Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, is known as ‘El Deif’ or the Guest, because, for decades, he has stayed in different houses every night to avoid being tracked, and killed, by Israel and he is now in charge of the militant group’s military wing, the Al Qassem Brigades, the media reported.
Thought to have been born in the 1960s, El Deif is little known to ordinary Palestinians, CNN quoted Mkhaimar Abusada, a professor of political science at Al Azah University in Gaza, as saying.
“He’s very much like a ghost to the majority of the Palestinians,” he said.
The Al Qassem Brigades were opposed to the peace process embraced by Yassir Arafat, then-leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the 1993 Oslo Accords that were supposed to pave the way to a two-state solution of a new Palestine living in peace alongside Israel.
In 1996, El Deif, an accomplished bomb maker, was behind a wave of four suicide attacks that killed 65 people in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and other outrages intended to derail the peace process, CNN reported.
The tighter the Israeli and Egyptian control over Gaza’s borders – the more Hamas (and other groups) developed military means to fight back.
Chief among them is rockets. Primitive at first, the missiles have been improved and refined over years of help from Iran.
The Tehran theocracy, also dedicated to the eradication of the Jewish state, trained engineers, organised technology transfers and guided developments to create rockets capable of hitting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, CNN reported.
Men like El Deif, the bomb makers and decision takers, were hunted by Israel.
In 2014, an air strike killed his wife and daughter. He lost part of an arm, a leg and his hearing. No doubt his hatred for Israel intensified then, CNN reported.
But his emotions were leavened with zealous cunning. And the first, and most important deception, was to transform the Israeli perception of Hamas.
In the last two years, Hamas, under El Deif’s guidance, worked to convince Israel that its focus was on domestic issues, on rebuilding Gaza, on securing work permits for people to seek employment in Israel, on building up its infrastructure, CNN reported.
Hamas’ attack on Israel last weekend represents the worst Israeli military setback since 1973.
Back then Syria and Egypt launched a surprise assault on Israel over the Yom Kippur holiday. Initially successful, the Arabs were soon pushed back as Israel rallied.
Now Israel is massing troops on the borders with Gaza and in the north where it faces Iran-backed Hezbollah across the fence with Lebanon.
What will Hamas ultimately gain from its bloody gamble? Karim von Hippel, director of the London-based Royal United Services Institute, says “they may have been planning this for years and thinking through what they can do, because everything else they have tried, hasn’t worked”.
“But certainly this is not going to work either. I think this will spell the end of Hamas.”
That may be a zero-sum option that not even the shadowy El Deif had guessed at, CNN reported.
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