Israel Gaza latest updates: Hamas to release three Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners

Paul Adams
Reporting from Kfar Saba near Tel Aviv

Image source, Getty Images

A giant poster to the left of
the stage in Khan Younis, where the hostages are due to be handed over to the
Red Cross, is full of potent imagery.

It shows a rear view of the
former Hamas military chief, Yahya Sinwar, sitting in a dusty red armchair in a
room full of rubble, looking out through the shattered wall of the room where
he was killed by Israeli gunfire last October.

The stylised image draws on
the footage of Sinwar’s final moments, released by the Israeli military.

In the poster, Sinwar is seen
staring out through the hole in the wall at a silhouette of a man holding the
Palestinian flag, standing in front of Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock.

The mixture of Palestinian
iconography, old and new, is powerful. Sinwar’s death, it defiantly says, was a
necessary sacrifice on the path towards national liberation.

A former Israeli official
messaged me this morning to say it was a mistake for Israel to have released
the footage of Sinwar’s death.

“It raised him to a mythical
status,” he said.

Together with the now
familiar images of heavily armed militants from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic
Jihad, parading at another handover ceremony, it’s all part of a concerted
effort by the gunmen to say that they are still a force to be reckoned with.