GAZA (Dispatches) – The 
martyrdom of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar will not deter the Palestinian people from resisting the Zionist regime’s occupation and fighting for their “freedom and dignity,” a senior Hamas official told Middle East Eye.
Sinwar, who had served as the top Hamas leader in Gaza since 2017, was martyred on Wednesday during combat with Zionist troops.
His martyrdom was announced on Thursday when the Israeli military released drone footage showing the Hamas chief flinging a stick in the direction of an approaching drone in a partially destroyed house. Shortly afterwards, the Israeli army shelled the building, assassinating the 61-year-old leader.
The Israeli military’s video went viral across social media and was accompanied by quotes from Sinwar’s past speeches in which he said he would rather get martyred in battle than surrender.
Basem Naim, a senior member of Hamas’ political wing, told MEE that while it was “distressing to lose beloved people”, the martyrdom did not mark the end of the Palestinian movement.
“It seems that Israel believes that killing our leaders means the end of our movement and end of the struggle of the Palestinian people,” he said.
“They repeated those same statements when they killed [the group’s founder] Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and [then another leader] Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi. But each time, Hamas became stronger and more popular.
“Hamas is a liberation movement led by people looking for freedom and dignity. This cannot be eliminated,” he added.
Hamas has said the silence of Arab nations and the international community emboldened the Zionist regime to continue committing war crimes and massacres against Palestinians, as the regime’s aggression to displace residents in the northern Gaza Strip escalates.
In a statement on Sunday, the Palestinian resistance movement called on Arab and Islamic countries, the UN, and other international bodies to take action to stop the “holocaust” led by the “new Nazis.”
“The criminal Zionist enemy is racing against time with its massacres and atrocities that it commits around the clock against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip,” read the statement.
“The Arab silence and international impotence have encouraged this fascist criminal enemy to commit further crimes and massacres in its attempt to empty the northern part of the Gaza Strip of its residents,” it added.
An official with Hamas called on Arabs and Muslims to besiege Israeli and American embassies around the world to halt the regime’s genocidal war on Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
“The Arab and Islamic masses must besiege the [Israeli] occupation embassies and the American embassies,” Khalil Al-Hayya was quoted as saying by Al Jazeera on Sunday.
He said, “The occupation’s massacre in the Beit Lahiya project must not go unnoticed,” likening such criminal acts to modern Nazism.
The Israeli regime forces’ attack on Beit Lahiya on Saturday evening killed at least 73 Palestinians.
Al-Hayya said the Israeli and American leaders want to push Palestinians out and seize control of the besieged land.