There will be no prisoners in the Hamas leadership. Israel’s secret services have been trying for 11 days to hunt down Hamas leaders, whom they already consider, in the words of a military spokesman, the “living dead.” Mohamed Deif, the now well-known faceless military leader who hides in the shadows and who has escaped death a dozen times, most recently in 2021, is considered the mastermind of the surprise attack on the 7th, the deadliest since the war against Egypt and Syria in 1973 The executive agents also want the head of Yahia Sinwar, the political leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, who spent 23 years, a third of his life, in Israeli prisons. The head of the Islamic resistance movement, Ismail Haniya, knows from his exile in Qatar that he too is in the spotlight.
In the midst of the war in 2014, an Israeli airstrike on Deif’s home in Gaza resulted in the deaths of his wife and one of his young children. Born 58 years ago in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the south of the Palestinian enclave (like Sinwar), the leader of the Ezedin al-Qasam Brigades, whose real surname is Masri, has remained Israel’s greatest enemy since the end of the first intifada, in 1993. The Elite army and Shin Bet (internal security) commandos had him within reach on several occasions, but despite rocket attacks on his cars or their safe houses, he always managed to get to safety, even though he was seriously wounded.
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It never uses digital communication systems and ships its orders through a network of trusted couriers. No one has seen his presumably disfigured face for a long time. His enemies in Israel’s military and civilian intelligence claim he lost an eye and a hand; who has been limping and suffering from severe hearing loss since working as Hamas’ chief explosives engineer.
“Today the anger of Al Aqsa, the anger of our people and our nation explodes. Today is your day to make this criminal entity understandable [por Israel] that his time is up.” Shortly after the attack on the 7th, in which more than 1,400 Israelis, including civilians and soldiers, died amid barbaric scenes and another two hundred, including minors and women, were taken hostage, Mohamed Deif sent an audio message , in which he christened the operation “Al-Aqsa Flood”. It referred to the Esplanade of Mosques in Jerusalem, which houses Palestinian identity symbols, while a wave of nearly 3,000 rockets were fired towards Israel.
Mohamed Deif, the military leader of Hamas, in a file photo.
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In May 2021, and during the largest wave of rockets fired from the Palestinian enclave, Israeli attacks on the site, considered Islam’s third holiest site, outraged the Islamic world. At this point, Deif began planning the border operation with the Gaza Strip, a source close to Hamas told Portal. “The attack was triggered by images of Israel storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan, beating worshipers, attacking them and dragging old and young people out of the holy site,” the Gaza source cited above said. “All of this fueled and inflamed his anger.”
The strategy of apparent pragmatism
Deif’s whereabouts are unknown. Predictably, he is hiding somewhere in the network of tunnels and underground shelters along with other Hamas leaders and Ezedin al-Qasam Brigades commanders. In military intelligence jargon, it is called “The Metro” and has command, sanitary and living areas. In reality, no one knows where they sleep each night.
The same source close to Hamas assured that the decision to launch the attack was made together with Sinwar, Hamas’ political leader in Gaza. The internal election of a military chief as the new political leader in 2017 marked an internal shift in the Islamist organization. At the time, Sinwar was described as an extremist, as well as religious and pragmatic, compared to his predecessor Ismail Haniya. His political drift appears to have been the result of a ploy to make Israel believe that he was not interested in conflict and that he was focused on rebuilding the Gaza economy. While Israel offered Hamas economic incentives, such as work permits on its territory for tens of thousands of Gazans, Ezedin al-Qassam’s militias were preparing to attack the outskirts of Gaza.
Sinwar was sentenced to four life sentences in Israel for ordering the murder of Palestinians suspected of collaborating with the army during the Second Intifada (2000-2005). He was released from prison in 2011 as part of the exchange operation of 1,047 Palestinian prisoners, which enabled the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, kidnapped in Gaza since 2006. His election reflected the growing weight of Hamas’s military wing within the entire Islamist movement. after several armed conflicts with the Israeli army.
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The visible face of the organization
For Israel, the designation represented a defiant message from Hamas, which was pushing for military command following the withdrawal of civilian Haniya, who had been the visible face of the organization since it violently removed Al Fatah from power in 2007. Born at age 60 Previously, Hamas’ top political leader lived modestly in a house near the coastal road in Shati, a refugee camp north of the capital Gaza, among Palestinians displaced after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Haniya was also the candidate who defeated the hegemonic Al Fatah, the party founded by the late historic leader Yasser Arafat, in the 2006 elections.
He became the right arm of Sheikh Ahmed Yasin, the Hamas spiritual leader who was assassinated in his wheelchair by Israel in 2004. Both had escaped an Israeli airstrike two years earlier, when they met in the middle of the Second Intifada. After his exile in Qatar, Haniya has held presidential and representative roles in recent years, as Hamas’s visible diplomatic chief abroad and at the head of an organization designated as terrorist by both the United States and the European Union.
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