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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