The location where Hamas terrorist leader Yahya Sinwar was killed by Israeli forces has become a shrine, with Palestinians flocking to pay tribute. Meanwhile, families who fled Rafah before the recent fighting have returned to find their homes and livelihoods destroyed.
Hundreds of Palestinians are reportedly making pilgrimages to the neighborhood in Rafah where Hamas terrorist leader Yahya Sinwar was killed in October, turning the ruined building where he died into an impromptu shrine. Sinwar was killed on October 16, 2024, while attempting to sneak out of Rafah with a few bodyguards and bags of cash. He had the misfortune of blundering into an Israel i military patrol that engaged his retinue without realizing who he was.
The Hamas leader was cornered in a bombed-out building. An Israeli drone recorded him seated in an armchair upstairs, with one of his hands missing. His final act was to weakly fling his weapon at the drone, which proceeded to record his death in an explosion several moments later. Hamas has mythologized the death of its leader into a courageous act of “resistance” and defiance – and it is a mythology many Palestinians seem eager to buy into. Residents of Tel Al Sultan, the neighborhood where Sinwar died, have been flocking to the site, clambering over the rubble of the building where he was killed, treating the ruined house as a “symbol of honor and defiance.” Some residents have spoken of renaming the area “Tel Al Sinwar” in tribute to the Hamas leader, while the owners of the ruined building are thinking of building a Sinwar museum. \“I’m not sad that my house was destroyed because the last one to stay in it was Sinwar,” said the owner of the building. “I plan to turn the house into a shrine to honor his memory. I’m thinking of rebuilding it and dedicating a special room as a museum, showcasing the items Sinwar used during his last moments,” he said, proudly boasting he has recovered the very armchair Sinwar was sprawled in when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) blew him to smithereens. If nothing else, that chair was extremely well made. “This couch shows Sinwar in his final moments and proves that he wasn’t hiding – he was fighting alongside his comrades,” a visitor to the house proudly declared. That is not at all what the viral video of Sinwar’s last moments showed, but mythology has an inertia of its own. Rafah was largely destroyed in the war Hamas started by attacking Israel on October 7, 2023, so if a Sinwar museum can find a way to operate a profit, its business will probably be welcome. \The war's destruction has left many families shattered. One family, forced to evacuate Rafah in May after the IDF warned of its impending operation, returned after last weekend’s, only to discover their old neighborhood reduced to rubble. Their house, built in 1971 and occupied by three generations of the family, was completely gone. “I was shocked when I saw my entire life – everything I worked for – flattened to the ground. The home I spent so many years building, pouring my savings into, is gone,” said 74-year-old farmer Abed Dahliz. “This was an agricultural area, a place of peace. It posed no threat to anyone, no danger to soldiers. We had no ties to politics, no reason to be caught in this violence,” another member of the family said
HAMAS SINWAR ISRAEL PALESTINE RAFAH WAR SHRINE DESTRUCTION
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