Days after Hamas shocked the Israeli security establishment with a full frontal assault on Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking about 250 people hostage, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was emphatic: The Palestinian terrorist group and its leadership were on borrowed time. Every single member of Hamas, Netanyahu said at the time, was “a dead man,” a boast that sounded awfully similar to George W. Bush’s declaration about al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks.
Nine months later, Hamas has lost thousands of low-level fighters and likely dozens of field commanders. Yet other than Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, no Hamas official is as important to the Israelis than Mohammed Deif, Hamas’ top military commander. Israel has spent months trying to knock this man off the board and had its best opportunity last weekend. For weeks, Israeli forces monitored a compound in the al-Mawasi area of Gaza where they suspected Deif was hiding out. The Israelis finally took action once intelligence suspected the elusive Palestinian militant was thought to be inside. Days after the strike, Deif remains unaccounted for — Israel still doesn’t know whether he is dead.
Although Deif may not be as etched in the Palestinian psyche like the late Yasser Arafat, he has taken on a legendary status. Israel has tried to assassinate him several times. Deif is like a ghost, seemingly nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Most Gazans don’t even know what he looks like. He moves between houses like a nomad, no doubt a security precaution given the price on his head.
Deif’s death would be somewhat of a coup for Netanyahu, whose status as a leader has been irreparably damaged by the events on Oct. 7 and after. Deif was not only a key architect of the Oct. 7 attack, the worst of act of terrorism in Israel’s history, but also planned suicide attacks against Israeli civilians during the 1990s, a campaign of violence designed to undermine the 1993 Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
Deif is also in part responsible for turning the Izz al-Din-al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, from a ragtag bunch of insurgents into what it is today: a formidable army. The brigades have ruled Gaza as their own personal fiefdom for nearly 17 years and embarrassed the Israeli government by running rampant across small communities in southern Israel.
Last week’s airstrike on Deif’s suspected location isn’t all good news for the Israelis. First, there is no confirmation that Deif is dead, as Netanyahu admitted. Second, the operation was frankly a mess. It took place in a designated safe zone for Palestinian civilians who are spending every waking moment trying to escape the fighting and keep their families together. It’s even more unfortunate when one considers the fact that this designated safe zone was established by Israel. In effect, Israeli officials broke their own rules by violating their own safe area to kill someone who may have escaped.
At least 90 Palestinians were killed in the bombing, including women and children. One United Nations aid worker described wretched scenes at the al-Nasser hospital: “I saw toddlers who are double amputees, children paralyzed and unable to receive treatment, and others separated from their parents.”
The long-term consequences of the strike could be significant as well. The attempted assassination of Deif is occurring at a time when the United States, Qatar and Egypt are in the middle of yet another campaign to hammer out a permanent cease-fire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas. Those negotiations have been the diplomatic equivalent of going to the dentist and getting your wisdom teeth pulled without Novocain. While the outline of a deal is supposedly settled — a three-stage process that includes the release of hostages, the freeing of Palestinian prisoners, an initial six-week cease-fire, an Israeli troop pullback and finally an end to the war — the details are still being haggled over. Netanyahu continues to insist that Israel reserves the right to continue the war in order to achieve all of its military objectives, destroying Hamas first and foremost. Hamas, of course, has no interest in seeing itself destroyed and is demanding that any deal include a written guarantee from the mediators that Israel won’t return to hostilities.
Thus far, nobody is budging from their positions. Will the attempted hit on Deif make an already complicated situation downright impossible?
The massive casualties caused by the strike shouldn’t be overlooked. Killing so many noncombatants is kindling for terrorist groups such as Hamas, which will use the episode as a convenient recruiting tool for the cause. This is precisely what President Joe Biden had in mind when he advised Israel not to make the same mistakes as the United States did after 9/11. One of the reasons the U.S. couldn’t subjugate the Taliban in Afghanistan over a 20-year stretch was because military operation by the U.S. and U.S.-supported Afghan government often alienated the communities in the Afghan countryside that Washington and Kabul were seeking to win over. We can say the same thing about Israel in Gaza.
In the grand scheme, the war won’t end with Deif’s death. It will end only when Israel and Hamas agree to end it through a negotiated agreement that will be a bitter pill for both sides to swallow.
As we’ve seen over the last nine months, this is far easier said than done.
Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
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