Underneath the rubble of Gaza, as Israeli bombs rained down on his besieged people, Yahya Sinwar could luxuriate in a hot shower.
The bunker below Sinwar’s hometown of Khan Yunis included a well-stocked kitchen, stacks of cash and a tiled bathroom furnished with shampoos and shower gels, according to footage released by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
Since the assassination of the Hamas leader, Israel has released a series of videos that give an insight into his final months, attempting to reverse the narrative of selfless martyrdom that has taken hold in the Middle East since his death last week.
For some Palestinians, footage of Sinwar’s final moments shows a determined fighter wrapped in a keffiyeh, a traditional scarf, using his last strength to try to knock down an Israeli drone.
The images, along with photographs of Sinwar’s splayed corpse, have been interpreted across the Arab world as a contradiction of the Israeli narrative that Sinwar was cowering in Hamas’s extensive tunnel network throughout the war, and the IDF appears to have inadvertently shown Sinwar at the vanguard of the fight. Israel is planning to demolish the house in Tel al-Sultan where he was killed to stop it becoming a shrine.
Before his flight to Rafah, Sinwar appears to have enjoyed a comfier existence than the hundreds of thousands of his compatriots made homeless by Israeli attacks, the footage released by the IDF shows.
In the hours before the October 7 terror attacks, Sinwar descended into the tunnels with his family — carrying a TV. He was accompanied by his wife, Samar, who the IDF claimed was carrying a Hermès Birkin handbag worth £25,000, and his young children, wearing football shirts.
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Internet sleuths, however, soon claimed to have debunked the IDF’s claim about the handbag, which was amplified by the Israeli government on social media. They suggested that the shape, pockets and metal stripes on the bag, seen in the grainy images, did not match the desirable Hermès original.
Between 10.44pm on October 6 and 1.32am on October 7, Sinwar went back and forth, ferrying supplies, including pillows and water bottles, into the tunnels, apparently outfitting his bunker for war. The whereabouts of Sinwar’s family is still unknown.
Israeli troops claim they were minutes away from discovering Sinwar at his original hiding place beneath Khan Yunis before he was forced to flee south to Rafah in February. “The coffee was still hot,” Brigadier General Dan Goldfus, commander of the 98th Division, told Israeli media earlier this year.
Sinwar was even offered the chance to escape in exchange for the release of the Israeli hostages shortly after the war began. “I’m not under siege, I’m on Palestinian soil,” he shot back via Arab mediators, according to The Wall Street Journal.
What followed was a year-long search, led by Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic intelligence agency, and aided by the US, which provided equipment including ground-penetrating radar. The hunt combed the “Gaza metro”, the tunnel network below the territory, hundreds of miles long.
Following his escape from Khan Yunis in February, Sinwar’s whereabouts were unknown until August, when Israeli troops discovered the bodies of six hostages in a tunnel in Rafah apparently executed at point-blank range. In the same tunnel complex, in a room with a TV and a sofa, Israeli troops discovered Sinwar’s DNA — in some urine, according to The New York Times.
Over the next month and a half, Israeli troops narrowed the means of escape by exploding tunnels under Rafah and Sinwar was forced to emerge from the underground network accompanied by two bodyguards.
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Nevertheless, he still led Hamas’s ceasefire negotiations having assumed overall leadership of the group after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s former leader, in Tehran, and he reestablished contact with mediators in early October after a period of silence.
But then, on October 16, trainee Israeli soldiers stumbled into a group of three Hamas fighters by pure chance and, following a battle that lasted a day, ensured that Sinwar would never be heard from again.
