Shopkeepers, women and children from the Beddawi Palestinian refugee camp crowded along the market's alleyways to watch the procession pass by. Mid-afternoon on Friday, October 18, an hour after Hamas confirmed the death of its leader Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip, its supporters gathered in this camp in Tripoli, northern Lebanon, to commemorate the "martyr." Officials from Fatah, the rival party of President Mahmoud Abbas, joined them to pay their respects to this "figure of Palestinian resistance."

From balconies, through strands of electrical wire strung between buildings, women threw rice at the several hundred men and children marching past. To the sound of songs to the glory of Hamas and the Palestinian resistance, blaring from a van's loudspeakers, teenagers opened the march with a giant portrait of Sinwar and flags of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas. Faces were serious, but there were no demonstrations of joy or anger.

"He died as he wanted: fighting. He wasn't hiding underground. He was in the Tel al-Sultan district of Rafah, where the Israelis never stop bombing. I would have given my son's life for his. Even people in the camp who didn't like Sinwar politically respect him for that and for what he did for Palestine," said Mustafa, a 43-year-old Hamas supporter who refused to give his last name.

Sinwar's portrait is everywhere in Beddawi

By broadcasting images of Sinwar's last moments, the Israeli army has unwittingly boosted the power of the Hamas leader's legend. His portrait was quickly displayed everywhere in Beddawi, along with those of Ismail Haniyeh, his predecessor, and Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader killed before him by Israel. The death in action of the architect of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, on October 7, 2023, which left over 1,200 Israelis dead, commands the respect of even the most critical voices within the camp. Some, however, expressed skepticism about Hamas' strategy, in view of the devastation inflicted in return by Israel on the Palestinian enclave and the deaths of 42,000 Gazans over the past year, according to figures from the Gazan Ministry of Health corroborated by humanitarian organizations.

"Yahya Sinwar is a resistance fighter like all the Palestinian people, but Hamas is always trying to put itself in the spotlight," said Shadi Marzouq, a local leader of the Fatah-linked Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was a mistake because it is linked to Iran," continued this 44-year-old fighter, whose family hails from Galilee. "It destroyed the Gaza Strip and killed so many innocent people. It's going to take us 100 years to rebuild Gaza. But we have nothing left to lose. All Palestinians want to die as martyrs to get their land back. In Lebanon, the refugees have no life: They are hungry, they live in deplorable conditions, they have no rights."

You have 59.52% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.