1 of 8 Abdullah Barghouti, Mohammed Deif and Yahya Ibrahim AlSinwar, the most important leaders of today’s Hamas Photo: REPRODUCTION Abdullah Barghouti, Mohammed Deif and Yahya Ibrahim AlSinwar, the most important leaders of today’s Hamas Photo: REPRODUCTION
Since Operation AlAqsa Storm began on Saturday, October 7, questions have been raised about the extent of the extremist group Hamas’s military capabilities.
Although they were considered modest compared to the Israeli forces, the group actually surprised the country with their attack.
Another littleknown point is the identity of its leaders, as Hamas’s most important names often appear in the media masked or are constantly fleeing attacks from Israel.
Here we provide details of who the key political and military leaders of Hamas are today.
2 of 8 Deif is known by the nickname “The Guest” Photo: REPRODUCTION Deif is known by the nickname “The Guest” Photo: REPRODUCTION
As soon as the creation of Hamas was announced, Mohammed Deif joined its ranks without hesitation.
Israeli authorities arrested Deif in 1989. He spent 16 months in prison without trial, accused of working for the Islamic group’s military apparatus.
During his time in prison, AlDeif Zakaria joined AlShorbagy and Salah Shehadeh to form a movement separate from Hamas with the aim of capturing Israeli soldiers. These were the Izz alDin alQassam Brigades.
After their release, the alQassam Brigades emerged as a military formation, and Deif was one of its founders.
He was also the engineer responsible for building the tunnels through which Hamas militants entered Israel from Gaza, and promoted the strategy of firing larger numbers of rockets into Israeli territory.
The most serious allegations against him include planning and overseeing a series of revenge operations for the murder of Yahya Ayyash responsible within Hamas for making bombs, including on a bus, that killed around 50 Israelis in early 1996.
He is also accused of being involved in the capture and murder of three Israeli soldiers in the mid1990s.
Israel arrested him in 2000, but he escaped early in the socalled “Second Intifada,” and he has been on the run ever since.
There are three photos of him: one is very old, the second shows him masked, and the third shows an image of his shadow.
During one of his assassination attempts in 2002, Deif miraculously survived but lost an eye. Israel says he has also lost a foot and a hand and has difficulty speaking because of the attacks he suffered.
In 2014, during the war started by Israel in the Gaza Strip, which lasted more than 50 days, the Israeli army also failed to kill him, but killed his wife and two of his children.
His ability to survive earned him the nickname “The Cat with 9 Lives.”
Above all, he is known as “The Guest” because he does not stay in the same place for more than one night and stays in a new house every day to avoid Israeli persecution.
He was also known by the nickname “Abu Khaled” for his role in a play called “The Clown”, in which he played the historical figure who lived in the period between the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties. At the Islamic University of Gaza, where he studied biology, he became enthusiastic about acting and founded a theater group.
3 of 8 Like AlDeif, Issa also survived attacks from Israel Photo: REPRODUKTION Just like AlDeif, Issa also survived attacks from Israel Photo: REPRODUKTION
Marwan Issa, known as “The Shadow Man” and Mohamed AlDeif’s righthand man, is deputy commander of the alQassam Brigades and a member of Hamas’ political and military cabinet.
Israeli forces detained him for five years during the socalled “First Intifada” because he was active in the ranks of Hamas, a group he joined at a young age.
Israel describes him as a man of “actions, not words” and asserts that he is so intelligent that “he can turn plastic into metal.” The country assumes that the “war of brains” with Hamas will continue as long as he lives.
Issa was an outstanding basketball player and was nicknamed “The Palestinian Commando.” However, he did not advance in his sporting career because Israel arrested him in 1987 after accusing him of belonging to Hamas.
The Palestinian Authority then arrested him in 1997 and only released him after the socalled “AlAqsa Intifada” broke out in 2000.
After his release, Issa played a key role in the development of the AlQassam Brigades’ military systems.
Because of his prominent role in Hamas, Issa was pursued by Israel, which put his name on the wanted list and tried to assassinate him in 2006 during a meeting attended by Deif and senior leaders of the AlQassam Brigades, but he failed acted hurt.
Israeli warplanes also destroyed his home in Gaza twice, in 2014 and 2021, and killed his brother.
His face only became known in 2011, when he appeared in a group photo taken during the reception of prisoners released in the exchange agreement to release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
4 of 8 Sinwar is the founder of the Hamas security service Photo: GETTY IMAGES Sinwar is the founder of the Hamas security service Photo: GETTY IMAGES
Yahya Ibrahim AlSinwar, leader of Hamas and head of its political office in the Gaza Strip, was born in 1962.
He founded the Hamas security service “Majd,” which is responsible for internal security, including interrogating suspected collaborators with Israel. This body was designed to also monitor Israeli intelligence and security services.
Sinwar was arrested three times. The first time was in 1982, when Israeli forces held him in administrative detention for four months.
On his third arrest in 1988, Sinwar was sentenced to four life sentences. While in prison, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit’s tank was the target of a Hamas rocket attack, taking him hostage.
To release Shalit, Israel agreed to an exchange deal for more than 1,000 prisoners from the Fatah and Hamas movements, including Yahya Sinwar, who was released in 2011.
Sinwar then returned to his post as a senior Hamas leader and member of the political cabinet.
In September 2015, the United States added his name to its list of “international terrorists.”
On February 13, 2017, Yahya Sinwar was elected head of Hamas’ political bureau.
5 of 8 Barghouti, an explosives expert, remains imprisoned in Israel Photo: AFP Barghouti, an explosives expert, remains imprisoned in Israel Photo: AFP
Abdullah Ghaleb AlBarghouti was born in Kuwait in 1972 and moved to Jordan after the 1990 Gulf War.
He received Jordanian citizenship and then studied electrical engineering at a South Korean university for three years, where he learned how to make explosives.
He did not complete his studies because he received an entry permit to Palestine.
The people around him were unaware of his skills in making explosives until one day he took his cousin Bilal AlBarghouti to a remote area in the West Bank and demonstrated his skills by detonating a small amount of explosives.
Bilal AlBarghouti traveled to the city of Nablus to report the details of what he had seen to the brigades’ then commander, who asked Abdullah to join the ranks of the alQassam Brigades.
Abdullah Barghouti worked in the manufacture of explosive devices, detonators and toxic substances. He founded a special factory for military production in a warehouse in his city. The total death toll in the operations coordinated and led by Abdullah is over 66 Israelis, in addition to 500 injured.
He was accidentally arrested by Israeli special forces in 2003 and interrogated for three months in a row.
Dozens of family members of the dead Israelis were present at his trial, which received the longest sentence in the country’s history. Others called it the longest sentence for a prisoner in history, with 67 life sentences and a total of 5,200 years in prison.
He went on a hunger strike that ended his solitary confinement.
Barghouti, who remains imprisoned in Israel, was nicknamed “The Prince of Shadows” after writing a book with that title while in prison, in which he talks about his life and details of the operations he carried out alongside other prisoners .
In the book, he detailed how he smuggled explosives through Israeli military checkpoints and carried out remotecontrolled bombings.
6 of 8 Haniyeh was Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority Photo: GETTY IMAGES Haniyeh was Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority Photo: GETTY IMAGES
Ismail Haniyeh, also known as “Abu AlAbd,” was born in one of the Palestinian refugee camps.
He is head of Hamas’s political office and was prime minister of the tenth Palestinian government between 2006 and 2007.
Previously, in 1989, Israel had imprisoned him for three years. He then went into exile with several Hamas leaders in Marj alZuhur on the border between Lebanon and Palestine, where he spent an entire year in 1992.
After that year in exile, he returned to Gaza and in 1997 was appointed chief of staff to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, strengthening his position in the Islamic movement.
A year after his appointment as prime minister, Haniyeh was removed from office by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. His resignation from office came after the AlQassam Brigades seized control of the Gaza Strip and drove out members of the Fatah group during a week of violence that claimed many lives.
Haniyeh called the dismissal “unconstitutional” and announced that his government would continue to “fulfill its national responsibility to the Palestinian people.”
Since then, Haniyeh has repeatedly advocated for reconciliation with the Fatah movement and was elected head of Hamas’ political office on May 6, 2017.
7 of 8 Meshaal is one of the founders of Hamas Photo: GETTY IMAGES Meshaal is one of the founders of Hamas Photo: GETTY IMAGES
Khaled Meshaal or “Abu AlWalid” was born in 1956 in the village of Silwad. He received primary education there before the family emigrated to Kuwait, where he completed his primary and secondary school education.
Meshaal is considered one of the founders of Hamas and has been a member of its political cabinet since its founding.
He chaired Hamas’s political office from 1996 to 2017 and was named leader after the death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 2004.
In 1997, Israel’s Mossad attempted to assassinate him on the direct orders of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who asked the intelligence chief to develop a plan to carry out the operation.
Ten Mossad agents entered Jordan on false Canadian passports and injected Khaled Meshaal with a toxic substance as he walked down a street in the capital, Amman.
Jordanian authorities discovered the attack and arrested two Mossad members involved.
The late Jordanian King Hussein bin Talal asked the Israeli Prime Minister for the antidote to the toxic substance injected into Khaled Meshaal.
Netanyahu initially rejected the request, but the attack took on a political dimension and then US President Bill Clinton convinced the prime minister to finally send the antidote.
Khaled Meshaal returned to the Gaza Strip on December 7, 2012. It was his first visit to the Palestinian territories since he left at the age of 11. On the way to Gaza City, he was greeted by Palestinian leaders and crowds.
On May 6, 2017, Hamas’ Shura Council elected Ismail Haniyeh as his successor as head of its political bureau.
8 of 8 AlZahar is one of the most prominent leaders of Hamas Photo: GETTY IMAGES AlZahar is one of the most prominent leaders of Hamas Photo: GETTY IMAGES
Mahmoud AlZahar, the son of a Palestinian father and an Egyptian mother, was born in the city of Gaza in 1945 and spent his early childhood years in the city of Ismailia, Egypt.
He completed his primary, middle and secondary education in Gaza. AlZahar received a bachelor’s degree in general medicine from Ain Shams University in Cairo in 1971 and a master’s degree in general surgery in 1976.
After graduating, he worked as a doctor in hospitals in Gaza and Khan Younis until Israeli authorities fired him because of his political views.
AlZahar is considered one of Hamas’ most prominent leaders and a member of the movement’s political leadership.
He was imprisoned in Israel for six months in 1988, a semester after Hamas was founded, and was among those deported from Israel to Marj AlZuhur in 1992, where he spent a full year.
After Hamas won the 2005 parliamentary elections, AlZahar served as foreign minister under Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh until thenPresident Mahmoud Abbas announced the government’s dissolution.
Israel attempted to assassinate AlZahar in 2003 with a halfton bomb dropped from an F16 aircraft on his home in the AlRimal neighborhood of Gaza City. At this point he had some minor injuries, but his eldest son Khaled died.
On January 15, 2008, his second son Hossam, a member of the AlQassam Brigades, was killed along with 18 others in an Israeli air raid in eastern Gaza.
AlZahar wrote intellectual, political and literary works, including The Problem of Our Contemporary Society… A Study of the Qur’an and No Place Under the Sun, in response to Benjamin Netanyahu’s book Islamic Political Discourse.
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