Mohammed Deif is the head of the military wing of Hamas and one of the masterminds of the group’s bloody surprise attack on 7 October which triggered the latest war in Gaza.
Israeli officials said Deif – whose real name is Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri – was the target of Saturday’s airstrike, which levelled several buildings in Khan Younis and killed 90 people, according to local health authorities.
Experienced, capable and utterly committed to the militant Islamist organisation, Deif has survived at least seven Israeli assassination attempts. The question is whether the 58-year-old has survived an eighth. If Israel has killed such a significant figure, this will be chalked up as a major step towards an increasingly elusive victory.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have so far only said the attack was based on “precise intelligence” and “struck” Deif but not that he is dead.
Deif means “the guest” in Arabic, a nom de guerre he owes to his effort to evade Israeli assassination attempts by moving location almost every night and staying in the homes of supporters of Hamas.
He was born in 1965 in a refugee camp in Khan Younis, the southern Gaza City, one of dozens set up to house some of those Palestinians forced to flee their homes in the wars surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948. His family was poor but Deif did sufficiently well at school to study for a degree in sciences from the Islamic University in Gaza, an Islamist stronghold. Deif joined Hamas when it was founded in 1987 in the first months of the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising.
Working closely with Yahya Sinwar, the current leader of Hamas in Gaza, Deif soon showed a talent for military operations and internal security. In 1989, he was arrested by Israel and spent about 16 months in detention. Through the 90s, Deif helped plan and execute suicide bombings in Israel designed to derail the ongoing peace process and avenge assassinations of Hamas leaders.
Deif and Hamas sources say he lost an eye and sustained serious injuries in one leg in one of Israel’s past efforts to kill him. Some say he is confined to a wheelchair; others say this is not true though he has a pronounced limp. His wife, seven-month-old son, and three-year-old daughter were killed by an Israeli airstrike during the war in Gaza of 2014.
In recent years, Deif has overseen Hamas’ efforts both to build more effective rockets in Gaza and the immense tunnel complex across the territory. He is also thought to have been tasked with training the militants who attacked Israel last year, particularly the elite Nukhba forces.
If Hamas’s ability to fire rockets into Israel has been battered during the conflict and many of the Nukhba are dead, the tunnels continue to protect Sinwar and other leaders of the organisation. Israel’s invasion of Gaza has so far killed more than 38,000 according to Palestinian officials and reduced much of the territory to rubble.
Deif is thought to have been directing military operations from the tunnels and, possibly, discreet locations above ground, though he has never been seen.
There are only four known images of Deif: one in his 20s, another of him masked, an image of his shadow, which was used when an audio tape of a speech he made was broadcast on 7 October, and one found by Israel in an intelligence haul of millions of computer files during the invasion.
Israeli security services will now be rushing to confirm Deif’s death. This may take some time, but his passing will be hailed in Israel as a very significant achievement for the Israeli military and will be a welcome boost for the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. It would mean two of the three most senior individuals in Hamas in Gaza – described as “dead men walking” by top Israeli officials last year – have now been eliminated. Marwan Issa, the deputy head of Hamas’ military wing, was killed in March. Sinwar remains alive.