Israel tried to kill Mohammed Deif on Saturday. Again.
It was unclear, initially anyway, if they were successful on that score, but they certainly “succeeded” in killing scores of other people.
The airstrike, which hit a designated humanitarian zone outside of Khan Younis, left dozens dead and injured hundreds. Firsthand accounts carried by global newswires were macabre. Dazed Gazans recounted crawling out of blown-down tents to a find “parts” of children strewn haphazardly among bodies and charred detritus.
The IDF said it struck “an open area surrounded by trees, several buildings and sheds,” where Deif and Hamas’s Khan Younis chief were — I don’t know — playing backgammon and eating blueberry scones, maybe.
To call Deif a legend and a high-value target would be to materially understate the case. Both cases. Born in Khan Younis, the 60-year-old is Hamas’s top military commander — head of the Qassam Brigades, which he took over more than two decades ago. On the (very long) list of Israeli archnemeses, Deif’s right up there with the late Qassem Soleimani and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah.
Deif — whose nom de guerre means “guest,” a grim reference to the necessity of bedding down in different locations to evade assassination attempts — is sewn into the very fabric of Hamas’s existence. By now, he’s almost synonymous with the group. And it with him.
His resume with the movement dates to the very beginning, and includes masterminding any number of violent operations against Israel, from suicide bombings to high-profile kidnappings all the way through the October 7 attacks. The rocket barrage strategy? His idea. The tunnels? His idea. (One of Deif’s mentors was Yehya Ayyash, a bombmaker of almost folkloric status. Israel famously assassinated Ayyash by blowing up his cell phone. While he was on it.)
A one-time actor, Deif maintains a dizzying array of false identities. Few Hamas members, even fewer everyday Palestinians and almost nobody else has ever even seen him other than in a handful of undated pictures. He’s lost multiple family members (including a wife and an infant son) as well as one of his eyes, to Israeli airstrikes. Until very recently he was thought to have only one remaining arm and leg.
In 2021, when tensions between Israel and Hamas last boiled over, the IDF tried to kill Deif twice in a single week. It wasn’t so long ago — let’s call it 10 years — that foreign intelligence agencies were still unsure about his real name (it’s Mohammed al-Masri).
The IDF caught up to Deif’s deputy, Marwan Issa, three months ago. If they caught up with Deif himself on Saturday, the mood would be celebratory among the Israeli defense and intelligence community to put it mildly.
Israel confirmed, just not in so many words, that the strike did in fact occur in a humanitarian area. Not that such an admission was avoidable. It happened where it happened. Mawasi’s a designated “safe” zone. Israel advised citizens of Rafah to move there in a partial evacuation earlier this year.
“If Hamas senior leaders think they’ll build a compound and hide in an area where we called for [civilians] to move to, we will hunt them down,” an IDF official said.
I assume this is clear from the above, but just in case: Israel would absolutely kill 71 civilians (the initially-reported death toll in the strike) if it meant killing Deif. Or 710 civilians. Or 7,100 civilians. The casualty count was still climbing into Saturday evening.
In addition to “The Guest” and “The Mastermind,” Deif was also known as “the cat” for his nine lives. Saturday marked the eighth publicized attempt to kill him.
