(Bloomberg) -- Israel said it had confirmed that Mohammed Deif, Hamas’ military chief, was killed in a strike in Gaza last month, an announcement that came a day after the group’s political head Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran.
The military had previously said it was all but certain Deif had died in its July 13 attack in the southern city of Khan Younis. Hamas said at the time that the strike killed about 100 people, but denied Deif was among them. It hasn’t reacted to the latest announcement.
Deif’s elimination — if confirmed — and that of Haniyeh would constitute major achievements for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. It vowed to eliminate all senior Hamas figures following the group’s Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel, during which its fighters killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostage. But they also may complicate efforts to broker a truce in the almost 10-month-long war in Gaza, large parts of which have been reduced to rubble during Israel’s ground and air assault, and secure the release of 115 hostages still held by Hamas.
Netanyahu would be able to declare that his mission has largely been accomplished if Israel could also kill or arrest Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in Gaza, but it wouldn’t mean the group had been eliminated, said Ryan Bohl, a Middle East and North Africa analyst at risk consultancy RANE.
“The reality is that Hamas will be able to regenerate its leadership structure, because it was designed from its inception to accept assassination more or less as a fact of life,” Bohl said in a Bloomberg Television interview on Thursday. “The politburo, the top decision-making body within Hamas, is designed for there to be attrition.”
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Almost 40,000 Palestinians have died since Israel began its retaliatory offensive on Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and fighters. Hamas is designated a terrorist group by the US and European Union.
The supreme commander of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades, Deif was viewed as one of the key planners of the October assault and announced it in a pre-recorded speech as it was happening. He has long been a key target for Israel, which unsuccessfully tried to kill him on several occasions.
“Over the years, Deif directed, planned, and carried out numerous terrorist attacks against the State of Israel,” the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Security Agency, known as the Shin Bet, said in a joint statement. They also accused him of commanding Hamas’ terrorist activity in the Gaza Strip by issuing commands and instructions to the group’s military wing.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant posted a picture of himself on social media platform X crossing Deif off a wall chart containing the images of wanted Hamas leaders.
“Israel’s defense establishment will pursue Hamas terrorists, both the planners and the perpetrators of the 07.10 massacre,” Gallant wrote. “We will not rest until this mission is accomplished.”
Deif, whose given name was Mohammed al-Masri, was born in 1965 in a refugee camp in Khan Younis — his precise date of birth isn’t clear — and grew up there with Sinwar. He studied at the Islamic University in Gaza, graduating with a science degree and was one of the founders of the armed wing of Hamas in the late 1980s.
Deif was arrested in the late 1990s as part of a large-scale crackdown against Hamas by the Palestinian Authority, the entity created in 1994 to administer limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Deif was believed to have escaped from prison before the outbreak of the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in 2000. 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.
Israel has yet to comment on whether it was involved in killing Haniyeh, but the Iranians and Hamas both say they hold it accountable and have threatened retribution.
(Updates with IDF statement in fifth paragraph, Defense Minister’s tweet in 7th)
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