TEHRAN – According to a senior Hamas member, speaking to the Tehran Times, Mohammad Sinwar – whom Israel alleges is leading the fight against its forces in Gaza – is alive and still fighting within the besieged territory.

Israel says it assassinated the brother of Hamas’ late leader, Yahya Sinwar, during a brutal and deadly attack on a Gaza hospital last Tuesday. “This is a false claim Israel makes to justify the bombing of a hospital. Our brothers in Gaza have assured us that Mohammad Sinwar is alive and still fighting the enemy firmly,” Osama Hamdan, a member of the Hamas Political Bureau, told the Tehran Times. 
 
The Israeli regime has routinely struck hospitals and other civilian sites since it began its devastating war in Gaza 19 months ago. The stated goal was the “eradication” of Hamas, a Palestinian Resistance group that managed to shatter Israel’s myth of invincibility during a 2023 attack on military positions in the occupied territories. 

While the regime has killed over 60,000 people, mostly civilians, in the past months, it has yet to come close to the dismantlement of Hamas, as admitted by Israel’s own officials on multiple occasions. The regime managed to assassinate Yahya Sinwar by accident last year while he was on the ground fighting, despite having claimed for numerous weeks that the leader was inside a hardened tunnel, surrounded by Israeli prisoners. 

On Western proposals that Hamas put down its weapons for “peace”, Hamdan pointed out that in the West Bank, there is no Hamas or Palestinian Jihad fighting the occupation, but Palestinians are still systematically oppressed and abused by Israel.