba (the catastrophe), the liberation of the people and the land. This popular mobilization also emphasized his commitment to the unity of resistance, including popular mass mobilization and led by the armed struggle, in a comprehensive resistance and revolutionary effort for the liberation of Palestine and the defeat of Zionism and imperialism.
In 2021, in the Battle of Seif al-Quds/the Unity of the Fields, Sinwar, his movement, and the Palestinian people in Gaza joined the battle taking place in Jerusalem to defend the land against settlers and to defend Al-Aqsa Mosque against repeated attacks and incursions. The resistance in Gaza responded to the call of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and were joined by an uprising in occupied Palestine ’48, marches of return from Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria approaching Palestinian borders, and worldwide mobilization of the Palestinian refugees in the diaspora and supporters of the Palestinian struggle, in a heroic moment of the battle that reaffirmed once more the unity of the Palestinian people and land despite over seven decades of occupation and colonialism.
The launch of the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October 2023 was a pivotal moment in the history of the Palestinian cause, of the Arab revolution, and of the international struggle against imperialism. When the time was right, in the midst of social strife in the occupation state stemming from conflict over Netanyahu’s rule, Sinwar and the Al-Qassam Brigades launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood to break the siege, make way for a prisoner exchange, and open the road to the liberation of Palestine. In mere minutes, the billions of dollars in defenses, “elite troops”, and “iron walls” that were supposed to keep Gaza locked up ended up being destroyed. The world once again saw the power of the Palestinians when they fight. The operation was planned in detail and brilliantly executed, targeting key military sites and, in particular, the intelligence divisions of the occupation military besieging Gaza. The genocidal assault of the Zionist regime we have witnessed since then is an attempt to complete the always-genocidal intentions of the colonial occupation of Palestine and an attempt to erase the victorious power of the Palestinian people and their heroic Resistance, revealed before the world on 7 October. It became clear on that day that it was indeed possible for the resistance to defeat the zionist military and create a Palestine free of Zionist colonialism — and for the forces of resistance in the region to liberate the Arab nation, Iran and the entire region from imperialist hegemony. The imperialist-Zionist alliance has since unleashed a bloodbath in an attempt to render that future impossible.
However, their vicious and bloody assault has done nothing to erase the Palestinian people and their commitment to struggle and to liberation. Their assassinations of great leaders like Saleh al-Arouri, Ismail Haniyeh, Fouad Shukr, Ibrahim Aqil, Ali Karaki, and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has failed to achieve their military goals and kill the resistance; instead, their martyrdom has inspired and urged onward a new generation of resistance fighters confronting the occupier, burning their tanks, and repelling their assaults. Hezbollah, leading the Lebanese resistance, is once again creating a graveyard for Merkava tanks, even as Germany shoots down its drones and the US sends over THAAD missiles, joining even more overtly the battle for the imperialist outpost in the region.
The assassinations of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Dr. Abdel-Aziz al-Rantisi, Yahya Ayyash, Abu Ali Mustafa, Ghassan Kanafani, Fathi Shiqaqi, Samir Kuntar, Abbas al-Musawi, Imad Mughniyyeh, Sheik Khader Adnan, Kamal Nasser, Mohammed al-Najjar and Wadie Haddad did not kill their cause nor the Palestinian and Arab liberation movement; the resistance is more deeply rooted than ever before, while the Zionist project remains a fragile implantation, imposed at the force of billions of dollars in colonial weaponry on a daily basis. Of course, we know also that his martyrdom came on 17 October 2024, 23 years after the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine assassinated the infamous racist tourism minister of the occupation, Rehavam Ze’evi, in response to the assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa, to impose a mechanism of justice and accountability — and the prisoners of the 17 October operation are among those that the Resistance is currently seeking to liberate in a prisoner exchange.
As in all anti-colonial resistance struggles, assassinations can never kill the resistance, but only confirm the immortality of great leaders who give their lives in struggle. Yahya Sinwar’s martyrdom was unique, joining his comrades and fellow resistance fighters on the front lines of struggle, advancing to confront the genocidal invaders, wearing a kuffiyeh and military gear, his gun in his hand, a legendary image and material manifestation of the collective unyielding will to liberate Palestine.
Yahya Sinwar was martyred like Sheikh Izz el-Din al-Qassam himself in November 1935, in a firefight with the occupier — then the British, now the Zionist colonizer. Today’s Qassam, will, too, inspire generations to rise, until the defeat of zionism and imperialism and the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.
The zionist entity and the imperialists have released images of Sinwar in his final hours in hopes of demoralizing the Palestinian resistance and its people. From “Genocide Joe” Biden and “Holocaust” Kamala Harris, to Justin Trudeau, to Anthony Albanese, Keir Starmer, Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron, imperialist officials saluted, praised and boasted about Sinwar’s death, making clear once again that the genocide in Palestine is a US-led imperialist priority.
The image of a great political and military leader, fighting on the front lines for his people, living to fight again despite their bullets, their drones and their tank shells, engaged as a field commander until his last breath, stands before the Palestinian people, the Arab people, and all free people of the world, as one of unparalleled courage, self-sacrifice and bravery.
These images will serve as a beacon of heroism and inspiration for the resistance of today and future generations. Unlike the cowardice that marks the leaders of the zionist entity and the imperialists who cower at the face of the resistance, Sinwar was unyielding in facing the enemy head-on. Shattering all myths that the resistance “hides behind civilians”, the images and circumstances of Sinwar’s martyrdom proves that the resistance is on the frontlines against the enemy, acting as the first barrier between genocidal forces and the whole Palestinian people. Sinwar’s martyrdom proved beyond doubt his incredible courage and will, fighting with blood and soul until the very end.
He is an international icon of resistance, of refusal to submit to colonialism, of readiness to act in all circumstances, of commitment to sacrifice for God, the people and liberation, of the march of martyrs, from Che Guevara to Chris Hani to Sayyed Nasrallah to Yahya Sinwar.
The al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement issued today:
“When the resistance factions, with Hamas at the forefront, decided to enter this major, decisive battle in the history of the Palestinian people’s struggle and our nation’s journey, they knew the price of liberation was very high, a price all nations paid before freeing themselves from their occupiers. They were ready to lead the ranks of the sacrificers, offering both leaders and soldiers, refusing to submit to the enemy or remain silent about its oppression and theft of our people’s legitimate rights….This criminal enemy is delusional if it thinks that by assassinating the great leaders of the resistance such as Sinwar, Haniyeh, Nasrallah, Al-Arouri and others, it can extinguish the flame of the resistance or push it to retreat. Rather, it will continue and escalate until the legitimate goals of our people are achieved. Martyrdom is the highest thing our leaders desire, and their blood will be a beacon that lights the path to liberation and a fire that burns the aggressors.”
Yahya Sinwar’s life, struggle and commitment live on, until the defeat of the Zionist regime and its imperialist partners and sponsors, and until victory: the liberation of Palestine, and the liberation of the Arab people and the region from Zionism, imperialism and their agents and collaborators.
Glory to the martyr Yahya Sinwar and all the martyrs of Palestine and the Resistance. Return, liberation and victory to Lebanon, to Yemen, to all of the forces of the Resistance. Victory for Palestine, all of Palestine, from the river to the sea.
