Report: Israel Targets Hamas Millitary Leader Muhammad Deif in Airstrike

Israel’s Army Radio reported Saturday that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had likely succeeded in killing Hamas’s military leader, Muhammad Deif, along with other senior terrorist leaders in an airstrike in the city of Khan Yunis in Gaza.

The IDF issued a terse announcement:

In a joint IDF and ISA [Israel Security Agency] activity based on precise intelligence, the IDF’s Southern Command and the IAF [Israeli Air Force] carried out a strike in an area where two senior Hamas terrorists and additional terrorists hid among civilians. The location of the strike was an open area surrounded by trees, several buildings, and sheds.

Deif is considered the “mastermind” of the October 7 terror attacks against Israel, as Reuters reported in October:

A survivor of seven Israeli assassination attempts, the most recent in 2021, Deif rarely speaks and never appears in public. So when Hamas’s TV channel announced he was about to speak on Saturday [October 7], Palestinians knew something significant was afoot.

“Today the rage of Al Aqsa, the rage of our people and nation is exploding. Our mujahedeen (fighters), today is your day to make this criminal understand that his time has ended,” Deif said in the recording.

…

The whereabouts of Deif are unknown, though he is most likely in Gaza in the maze of tunnels under the enclave. An Israeli security source said Deif was directly involved in the planning and operational aspects of the attack.

 

Army Radio reported that Hamas was preventing Palestinians from accessing the location of the airstrike, because it wanted to do everything possible to avoid confirming that Israel had in fact killed its main military commander.

An IDF biography of Deif describes his long career of terror:

Mohammed Deif is the military leader of Hamas, a widely recognized terrorist organization. He has played an active role in promoting terror and targeting civilians for over 30 years, after initially joining the organization in 1987.

Most recently, Deif played a pivotal role in conceiving, planning and executing the barbaric October 7th massacre …

Deif was reportedly born in Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip in 1965. From the moment he was born in Gaza’s Khan Yunis neighborhood, Deif was raised in an extremist Islamic environment and educated to follow the same ideologies. He initially joined Hamas in 1987 and began rising in the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades’s chain of command quickly.

Deif was in and out of Israeli prisons throughout the years but was released in exchange for kidnapped civilians, soldiers and bodies.

…

Deif was also known for planning suicide bombing attacks and was responsible for a series of such attacks that left 50 Israelis dead in 1996.

…

Deif was recognized by the United States as a terrorist in September 2015. In the statement, the United States flagged Deif as the top commander of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, noting his involvement in leveraging suicide attacks against Israelis and abductions of Israeli soldiers.

The Times of Israel notes that Deif had a brief career as an actor:

Deif earned a degree in science from the Islamic University in Gaza, where he studied physics, chemistry and biology. He displayed an affinity for the arts, heading the university’s entertainment committee and performing on stage in comedies.

…

His survival while running Hamas’s armed wing earned him the status of a Palestinian folk hero. In rare video appearances, he was masked, or seen only as a shadow.

Deif has long eluded the IDF, surviving several previous strikes that wounded but did not kill him. Reports on Saturday, however, suggested a high degree of confidence that this time, the IDF had succeeded in killing Deif.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has scheduled a press conference for 9:00 p.m. local time in Israel — his first such press conference since March, amid speculation that he would confirm the successful operation against Deif.

It is unclear how the airstrike will affect ongoing hostage negotiations. It could cause Hamas to break off talks, or could create new pressure on Hamas leaders to save themselves through a deal. Army Radio reported that it is not known whether there were any of the remaining 120 Israeli hostages near Deif when the airstrike was carried out.

Update: Netanyahu told journalists and the Israeli nation that Deif and his deputy, Rafah Salameh, had been targeted in the operation. He said that Israel had not yet confirmed their deaths, but that Israeli intelligence had confirmed prior to the airstrike that there were no hostages surrounding the Hamas commanders.

Netanyahu reminded Israelis that he had promised after October 7  that members of Hamas were dead men walking.

He then turned to Iran, noting that Iran was attempting to strangle Israel by surrounding it with terror organizations. He said that it was therefore forbidden to give up on victory against Iran’s proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Update: Hamas leaders have denied that Deif was killed in the Israeli airstrike, though they provided no evidence.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.