JERUSALEM: Israel and its adversaries in the region, such as Hezbollah and Iran, pledged to keep fighting after Hamas confirmed the death of its leader Yahya Sinwar in an attack on Friday.
Iran said Sinwar’s killing would just fuel “the soul of obstruction”, while Hamas demanded it wouldn’t deliver detainees taken during the October 7 downpour on Israel, until Israel’s conflict on Gaza closes.
It stated, confirming his death, “The martyrdom of our brother, the leader Yahya Sinwar… will only increase the strength and resolve of Hamas and our resistance.”
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, referred to Sinwar’s assassination as an “important landmark in the decline of the evil rule of Hamas.”
He went on to say that it was “the beginning of the end,” even though it wasn’t the end of the conflict.
US President Joe Biden, whose administration is Israel’s top arms supplier, said Sinwar’s passing was “a potential chance to look for a way to harmony, a superior future in Gaza without Hamas”.
In a joint explanation, Biden and the heads of Germany, France and England stressed “the prompt need to bring [Israeli prisoners] home to their families, for finishing the conflict in Gaza, and guarantee compassionate guide arrives at regular people”.
However, Muslims around the world mourned Sinwar’s passing. The Palestine Freedom Association communicated its sympathies on his “affliction” and called for solidarity among every Palestinian group.
The PLO called for a united struggle against Israel to “full reclaim our rights, including the right of return, the end of the occupation, and the establishment of our Palestinian state on all our occupied territories based on the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its eternal capital” and accused Israel of committing “massacres and genocide” against Palestinians.
Israel’s policy of “killing and terrorism will not succeed in breaking the will of our people to achieve their legitimate national rights to freedom and independence,” Fatah, the party of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, stated in a separate statement.
Al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas issued the following statement: The criminal adversary is whimsical on the off chance that he believes that by killing the incredible heads of the opposition, for example, Sinwar, Haniyeh, Nasrallah, al-Arouri and others, he can quench the fire of the obstruction or power it to withdraw.
Instead, it will continue to escalate until our people achieve their legitimate objectives.
The news was described as “painful for the world’s freedom seekers, especially the heroic people of Palestine and a clear sign of the unstoppable crimes of the child-killing Zionist occupier regime” by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
