Mohammed Deif
Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, better known as Mohammed Deif, was a Palestinian militant who served as the sixth commander of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. He succeeded Salah Shehade following the latter's assassination in an Israeli airstrike in July 2002, until his assassination in July 2024. He was succeeded by Mohammed Sinwar, the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar. He was a central figure in the Gaza war and one of the masterminds of the October 7 attacks, alongside Yahya Sinwar.
Deif was born in 1965 in the Khan Yunis Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip, to a family that had fled or been expelled during the 1948 Palestine war. He reportedly left school temporarily to support his low-income family, later graduating with a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the Islamic University of Gaza in 1988, where he had established a theater group.
Deif joined Hamas in 1987, weeks after it was established during the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation. He later became known as Mohammed Deif, meaning "guest" in Arabic—possibly in reference to the nomadic lifestyle he adopted to avoid being targeted. During the 1990s and early 2000s, he planned several suicide bombing attacks, including the 1996 Jaffa Road bus bombings. He became the head of the al-Qassam Brigades in 2002 and developed the group's capabilities, transforming it from a cluster of amateur cells to organized military units. He masterminded the group's strategy of combining rocket attacks on Israel with tunnel warfare, and was central to planning the October 7 attacks that initiated the Gaza war.
Deif had been on the Israeli military's most wanted list since 1995 for killing Israeli soldiers and civilians. He was detained by the Palestinian Authority at Israel's request in 2000 before escaping months later. He had been targeted in multiple Israeli assassination attempts since 2001, surviving at least seven attempts on his life. His wife, infant son, and 3-year-old daughter were killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2014. The United States and the European Union added Deif to their terrorism lists in 2015 and 2023 respectively.
Israel killed Deif in an airstrike on al-Mawasi on 13 July 2024. For over five months, Hamas denied reports of his death, eventually confirming it on 30 January 2025. In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Deif, claiming it was unable to verify his death. The warrant was cancelled in late February 2025.
Early life
Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri was born on 12 August 1965 in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. His family originates from al-Qubeiba, a former town near Ramleh in Mandatory Palestine, but fled or were expelled during the 1948 Palestine war. According to the Shin Bet, either his father or his uncle had participated in sporadic raids into Israel conducted by Palestinian fedayeen in the 1950s.Although not much is known about the details of his early life and upbringing, he reportedly had to temporarily drop out of school to support his low-income family, working with his father in upholstery and later starting a small poultry farm. It is understood that he studied chemistry at the Islamic University of Gaza, from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1988.
During his years at the university, he had a passion for theatre, establishing a theatre group called "The Returners", in reference to Palestinian refugees longing to return to the lands they lived on before the Nakba. He played a number of roles, including those of historical figures.
Early militant career
Deif joined Hamas in 1987, weeks after its establishment during the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation. He was arrested by Israeli authorities in 1989 for his involvement with the organization. After 16 months of detention, he was released in a prisoner exchange. Soon after his release, he helped establish the Ezzedeen al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas.Deif was close to Emad Akel and Yahya Ayyash, who were assassinated by Israel in 1993 and 1996 respectively. He trained with, and learnt bombmaking from, Ayyash. After Ayyash's assassination, Deif reduced his profile to avoid being targeted. During the 1990s and early 2000s, he was behind a number of suicide bombing attacks, including the 1996 Jaffa Road bus bombings. He also oversaw the kidnappings and later killings of Israeli soldiers Shahar Simani, Aryeh Frankenthal, and Nachshon Wachsman in the 1990s.
In May 2000, Deif was arrested at Israel's request by the Palestinian National Authority, but he escaped in December with assistance from some of his guards.
According to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, Deif's campaign of massive retaliation and the failure of Israeli intelligence services to prevent it, was one of the factors that led to the defeat of Prime Minister Shimon Peres and the Israeli Labor Party in the 1996 Israeli general election and the victory of the right-wing Likud party of Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposed the Oslo peace process:
At the beginning of February, Peres was up twenty points in the polls over his opposition, the conservative hawk Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu. By the middle of March, Netanyahu had closed the gap significantly, and Peres led by only five percentage points. On May 29, Netanyahu won by 1 percent of the vote. This was all due to the terror attacks, which Peres simply couldn't stop. Yahya Ayyash's disciples had ensured the right wing's victory and "derailed the peace process," in the words of the deputy head of the Shin Bet, Yisrael Hasson.After Netanyahu got elected, attacks stopped, with some asserting that this was because Yasser Arafat clamped down on Hamas members, but Bergman insisting that the halt was because the short-term goal of the attacks was to stop the Oslo peace process, and Netanyahu was now working towards the same goal.
Head of the al-Qassam Brigades
Deif became the head of the al-Qassam Brigades after Israel assassinated Salah Shehade in July 2002. Between July 2006 and November 2012, effective command was exercised by Deif's deputy, Ahmed Jabari, after Deif was seriously wounded in an Israeli assassination attempt.As the overall commander of the al-Qassam Brigades, he is thought to be the main organizer of the raid into Israel that killed two IDF soldiers and captured Gilad Shalit in June 2006, as well as the five-year operations to deceive Mossad and Shin Bet about Shalit's location in Gaza. He was also in charge of the al-Qassam Brigades' procurement of weapons from abroad, overseeing the transfer and manufacturing of Iranian Fajr-5 rocket components into Gaza, and maintained correspondence with Iranian Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani and his predecessor Qasem Soleimani. In a letter, Soleimani had called Deif a "dear brother" and a "living martyr".
In September 2015, the US Department of State added Deif and three other Hamas leaders to the American list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists. In December 2023, the European Union added him to their terror blacklist in 2023.
Shadow Unit
Deif also created the "Shadow Unit" within the al-Qassam Brigades. Among the unit's duties are "to guard enemy captives held by the al-Qassam Brigades, to hide them and to thwart enemy attempts to find them." An al-Qassam video said that the unit "treats enemy captives honorably, in line with the rules of Islam, and provides for their needs, taking into account the treatment given to the prisoners of the resistance in the hands of the enemy."Strategy
Deif has been credited with transforming the al-Qassam Brigades from a cluster of amateur cells to organized military units, described as an 'army,' that are capable of invading Israel. His military strategy has been dubbed the 'above and below' strategy, built on attacking Israeli territory with rockets and constructing underground tunnels to be used in infiltrating the border with Israel.Gaza war
As the highest-ranking leader of the al-Qassam Brigades, Deif was involved in orchestrating the surprise attack on Israel that commenced the Gaza war, which, according to a source close to Hamas, he began planning in the lead up to the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, motivated by scenes of Israeli forces storming al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan. According to France 24, he was the mastermind behind the attack on 7 October. The decision to launch the attack was taken jointly by Deif and Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.After the attack, a Reuters report stated that over the previous two years, Deif deceived Israel into believing Hamas was not interested in another round of conflict. This deception campaign involved a decision not to participate in the clashes between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in August 2022 and May 2023, putting Israel under the impression that Hamas "was not ready for a fight" and could be contained by providing economic incentives to Gazan workers.
On the day of the attack, Deif gave an audio address, his first since 2021, justifying it as a response to the "desecration" of the al-Aqsa Mosque and the killing and wounding of hundreds of Palestinians in 2023. He called on Palestinians and Arab Israelis to "expel the occupiers and demolish the walls". Announcing the start of "Operation Al-Aqsa Storm," Deif said that "In light of the continuing crimes against our people, in light of the orgy of occupation and its denial of international laws and resolutions, and in light of American and western support, we've decided to put an end to all this so that the enemy understands that he can no longer revel without being held to account."
On 20 May 2024, a request for an arrest warrant against Deif and four other Palestinian and Israeli leaders was filed by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on several counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, as part of its investigation in Palestine. The effort continued into September 2024, with the prosecutor saying that he was gathering information about Deif's "reported death." On 21 November, the court officially indicted Deif for war crimes, stating that he bore responsibility for mass killings, hostage taking and rape during the 7 October attacks. The ICC argued that it was "not in a position to determine whether has been killed or remains alive" following reports that Deif was killed in an Israeli airstrike on 13 July 2024.
On 3 September 2024, the United States Department of Justice announced criminal charges against Deif and other Hamas officials for their roles in the October 7 attacks on Israel. The charges, which were filed under seal in February 2024, include conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals, and conspiracy to finance terrorism.