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.
The owners of the property say they might turn it into an actual shrine or museum.
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 Israeli 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.
The National reported on Wednesday that “hundreds of visitors” have flocked to the neighborhood of Tel Al Sultan where Sinwar died and clambered 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 am so proud that Sinwar was martyred in my house,” owner Ashraf Abu Taha told The National. “I’m not sad that my house was destroyed because the last one to stay in it was Sinwar.”
“I plan to turn the house into a shrine to honour 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.
Taha is fortunate to have ruins that still resemble a house. The left-wing New York Times (NYT) on Wednesday chronicled the journey of a family that evacuated Rafah in May after the IDF warned of its impending operation, then returned after last weekend’s ceasefire, 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.
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