Yahya Abdulatif Ayyash. The name alone strikes fear into the heart of every zionist. His image, a ghost that haunts the crumbling entity to this day, such that cowardly intelligence worked tirelessly for years to assassinate him. He was martyred 28 years ago today when a zionist collaborator was used to rig his phone with explosives.
A mastermind, a student of Birzeit University, and the engineer of resistance, Yahya oversaw dozens of resistance operations, especially after the treacherous Ibrahimi Mosque massacre in 1994 by American settler Baruch Goldstein; this was a critical turning point for the resistance, as all settlers became legitimate targets.
The first response came a few weeks later: at least eight zionists were killed and 60 wounded in “Afula.” Raed Zakarneh, son of Qabatiya, Jenin, ascended in the heroic operation, which was overseen by Ayyash and martyred commander Nasr Jarrar, father of martyr Ahmed Jarrar.
Ayyash’s operations killed over 100 settlers until he was martyred at the age of 29.
Yet, Yahya lived on. Yahya said, “The Zionists can uproot my body from Palestine, but I want to plant in the people something which they cannot uproot.”
He and his giant legacy resisted even after death. To avenge him, a series of operations were carried out across occupied Palestine, starting exactly 40 days after his martyrdom, killing 78 settlers: a series of operations dubbed “The Sacred Revenge.” Even in 2023, the Sacred Revenge continues to avenge martyrs, with martyr Abdelwahab Khalyleh avenging the martyrs of Jenin in the heart of “Tel Aviv.”
In 2021, under the supervision of martyr Dr. Jamal Abu Zebda, the resistance in Gaza revealed and utilized its most powerful rocket yet, Ayyash-250, which reached “Tel Aviv” and can reach every part of occupied Palestine and beyond. In 2022, an engineering cohort at a university in Jordan was named in his honor. In Al-Aqsa Flood, the Ayyash-250 has been used to bomb as far as occupied Safad and “Eilat.”
In his honor, 100,000 Palestinians attended the Engineer’s funeral. On April 7, 2022, the heroic martyr Raed Khazem, carried out a resistance operation on Dizengoff street in “Tel Aviv,” killing two settlers and injuring six, exactly 20 years after Ayyash orchestrated a bombing that killed 12 settlers in the same place.
Today, the West Bank is commonly referred to as “the Bank of Ayyash.” (2, 3, 4, 5)
The martyr Basil Al-Araj said of him, “Weapons are the adornment of men, but you, Yahya, are the adornment of weapons.”
The prisoner and commander Abdullah Al-Barghouti, who has the longest prison sentence in the world (at 67 life sentences plus 5,200 years), said of him, “I loved Yahya Ayyash just as I loved Al-Quds completely. Ayyash, that Qassami engineer, restored through me through their talk about him in the spirit of resistance, the spirit of confronting injustice and tyranny.”
In fact, Abdullah picked up where Yahya left off, reverse engineering his bombs after returning to his homeland after a long stay in diaspora, setting off a new chain of resistance for a new generation.
Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida, said of him, “The martyrdom of Yahya Ayyash, after he shook the entity of occupations, created a living model.
“His students still continue on his path in the West Bank of the free, from Jenin to Al-Khalil to every corner of the resisting West Bank, the West Bank that constitutes the true depth and the most important dimension in the equation of the future confrontation with the enemy occupier.
“Every bullet fired by the students of the engineer Yahya Ayyash opens a new gateway towards the liberation of Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa.”
The martyred Ayyash is still living, through the blood, bullets, and bombs of every resistance fighter.
“Israel” kneels under your feet.
