Hyderabad: Mohammed Deif was the man who paralyzed Israel. Deif was eliminated in a strike carried out by the Israeli Army.
He was the mastermind of the October 07 attacks on Israel, in which close to a thousand people were killed. Mohammed Dief was a crippled man who escaped numerous assassination attempts on his life by Israel to give a tough time to Israel.
Deif was a one-time bombmaker and the architect of a decade-long programme to dig a network of tunnels under Gaza. His ability to outwit Israel's military while killing soldiers alike has earned him the reverence of Palestinian militants.
His numerous unsuccessful assassination attempts solidified his reputation for exceptional evations skills, leading his adversaries to dub him as "The Cat with Nine Lives".
He was the head of Hamas’s military wing since 2002. Just like Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas’s handicapped spiritual leader, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in 2004, the 57-year-old Deif has run the Qassam brigades from a wheelchair for the last two decades.
He was born as Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri in the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza during the 1960s. Gaza, then had been under Egyptian control (from 1948 to 1967). Between 1967 to 2005, it was under Israeli rule and then it came under the Palestinian Authority from 2005 to 2007.
Deif’s relatives were part of the Fedayeen Palestinian fighters, who in the 1950s launched attacks on illegal Israeli posts. Like many Palestinian leaders, who joined the nation’s liberation movements during their university period, Deif’s relationship with Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired movement, began at the Islamic University of Gaza.
In the early 1990s, Deif like many Palestinians including founders of Hamas was angry about the Oslo Accords signed by Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), that ceded many Palestinian lands to Israel.
Under the influence of Yahya Ayyash and Adnan al-Ghoul, who were two of Hamas's top military strategists prior to their assassinations by Israel, Deif became part of the Qassam Brigades, which was founded shortly after the Oslo Accords. Since 2002, Deif led the Qassam Brigades, the military offshoot of Hamas.
His wife and two kids including an infant son were killed in assassination attempts by Israel. He lost an eye, arm and leg in those assassination attempts. In 2007, a Hamas coup led it to establish its control.
In late 2010, Deif wrote an article in which he outlined the group's aim according to his own vision of the conflict, saying that “Palestine will remain ours including Al Quds (Jerusalem), Al Aqsa (mosque), its towns and villages from the (Mediterranean) Sea to the (Jordan) River, from its North to its South. You (Israel) have no right to even an inch of it."
Deif rarely appeared or spoke in public, and his voice was last heard in May 2021, when he warned Israel of a "heavy price" if it did not meet Hamas's demands over Jerusalem.
What role has Deif played in Hamas?
Hamas was founded in the late 1980s, after the beginning of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Israeli capture of the two areas happened in the course of the 1967 Israeli-Arab War. By the time Hamas was born in the late 1980s, forged in the fire of the first intifada, or uprising, against Israel’s occupation, Deif was in his 20s.
He was also later jailed by the Israelis, who held Deif responsible for the death of dozens of people in suicide bombings, including a wave in 1996 that killed over 50 civilians.
These bombings were in response to the Oslo Peace Accords that were signed in the early 1990s between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the body representing most Palestinians. The accords aimed to bring about Palestinian self-determination, in the form of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But Hamas was against it on the grounds that in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Israel gained control of Palestinian territories. The Accords, it argued, would effectively mean a loss of territory for Palestine.
Deif further became involved in the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. Deif moved up the ranks of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. He was involved in the creation of the first rudimentary rockets.
Attempts on Deif’s life
Although he only took over as Gaza commander of Hamas’s military wing in July 2002, Deif had been at the top of Israel’s "most wanted" list for years and had narrowly escaped the Israeli army’s efforts to kill him on several occasions. The year he took over, an Israeli helicopter fired missiles at a car near Gaza City in which two Hamas members were killed. At least 40 other people, including 15 children, were wounded in the attack.
The US State Department has designated him as a terrorist. “During the 2014 conflict between Israel and Hamas, Deif was the mastermind of Hamas’s offensive strategy,” it said.
In 2014, Israel confirmed that it tried to assassinate Deif with a targeted strike on a house.
