Libya’s Fatwa House has mourned the Palestinian leader Yahya Sinwar, who died in a confrontation with the Israeli soldiers in Rafah, south of Gaza.
“The heroic martyr, Abu Ibrahim Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas, joined his fellow fighters. He achieved what he desired after a long journey of jihad and struggle for the sake of Allah and the liberation of the nation’s sacred sites, advancing fearlessly, on the land, not beneath it,” the Fatwa House said in a statement on Friday.
“We ask Allah Almighty to accept his jihad, recognize his struggle, and grant him the highest levels of paradise in the company of the prophets, the truthful, the martyrs, and the righteous.”
Yahya Sinwar, also known as Abu Ibrahim, was born in October 1962 in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. His family were refugees from the Palestinian city of Majdal, which was occupied by Zionist forces during the 1948 Nakba, which marked the displacement of Palestinians with the creation of the state of Israel. Majdal was subsequently renamed Ashkelon.
Like many families from northern areas that became part of the new “State of Israel,” Sinwar’s family fled south to Gaza, believing at the time that their displacement would be temporary.
A recent New York Times report, citing Hamas documents allegedly discovered by Israeli forces on a laptop in Gaza, revealed that Yahya Sinwar and a select inner circle of close allies had begun strategizing a major offensive against Israel as early as 2021.
Following the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, 2024, Hamas’s Shura Council appointed Sinwar as the movement’s new political leader on August 5, succeeding Haniyeh.
Early social media images showing Yahya Sinwar’s body in a demolished Gaza house may not have been the image Israeli leaders intended. Soldiers, suspecting the body was Sinwar’s, quickly shared photos online before their superiors could craft a different narrative—one that portrayed him hiding in a tunnel using hostages as shields.
However, Sinwar died in direct combat, with a bullet wound to his head, not while fleeing as Israeli PM Netanyahu suggested. For Palestinians and their supporters, he will be remembered as a martyr who died fighting invaders, much like his predecessors.
