By Hussain Sana
Over 60 people were the total number of relatives Ismail Haniyeh had to sacrifice during the current war for the sake of the Palestinian cause, before sacrificing his own life. This number includes his children and grandchildren. Orientalist studies would never grasp it, and Bernard Lewis would never understand why. It is challenging to explain it in English.
They are all [fida’a], a sacrifice for Palestine. You can hardly understand this if you have colonized this land; you have to be a native to grasp why someone would pay such a heavy price.
Now that Haniyeh himself is gone, the Zionist entity faces an even tougher leader, an Arab counterpart to the Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap. The New York Times, Washington Post and Jerusalem Post, among other media outlets, are already mystifying him. The usual orientalist perception reduces the entire regional cause to a single person, though it is not about him per se.
I am talking about Yahya Sinwar, an emerging Palestinian leader who seems more hardline. This is not about individualism. The whole Palestinian situation is radicalizing. The hardships in that environment forge radicalism, producing ruthless and sharp people who are strongly attached to their basic rights.
The root issue is not about Hamas, Islamism, leftism or Arab nationalism (which leaned more toward the left rather than fascism, raising valid questions). The root cause has always been occupation, settler-colonialism and imperialism. Netanyahu’s autobiography outlined a Zionist solution for the Palestinian question — keep Palestinians divided, reach out to Arabs in the region and suffocate Gaza with a strangling blockade. With one stroke, Sinwar, the mastermind behind the events of October 7, ruined all these plans.
According to journalist Ahmad Natheef, such an operation, limited in time and space, can only be conducted by a mind entirely dedicated to understanding the Zionist entity’s mentality, which annoys Zionists and provokes their supporters. Sinwar had enough time, having spent over two decades in Zionist prisons, to understand this mentality. He knows the price of liberating Palestine and understands the Zionist entity’s strengths and weaknesses. His doctrine is built on pillars of offense over defense, acting swiftly, moving the battle into enemy territory and using uncertainty against the enemy.
Zionists don’t know how they can win against Palestinians in this round, not to mention what their war goals are. Sinwar knew that Zionist "society” is the enemy’s weakness, and he made sure to strike there, keeping this "society” divided. Sinwar understands Hebrew fluently and knows that there is no ultimate grand victory; victory is achieved through the accumulation of points.
As General Giap used to say, "As long as the resistance survives and lives for another day, it can win.” Asa’ad Abu Khaleel concludes that Sinwar represents the ascendancy of the "Iranian” wing within Hamas over the "Turko-Qatari” moderate wing. This wing would not have prevailed if Palestinians had been offered a fair and equal solution.
This conflict requires heavy casualties, and the main reasons it continues are the foreign, unlimited support for the Zionist entity and the Arab world’s near-total absence from Palestine. To win, Hamas must break ties with the "Arafat” era that transformed the PLO into a "moderate regime”. Hamas needs to steer clear of "moderate” Arab tendencies.
To win a guerrilla war, Palestinians must activate the Zionist entity’s weaknesses and neutralize their strengths. The region’s strongest air force is useless against tunnels, and emerging from beneath the ground is terrifying even to the best-trained soldiers. Guerrilla warfare has no borders to defend; it’s all about attrition. The Zionist entity’s ego may retaliate against civilians and push further toward genocide as much as it wants, but it cannot come closer to achieving any of its political and military goals.
The Palestinian destiny is to become like Sinwar. Abandoned by their Arab brethren, they can only rely on themselves and their limited resources. The Palestinian diaspora has been neutralized since the Oslo Accords. The Palestinian bourgeoisie and upper class only identify as Palestinian through wedding chants and symbolism. Gazans must manufacture their arms themselves.
Understanding this, Sinwar rises from the refugee camp, the prison and the tunnel as the freedom fighter that Palestine deserves. Sinwar might be next on the target list. However, as Ghassan Kanafani said before his assassination in his car with his little niece, "Bodies fall, but ideas endure.”