Israel Says Hamas Commander Was Likely Killed Despite Denial

Ethan Bronner
·5-min read

(Bloomberg) -- Israeli security officials said Sunday they were pretty confident their targeted attack against Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif was successful despite the group’s denial.

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The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they’d been following Deif’s movements for a couple of days, pinpointed his location and carried out an attack on Saturday that would have been hard to survive. Rafa Salama, a Hamas brigade commander, was killed in the attack, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement, which didn’t refer to Deif.

Hamas said some 90 people died in the assault in the Khan Younis area of the central Gaza Strip but that Deif, a founder of the group and a mastermind of the October attack that led to the current war, was alive — and had even watched Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu address a news conference on Saturday night. It didn’t mention Salama.

Israeli officials say they don’t know how many died, but that the majority were Hamas officials or associates.

If Deif did escape, it wouldn’t be the first time. The supreme commander of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades, he has been such a shadowy figure that the only known picture of him dates back to when he was a teenager. He’s been on the run for two decades and has never appeared in public.

The assessment by Israeli security analysts is that his death — if confirmed — will be a major blow against Hamas and will help force the group, considered terrorists by the US and European Union, to close the deal currently being negotiated for a cease-fire to return Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and bring aid to the Gaza Strip.

To many outsiders, such a claim seems counter-intuitive: a deadly attack during negotiations isn’t likely to inspire flexibility. But Israeli officials are persuaded that the only way to get Hamas to close a cease-fire deal is by cornering it and eliminating its commanders.

“In recent weeks, we have identified clear cracks in Hamas under the power of the blows we are raining on them. We see changes. We see weakness,” Netanyahu said at his news conference.

The latest operation “also contributes to this, whatever its results are. Hamas’ commanders are hiding in underground tunnels and are cut off from their forces in the field. The Gazan population understands more and more the magnitude of the disaster that Hamas has inflicted on it,” he said.

The military said that Salama joined Hamas in the early 1990s, has headed its Khan Younis brigade since 2016 and was one of the masterminds of the Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel. His elimination significantly impedes the group’s military capabilities, it said

Other analyses are less sanguine for Israel, suggesting that Hamas’ daring and brutal attack won it deep loyalty among Palestinians.

Early on Sunday, AFP, the French news agency, reported that Hamas was withdrawing from the talks. One of the group’s top officials later issued a denial, saying it wasn’t going to allow Netanyahu “to block the way to reaching an agreement that stops the aggression against our people.”

Tamir Hayman, a former head of Israel’s military intelligence and a critic of Netanyahu’s, said in an online column for Channel 12 that the assassination was the right move.

“The ongoing military pressure led Hamas field commanders to demand a pause in the fighting,” he wrote. “Add to that calls by the Palestinian public that has paid a very high price over the extended duration of the war and the mounting criticism of Hamas.”

Time isn’t on the side of Hamas as elections in Europe and the US divert attention from Gaza and reduce pressure on Israel to end the fighting, he said. If Donald Trump is elected, he added, his administration “won’t put any pressure on Israel at all,” he said.

Trump escaped an assassination attempt over the weekend.

Netanyahu is due to address a joint session of the US Congress on July 24.

Hayman, like other analysts, warned Israelis against taking too much comfort from the operation, if it was indeed successful. Numerous difficulties lie ahead: getting back the hostages, returning Israelis who’ve been evacuated from areas in the north and south of the country to their homes, and establishing a strategic plan to ensure the nation’s security after the October assault.

Israel’s war against Hamas has so far killed some 38,000 Palestinians, according to Hamas, which doesn’t distinguish between fighters and civilians. Israel says it’s killed some 14,000 fighters.

Deif has long been on the top of Israel’s most-wanted list. He survived numerous attempts on his life, one of which was believed to have left him with an unspecified disability. In 2014, Israel bombed the house where he was staying, killing his wife and 7-month-old son.

He rose to be Hamas’ supreme military leader after his predecessor, Salah Shehada, was killed in a massive Israeli air strike on Gaza City in 2002.

As missiles rained down on Israel and several thousand Hamas operatives killed and kidnapped soldiers and civilians last October, a prerecorded speech by Deif was broadcast.

“We have decided to put an end to all of the occupation’s crimes,” he said. “The time is over for them to act without accountability. Thus, we announce the Al-Aqsa Flood operation.”

Born Mohammed al-Masri, he became widely know by the surname Deif — Arabic for “guest” — because he’s constantly on the move and perpetually housed by others. If he was killed, that would leave only Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, still running the organization inside the coastal strip. Other leaders are in exile.

--With assistance from John J. Edwards III.

(Updates with comments from military in second, 10th paragraph.)

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