The voice on the recording was calm and exact because it delivered a message of horror.
“In mild of the persevering with crimes in opposition to our folks, in mild of the orgy of occupation and its denial of worldwide legal guidelines and resolutions, and in mild of American and western assist, we’ve determined to place an finish to all this,” stated the speaker, filmed shrouded in shadows, “in order that the enemy understands that he can not revel with out being held to account.”
The voice heard on the video, launched inside hours of Saturday’s attack on Israel unfolding, presupposed to belong to Mohammed Deif, commander of the navy wing of the Palestinian militant group Hamas and mastermind of the incursion into Israel. The mass raid within the early hours of Saturday has up to now killed 600 folks in Israel, left greater than 2,000 Israelis injured and brought his decades-long marketing campaign in opposition to the Jewish state to a brutal and unpredictable new degree.
Whilst Deif’s message was being broadcast, tons of of Hamas fighters have been breaching the border fence between the blockaded Gaza Strip and Israeli territory, fanning out throughout southern Israel underneath the quilt of 1000’s of rockets.
Inside hours, Hamas had scored an unprecedented first strike in opposition to Israel whereas additionally taking dozens of hostages — estimated on Sunday to quantity about 100 — again to its teeming coastal enclave. Hamas’s social media channels concurrently launched slickly produced movies exhibiting its militants paragliding over the border and grotesque photographs of lifeless troopers and terrified Israeli civilians.
For Deif, whose nom de guerre that means “Visitor” is taken as a reference to the follow of Palestinian fighters spending every evening on the residence of a unique sympathiser to be able to evade Israeli intelligence, the assault was his most audacious, and lethal, but.
Hunted by Israel for many years, and nearly killed in an air strike 20 years in the past that reportedly left him in a wheelchair after dropping an arm and a leg, Deif’s skill to outwit Israel’s navy whereas killing troopers and civilians alike has earned him the reverence of Palestinian militants.
With the Israeli military seemingly caught unawares, Deif has catapulted himself to the best echelons of the Palestinian management, eclipsing his rivals in Fatah, the extra average faction favoured by the west, and his counterparts in Hamas, thought of a terrorist group by the US, EU and Israel.
“Even earlier than this, Deif was like a sacred character and really a lot revered each inside Hamas and by the Palestinians,” stated Mkhaimar Abusada, a professor of politics at Al-Azhar College in Gaza. His largest operation in opposition to Israel could have now turned him right into a determine “like a god to the younger”, he added.
Essentially the most vital issue for Hamas is the sheer variety of hostages hauled again to Gaza. Israel handed over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners to free a single soldier, Gilad Shalit, after 5 years of captivity by Hamas in 2011.
“Hamas understands very nicely that, relating to holding Israeli prisoners, persistence is all they want,” stated a regional diplomat who helped negotiate Shalit’s launch. “Over time, the Israeli public will create the stress. All Hamas has to do is wait.”
In interviews, Israeli and Palestinian analysts, together with individuals who knew Deif earlier than he vanished into the shadows of Palestinian militancy, described a quiet, intense man uninterested within the internecine rivalries of Palestinian factions. As an alternative, they stated, he was single-minded about altering the character of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and utilizing violence as a method to realize it.
“It is best to battle the Israelis inside Israel, and demolish their fantasy that they are often protected in occupied land,” stated a Palestinian fighter turned mid-level politician who met Deif within the early 2000s.
In addition they described a person whose skill to continuously evolve alongside the Israeli navy’s technological achievements was illustrated in the course of the ferocious 11-day struggle between the Palestinian militant group and Israel in 2021. Hamas deployed swarms of low-tech rockets in an try and overwhelm Israel’s air defence system, which almost ran out of munitions within the 11 days earlier than a truce was brokered.
Like others in Hamas, Deif views the Oslo Accords, which within the late Nineties briefly held the promise of a negotiated peace settlement, as a betrayal of its resistance and the unique aim to interchange Israel with a Palestinian state.
“Deif has tried to start out the second struggle of Israeli independence,” stated Eyal Rosen, a colonel within the Israeli military’s reserves who in a earlier position targeted on the Gaza Strip. “The principle aim is — by steps — to destroy Israel. This is without doubt one of the first steps — that is just the start.”
Deif, one-time bombmaker and the architect of a decade-long programme to dig a community of tunnels underneath Gaza, was born Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri within the Khan Younis refugee camp in the course of the Sixties, in keeping with an Israeli official accustomed to his safety file.
Gaza was then underneath Egyptian management, and the Israeli official accustomed to his file on the Shin Guess intelligence service stated both his uncle or father had taken half within the sporadic Fifties raids by armed Palestinians into the identical swath of land that Deif’s fighters infiltrated on Saturday.
So little is understood about him that even his title is a thriller. Individuals who knew him within the Eighties say that even then he glided by the title Deif, whereas others stated they knew him by his start title. Just one grainy {photograph} of him exists within the public area.
His style for theatrics was honed at an appearing troupe he joined whereas on the Islamic College of Gaza, a hotbed of the Egyptian department of the Muslim Brotherhood’s type of political Islam. By the point Hamas was born within the late Eighties, cast within the hearth of the primary intifada, or rebellion, in opposition to Israel’s occupation, Deif was in his 20s.
Round that point, Ghazi Hamad, now a Hamas politburo member, shared a jail cell with Deif after they have been jailed by the Israelis.
“From the start of his life in Hamas, he was targeted on the navy observe,” stated Hamad. “He was very form,” he recalled, “on a regular basis a patriot who would make little cartoons to make us snicker.”
Any trace of kindness would quickly fade, as Hamas carried out suicide bombings to doom the Oslo Accords. Israel holds Deif chargeable for the demise of dozens of individuals in suicide bombings, together with a wave in 1996 that killed greater than 50 civilians.
Deif is claimed to have studied underneath Yahya Ayyash, a bombmaker with the nickname “Engineer” who was assassinated by Israel in 1996 with a cell phone full of explosives.
Deif moved up the ranks of the Qassam Brigades, the navy wing of Hamas, and the Israeli official stated he was concerned within the creation of the primary rudimentary rockets. Hamas’s arsenal is now within the tens of 1000’s they usually fired 3,500 on Saturday alone.
The Israeli official stated Deif sought high-impact targets, reminiscent of settlers and troopers within the occupied territories, buses in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. He additionally oversaw the rocket barrages that ship Israelis into bomb shelters at common intervals.
Inside Hamas, the official stated, Deif was an opponent of the sophisticated dance whereby Hamas would comply with halt preventing that sporadically flared in trade for Israel permitting extra funds into the blockaded strip or extra work permits for Gazans.
Whereas this association helped to handle cycles of violence, it has additionally led to 4 wars in 2009, 2011, 2014, 2021 after which this one, all of which the militants portrayed as a victory.
“This terrorist motion has completed this follow eternally,” stated the Israeli official of Saturday’s assault. “Now there can be no truce, solely retaliation.”
Which is strictly, it appears, what Deif had at all times wished.