Why Did Sinwar Cry? A Call With Deif Captures Years of Comradeship and the Inside Story of “Sword of Jerusalem”

Hamas’s leader in the Gaza Strip at the time, Yahya Sinwar, could not hold back his tears as he spoke by phone with the commander of the Qassam Brigades, Mohammed Deif, after the ceasefire was announced in the “Sword of Jerusalem” battle in May 2021. It was a rare human moment that stayed out of public view until Al Jazeera aired it in the film “Al-Deif” on its “Ma Khafi A’zam” program on Friday, reopening a question that has lingered since the recording circulated: why did Sinwar cry?

The call did not come after an ordinary round of confrontation, but followed a battle that carried political and national significance extending beyond the Gaza Strip, after the confrontation moved from Jerusalem to the various Palestinian fronts and Al-Aqsa Mosque and Sheikh Jarrah became the heart of a military and political scene unprecedented in years.

At that moment, Sinwar was speaking to the man who led Hamas’s military wing during the battle and was one of the most prominent figures in the confrontation, in a call that brought together two leaders whose paths were tied to long chapters of joint work, before the following years revealed that the recording documents one of their last moments together.

 A victory that transcended the bounds of confrontation

To understand what Sinwar’s tears carried, one must return to the nature of the battle itself; it erupted on May 10, 2021, amid Israeli attacks at Al-Aqsa Mosque and attempts to displace Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem.

In a remarkable development, the Qassam Brigades announced their entry into the confrontation and fired rockets toward Jerusalem, transforming the battle from a confrontation confined to the Gaza Strip into an engagement directly linked to what was happening in the holy city.

Over 11 days, the resistance continued firing rocket barrages toward Israeli cities and towns, while the occupation army launched a wide air campaign on the Gaza Strip, targeting residential areas, facilities and infrastructure, leaving martyrs and wounded and causing widespread destruction.

But the significance of “Sword of Jerusalem” in Palestinian consciousness was not linked only to the scale of the military confrontation, but to the political messages it carried; the resistance presented the battle as a defense of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, and linked the Gaza front to what was happening in the city, in an attempt to impose an equation holding that an attack on Jerusalem would not remain an event isolated from the rest of the Palestinian arena.

The confrontation ended on May 21 with the announcement of a ceasefire, without the occupation government achieving its declared goal of ending the resistance’s capabilities or deciding the confrontation militarily. On the other hand, Hamas considered that the continued rocket fire until the final moments, the failure to subject Gaza to the occupation’s conditions, and the return of Jerusalem to the center of Palestinian and regional attention represented a political and moral victory for the resistance.

This reading was not confined to Palestinian discourse; an assessment published by the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies during the battle days noted that Hamas succeeded in achieving the goal of positioning itself as the defender of Al-Aqsa and Jerusalem and leading the Palestinian presence in the confrontation.

The Middle East Studies Center at Brandeis University also held that Hamas’s ability to continue firing rockets until the ceasefire constituted an important achievement in the balance of an asymmetric confrontation.

Partner in battle and comrade along the path

Following this confrontation came Sinwar’s call to Deif, which gives the scene its human context. Sinwar was not speaking to a military commander performing a task separate from the path of political leadership, but to a comrade whose name was tied to long phases of work within the movement and who was at the heart of managing the military confrontation.

The scenes aired in the film reveal another side of Deif’s personality; he did not confine his account of four decades of his life to his personal experience, but summoned his comrades who shared various chapters with him, mentioned their names and roles, and presented them as an authentic part of his path.

This aspect was addressed by writer and political analyst Dr. Iyad al-Qarra, who said that what drew his attention most in the film was humility and loyalty to comrades, noting that Deif, while reviewing his path, summoned his comrades and named them one by one, attributing credit to them instead of confining the achievement to his personal experience.

As for the most affecting scene for him, it was Sinwar’s tears as he spoke with Deif about the “Sword of Jerusalem” battle, which he considered reflected great appreciation for Abu Khaled and the human feelings and loyalty it carried.

Between Deif’s account, in which the names of his comrades were present, and Sinwar’s tears in his call with him, a common human thread appears in the film; the path Deif reviewed was not that of a single individual, and the battle that had just ended was not, for Sinwar, merely a military event, but a chapter that brought the two men together in a shared experience.

Outside the calculations 

What makes the recording remarkable is that it presents a different image of the two men whose names were tied to political and military work. Sinwar, who appeared on many occasions as Hamas’s political leader in Gaza, seemed in the call moved to the point of tears, while the film allowed the public to draw closer to the personality of Deif, who surrounded his life and military career in great secrecy.

Al-Qarra believes these scenes reveal a human side that does not usually appear in political and military coverage, noting that what struck him was putting comrades before oneself, humility in recounting achievements, and loyalty to those who took part in a long path.

Thus, the significance of the call is not limited to Sinwar’s tears alone, but lies in the fact that it reveals the nature of a relationship between two men brought together by years of work and chapters of confrontation, and which appeared in a moment following a battle that holds a special place in Palestinian memory.

The call gains an additional dimension with its airing years after it took place, after both men’s lives ended in the subsequent war; occupation forces assassinated Sinwar in Rafah in October 2024, while the Qassam Brigades officially announced the killing of Deif in January 2025, after he was targeted in an Israeli strike on the al-Mawasi area west of Khan Younis in July 2024.

And so the recording returns as a witness to a moment that brought the two men together before their departure, and to a phase that witnessed one of the most prominent confrontations in which Gaza was tied to Jerusalem, and in which Deif stood out in leading the battle while Sinwar followed it from his political and leadership position.

A definitive answer

As for why Sinwar wept, the recording offers no definitive answer, and he himself does not specify the reason for his tears. But the timing of the call, the confrontation that preceded it, and what the film reveals about the two men’s relationship and their loyalty to their fellow travellers all help explain the scene, rather than reducing it to a fleeting emotional moment.

The tears came after a battle that the resistance regarded as a victory in the equation of defending Jerusalem, and days after a confrontation in which Gaza paid a heavy human and physical price, yet which did not end on the terms of decisive victory that the occupation had sought.