At the height of tensions in the Middle East and while thousands of people in Tehran were saying goodbye to Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, who was killed the day before, the Israeli army announced on Thursday the death of another key leader of the Islamist movement. This is Mohamed Deif, the elusive head of Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezedin Al Qasam Brigades, who it had already tried to finish off a dozen times since 2001. Hamas, for the moment, is keeping silent. If confirmed, it would be the highest-ranking casualty for Hamas in 10 months of war, only behind its leader in Gaza, Yahia Sinwar. Israel also killed Marwan Issa, considered number three, in March, in another bombing that left dozens of civilians dead. of the group.
Deif, 59, was the target of an airstrike on the 13th in a humanitarian camp near the Gazan city of Khan Yunis, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people are living in poverty. The fighter-bombers killed more than 90 civilians, but it was not clear whether Deif was also killed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared before the nation that same day to boast of the “elimination”, but admitted that it could not be taken for granted, while Hamas hinted that he had survived. This Thursday, 20 days later, the Armed Forces and the Shin Bet (the intelligence services in Israel and Palestine) confirmed his death, after “evaluating” the information obtained by their intelligence services and broadcasting the aerial footage of the bombing. They also confirmed that of Rafa Salameh, commander of the Khan Yunis Brigade, with whom he was hiding.
Deif, who has been in charge of the Brigades since 2002, had the aura of a mythical character for Palestinians, always moving in the shadows. Like his face (unknown and of which Israel has released a photo, with scars from previous assassination attempts) or his own surname, which is actually Masri. Deif means “guest” in Arabic. He received it as a nickname, precisely because he always went from house to house, to avoid being located.
The last time he escaped death was in 2021. In a previous attempt, in 2014, Israel killed his wife and one of his children by launching a missile at their home. He always managed to escape (Israel has wrongly reported him dead in the past), even seriously injured, from airstrikes on cars he was driving or safe houses he was visiting.
Israel had him in its sights since the 1990s. It accuses him of planning numerous attacks, including several suicide attacks on buses in the 1990s and during the Second Intifada (2000-2005). He was its most wanted man for years, as Netanyahu has recalled.
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But Deif was now above all the mind that planned for years, together with Sinwar, the surprise attack of October 7, 2023, which left almost 1,200 dead in Israel (mainly civilians), more than 250 hostages (about half still in Gaza, dozens of them dead) and triggered the invasion of Gaza, which now has close to 40,000 corpses. Deif was, in fact, the one who claimed responsibility, in an audio in which he gave it a name: Al Aqsa Flood.
“Big step”
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described the news as “a major step on the path to eradicating Hamas as a military and governmental organization and to achieving the goals of the war.” Aware that a vast majority of society welcomes the elimination of the leaders of enemy armed groups, the minister accompanied the message with a photo in which he crossed out Deif’s name from the Hamas organizational chart with a black marker.
The announcement, amid a steady stream of bodies of Palestinian and Lebanese leaders, further heightens tensions in the Middle East. The region is going through its most dangerous period since the war in Gaza began 10 months ago, prompting seven airlines (Lufthansa, United Airlines, British Airways, Delta, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Air India) to cancel flights to Israel or Lebanon as of Thursday.
“Israel is in a very high state of readiness for any scenario, both in defence and attack,” Netanyahu said at a meeting with political and military authorities to discuss the situation in the homeland. “We will exact a heavy price for any act of aggression against us, wherever it may be.” The National Security Council has called on Israelis to be particularly careful when travelling abroad, given the risk of attacks.
The reason for the escalation is two so-called “targeted assassinations.” The first was on Tuesday in Beirut, of Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s number two, for which Israel boasts and which the Lebanese militia admitted a day later when his body was found in the rubble. It was the retaliation for Hezbollah’s most lethal attack in the daily low-intensity war it is waging with Israel in parallel to the invasion of Gaza. In an apparent mistake, it killed 12 children and teenagers in a Druze town in the Golan Heights, Syrian territory in the hands of Israel.
The high tension has made the televised speech on Thursday by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah one of the most eagerly awaited. In a firm but relaxed tone, he launched several messages. One, a psychological war message, directly to Israel: “Our response will certainly come. There is no debate about that. Now it is time to wait for the enemy and those who support it.” It will be, he added, “real and well studied,” not symbolic.
The other is the West, mainly the United States, which has been mediating between Israel and Lebanon for years and has blurred its role in recent weeks. “There will be no solution without pressure on Israel to stop the war in Gaza,” he stressed. The assassination of Shukr, he said, “crossed all the red lines” and brought the conflict “to a new phase, which goes beyond the principle of supporting Gaza, on all fronts of the ‘axis of resistance’,” as the informal alliance against Israel backed by Iran is called.
Nasrallah has also denied responsibility for the massacre in the Golan Heights, reiterating the theory – which Israel vehemently denies – that it was caused by the fall of a fragment of an interceptor projectile from the anti-missile shield.
The second murder that raised tensions on Wednesday was that of Haniya, to whom a crowd paid their last respects this morning in the courtyard of Tehran University, in the presence of the main government and military authorities. Among them was the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who gave the funeral oration for Haniya and for the other fatal victim of the attack: his bodyguard, Wasim Abu Shaaban.
A A plane has landed with the coffins in Qatar, where the leader had been living in exile since 2019 and will be buried on Friday. Hamas has called on the Muslim world, particularly Palestinians in the West Bank, to “launch clamorous marches of anger from every mosque” after the midday prayer.
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