Behind the Hamas attack on Israel, Hard Geopolitics lurk
By Bernard Siman - (11 October 2023)
Three key strategic issues underpin Hamas’s timing and extremely violent method in its recent attack on Israel. Rather than describing the facts, and staying away from the (very justified) emotional reactions, this piece will focus on these three strategic and geopolitical shifts in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf. --
Behind the Hamas attack on Israel, Hard Geopolitics lurk
Three key strategic issues underpin Hamas’s timing and extremely violent method in its recent attack on Israel. Rather than describing the facts, and staying away from the (very justified) emotional reactions, this piece will focus on these three strategic and geopolitical shifts in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf: Iran’s and Hamas’s potentially irreversible containment as a result of the Saudi-Israeli-US peace agreement; the control over three maritime chokepoints; and the long tail of consequences of the US disengagement from the Middle East that started with the Obama Administration.
As ever, Iran (and its international delivery arm, the IRGCs), with its complex geography, is a key player in this latest manifestation of violence in the Middle East. In many ways, this is the revenge of geography, which has been ignored for too long in favour of dreamy think pieces on how to achieve peace in the Middle East, penned with good intentions but without due reference to the realities of maps. As the saying goes: “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
Saudi-Israeli-US Peace Agreement: A Containment Strategy
The first key strategic shift behind the Hamas attack is the imminent Saudi-Israeli peace agreement, which would result in the containment of both Iran and Hamas. First because of the reported security and defence guarantees to be offered by the US to Saudi Arabia, and second because of the creation of a de facto maritime containment belt.
What is often conveniently overlooked is that Saudi Arabia always viewed its relationship with Israel through the prism of its foreign policy vis-a-vis the US. For decades, Saudi Arabia saw its regional policy as an integral part of its US policy, and that covered its Israel policy as well. This factor also explains the Saudi pivot towards more intensive and independent regional engagements and alliances after the US, under Obama, started disengaging from the region. It calculated that its bet on the US as a reliable ally would not yield unconditional support, and that the alternative would be to focus its efforts on regional geopolitics, to a large extent independently of the US. With the Trump administration, it saw an opportunity to re-engage the US anew in the region. And it worked, as the US moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and mediated the Abraham Accords between Israel on the one hand, and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco on the other. However, the level of engagement remained below the Saudi aspiration of having the US guarantee its security, as it had done for decades after WWII.
US Disengagement from the Middle East
US disengagement was epitomised by its lack of support for President Mubarak of Egypt during the Arab Spring, which stunned regional allies. It also reneged on its “Red Line” threat against the Syrian government after the latter’s reported use of chemical weapons. Obama thus upended the decades long US compact with regional rulers to guarantee regional stability and regime security in return for energy security. A vacuum of control ensued which is still being fought over by regional powers. The US’s so-called pivot was made possible because the shale revolution made the US self-sufficient in terms of its hydrocarbon needs. China, as ever, loomed large as the US decided to pivot to Asia to focus its resources there.
This sense of abandonment and insecurity in the region underpins much of what we see today in terms of regional conflicts. Moreover, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan created at least the dangerous perception of a weak and uncoordinated West, lacking the leadership of the US, and unwilling to stay the course. And “if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences”. These are uncomfortable realities for our policy-makers obsessed with values at the expense of our interests.
This brings us back to the future, as geostrategic realities reassert themselves: the security and defence guarantees that Saudi Arabia demanded of the US (as a price for its signing a peace deal with Israel) are a new-old version of the compact between Saudi Arabia/Gulf and the US that existed for decades since WWII.
Such guarantees, had the peace agreement come to fruition, would have led to weakening Iran beyond repair, both vis-a-vis its arch-rival, Saudi Arabia, and regionally. As Saudi Arabia was focusing on its own deal with the US and Israel, Hamas calculated that it, too, would be left totally isolated, to wither away on the vines of time and containment. Moreover, the agreement would likely have strengthened the hand of the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank, Hamas’s arch-rival. Add the Abraham Accords, and the extent of the potential containment and isolation becomes clear. The Abraham Accords are not only economically important, but in geopolitical terms they brought the Gulf states into the security architecture of the Eastern Mediterranean. This matters greatly to Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas: Gaza’s main maritime outlet is on the Eastern Mediterranean coast, which is controlled by Israel. Egypt, which is close politically to most (if not all) of the Gulf states, controls one of the main land crossings into Gaza.
The convergence of the threats to such vital strategic interests trumped any sectarian differences and rivalries between Shia Iran and Hizbollah on the one hand, and Sunni Hamas and Islamic Jihad on the other. Extreme violence was deployed by Hamas on behalf of this combine, to upend this expected diplomatic breakthrough and the consequent new regional security order. In all likelihood, it aims to provoke a wider regional war beyond the West Bank.
?Containment through maritime geopolitics
Iran faced a fundamental redrawing of the regional geostrategic map through containment, not only because of the US security guarantees to Saudi Arabia, but also as a consequence of maritime geopolitics.
The Abraham Accords and the planned Saudi-Israeli peace agreement would mean, in pure geostrategic terms, the creation of a US-centred ring of alliances controlling the maritime choke points of the Straits of Hormuz, the Suez Canal, and the Straits of Bab Al Mandab. This would hem Iran in, and effectively confine it to its continental reach into Afghanistan, Iraq and, through its Road Bridge in Iraq, into Syria and Lebanon, reaching the Eastern Mediterranean through its proxy, Hizbollah. In effect, both Iran and Hamas have failed strategically. Their tactical successes did not add up, ultimately, to changing their relative strategic position in the pecking order of regional players. Having failed to secure their positions through political and diplomatic means when the wind was in their sails, we now see the recourse to extreme violence, and potentially regional war. This political and diplomatic failure extends to the future of the recent Iran-Saudi reproachment, under the patronage of China (though the actual hard negotiations took place mainly in Baghdad). It may well be that Iran saw that rapprochement as a means to calm the waters and buy time as it tried to regain its bearings under the punishing sanctions and geopolitical containment. Moreover, ultimately Iran calculated that the damage to its relative strategic interests, caused by the strategic shifts mentioned above, will fundamentally and irrevocably weaken it. Its choice was clearly made to effectively abandon the China-sponsored rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. China now faces its first serious geopolitical test in the moving sands of the Middle East. It was always doubtful that its connectivity, trade, and investment agenda would translate into a geopolitical role amid the torrents of Middle East conflicts. China will let the parties fight it out and will shy away from getting involved – it might even start to think twice about its investments in non-essential sectors in the region (e.g., energy and ports).
?Iran’s Perennial Fears and Successful Hybrid War
Throughout its history Iran has suffered from “centrifugal claustrophobia”, regardless of regime. It has always attempted to push the line of confrontation and defence away from its Persian-dominated heartland. Its fears have always been enhanced, in Iran’s defensive thinking, by its multi-ethnic and sectarian composition. Looking at the map, this is not surprising: the 92% or so of Iran’s dominant Persian-Shiite ethno-sectarian group is concentrated in the centre of the current-day Iranian state. It is surrounded on all sides by a ring of hostile ethnicities, mostly Sunni groups, still within the internationally recognised borders of the modern Iranian state. Crucially, 65% of its oil production lies in the restive Arab southwest of the country, on the Gulf.
Iran’s influence in the region stems from combining both hard and soft power effectively. Its soft power emanates from the fact that the various Shia national ethnicities outside its borders, although they represent only about 10% (some 205 million people) of the global Muslim population, are concentrated in a contiguous belt stretching from India/Pakistan, Afghanistan and through Iraq to Syria and Lebanon on the Eastern Mediterranean, barely 200 km from Cyprus, the EU’s eastern most border point. This belt provides fertile ground for soft power influence, recruitment of militias, and the ability to melt into a generally sympathetic environment. Hence Iran’s ability to recruit Shia multi-ethnic militias totalling some 160,000 battle-hardened fighters.
Iran’s Hybrid Warfare methods have been effective, centred on an emotive message that combines theology, branding, hostility to western “facts”, and an organised and disciplined armed militia, proxies, and opportunistic partners to deliver effect. Using sectarian messaging to achieve nationalist Persian aspirations has been the stock-in-trade of Iran’s foreign entanglements, going back centuries to their rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. Through consistently combining hard and soft power over decades, it has succeeded in translating its military dominance and intimidation in Iraq and Lebanon into political dominance. It has done this by establishing political parties, backed up by local loyal militias, that dominate the Iraqi and Lebanese parliaments, taking advantage of the democratic process.
?Hizbollah: the wild card in any war scenario
Although Hamas and Islamic Jihad (the latter operating in the West Bank) are Sunni forces, their common interest with Iran in upending the planned geostrategic order across the Eastern Mediterranean, Levant, and the Gulf, resulted in what was reported as productive meetings in Beirut (reportedly attended by Hizbollah) since last August, with reported visits to Tehran and Moscow. This is a very significant development that, if true, may lead to escalation, as Hizbollah’s role may be to open the Southern Lebanese front. A quick look at the map indicates that an integrated war plan means attacks against Israel could be launched along the length of the line starting from Gaza to Southern Lebanon, and potentially along the Israeli-Syrian border.
A key factor in such a scenario is Hizbollah’s possession of a reported 150,000 Iranian-supplied missiles. Their use would stretch Israel’s armed forces. This led Israel and Iran to finally bring their shadow war into the open, but, crucially, to be fought on Syrian soil, away from their own territories. Russia sees an opportunity to further distract the west, stretch its attention, and create further chaos on Europe’s doorsteps; but only as long as its possession of the Tartus naval base on the Syrian Mediterranean coast and the Hmeimim Air Base are protected. This is a vital Russian strategic interest and a red line that Iran and Israel understand very well.
Regional military escalation seems in many ways inevitable, as Hamas will be decimated otherwise, and Iran strategically contained. The two allies effectively have only one way to go: to escalate. If Israel manages to implicate Iran explicitly in the Hamas attack, the region will very likely face an open war. The Saudi-Israeli-US peace deal is very likely going to be frozen. The region moves, yet again, to war instead of peace.
?Conclusions: What about EU’s enlightened self-interest
The EU and its Member States can’t continue their current modus operandi of disengagement, born largely out of the disappointment with the outcome of the Arab Spring, the failure of the Oslo agreements to deliver peace, and of being pre-occupied with the EU’s own real or perceived problems. For all practical purposes, only France has been providing leadership in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf. It is the only EU Member State that has demonstrated the willingness, focus, resources, reach and bandwidth to provide leadership.
This is not a war in a faraway place about which we know very little. Cyprus, the EU’s eastern most border point, is only 200 km from Gaza. This is literally on the EU’s doorsteps. And NATO’s too: Cyprus is home to the British Sovereign bases. There is an immediate need to identify and articulate the EU’s vital strategic interests in the Levant and the Gulf: maritime choke points and energy security (including hydrogen) loom large. Obsession with the domestic politics of immigration is a strategic distraction unless immigration is weaponised as a hybrid threat aimed at destabilising our societies, and to distract us from our vital strategic objectives.
The EU should urgently organise to formulate both immediate responses to this emerging crisis and the possible ramifications of a wider regional war on the one hand, and to adopt a longer-term statement of the EU’s vital strategic interests in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf, on the other. Such a statement should be accompanied by a clear allocation of the resources necessary, including military, to defend those interests. The Ukraine war has focused the EU’s attention on its eastern flank. This crisis should produce the same unity of purpose and effectiveness of action for its interests in the Eastern Mediterranean, Levant, and the Gulf. It is high time to abandon the tendency to be reactive. To be on the forefront in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf is to protect Europe’s vital interests, and its future prosperity and peace.-
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Unprecedented Israeli bombardment lays waste to Rimal in Gaza City
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip: Collapsed buildings, mangled infrastructure, streets turned into fields of rubble.Scenes of violence and destruction in the long-blockaded Gaza Strip have filled the world’s airwaves throughout four wars and countless rounds of hostilities between Israel and Hamas militants. But this conflict, Palestinians say, is different.On Tuesday, following a night of intense bombardment, residents were struggling to grasp the sheer scale of damage inflicted on Gaza City’s upscale Rimal neighborhood, with its shopping malls, restaurants, residential buildings and offices belonging to aid groups and international media far from the territory’s hard-hit border towns and impoverished refugee camps.Israel has hit Rimal, also home to Hamas government ministries, in the 2021 war, but never like this.Israeli bombs blew out walls and ripped off roofs of upper-class apartment towers. They toppled trees that had lined the sidewalks. They uprooted streets that had teemed with businessmen hustling to work and vendors hawking roasted nuts. They leveled mosques and university buildings and wrecked high-rise offices of companies and organizations like Gaza’s main telecommunications company and Bar Association.Among those broad boulevards full of beauty salons, falafel shops and pizzerias beat the heart of Gaza City. For many, the magnitude of the devastation there, affecting the territory’s middle and upper classes, had symbolic significance.“Israel has destroyed the center of everything,” said Palestinian businessman Ali Al-Hiyak from his home near Rimal. “That is the space of our public life, our community.”“They are breaking us,” he added.After Gaza’s Hamas rulers mounted the deadliest attack on Israel in decades, killing over 1,000 people and taking dozens hostage in a multi-pronged offensive, Israel unleashed what Gaza residents described as the most intense bombing campaign in recent memory, with hundreds of airstrikes Monday night.“These sounds are different,” 30-year-old Saman Ashour in Gaza City texted as she lay awake in a neighborhood north of Rimal, listening to the roar of explosions. “It’s the sound of revenge.”Residents said the Israeli military struck some buildings without first firing warning missiles as a precaution. The civilian death toll has been rapidly rising. Overall, Gaza health officials have reported the airstrikes have killed over 800 people and wounded thousands more. Israel has also cut off Gaza’s water supplies and electricity, worsening the territory’s already abysmal humanitarian conditions.The Israeli military’s Arabic spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, said that Israel was trying to “evacuate civilian populations from areas where Hamas has a military presence” before unleashing “powerful destruction.”That tactic is evident from staggering drone footage that shows vast swaths of central Gaza City reduced to nothing but dirt craters and ruins from demolished buildings.But most Palestinian civilians did not evacuate. There are no bomb shelters. Israel and Egypt tightly control the enclave’s borders and have not let anyone out. UN shelters are rapidly filling up.After the militant group’s unprecedented attack on Israeli civilians and soldiers, which stunned and terrorized a country long seen as invincible, analysts said it was clear the group bet all of its chips no matter the consequences. Israel was now waging a war not to repel Hamas, like in past rounds, but to destroy it.“The strategic prospect is to annihilate, destroy and demolish the military capacity of Hamas,” said Kobi Michael, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank. “Hamas brought this on the heads of the Gazans.”“If Israel is not aggressive enough,” he added, “that will only drag us to another front and to another conflict.”But Palestinians in Gaza see the Israeli military’s wrath as collective punishment.“We’re talking about damage to hospitals that can’t even run without fuel, the total demolition of homes and infrastructure,” said Iyad Bozum, spokesman for Gaza’s Interior Ministry. “At the end of this there will be nothing left to even reconstruct. It will be impossible to live here.”The strikes on Rimal early Tuesday killed ordinary residents like shopkeepers and local journalists and destroyed dozens of homes.Issa Abu Salim, 60, was seething as he stood amid the debris of his home, his clothes filthy with the dust of the destruction.“Our money is gone. My identity cards are lost. The entire house, all four floors, is lost,” he said. “The most beautiful area, they destroyed it.”
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Israeli village near the Gaza border lies in ruin, filled with the bodies of residents and militants
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KFAR AZA, Israel: On the road approaching this rural village, the bodies of militants lie scattered between the shells of burned-out cars. Walls and doors of what used to be neatly kept stucco homes are blasted wide open. As bags holding the bodies of slain residents await identification, the smell of death hangs thick in the hot afternoon air. This is the scene confronting Israel’s military as it battles to beat back a sweeping assault launched by Hamas from the Gaza Strip, in fighting that has killed hundreds in this country left reeling and the adjoining Palestinian enclave under heavy Israeli bombardment. “You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers in their bedrooms and how the terrorists killed,” Maj. Gen. Itay Veruz, a 39-year veteran of the Israeli army who led forces that reclaimed the village from militants, said Tuesday as he stood amid the wreckage. “It’s not a battlefield. It’s a massacre.” The Israeli military led a group of journalists, including an Associated Press reporter, on a tour of the village Tuesday, a day after retaking it from what they said was a group of about 70 Hamas fighters. Kfar Aza, surrounded by farms and just a few minutes down a country road from the heavily fortified fence Israel erected around Gaza, is one of more than 20 towns and villages attacked by Palestinian fighters early Saturday. Before the attack, the kibbutz, whose name means “Gaza village” in English, was a modestly prosperous place with a school, a synagogue and a population of more than 700. Walking through what is left provides chilling evidence of its destruction. On the town’s perimeter, the gate that once protected residents had been blasted open. Inside the settlement, the doors of many homes had been blown from their hinges by militants using rocket-propelled grenades. Throughout the town, walls and torched cars are riddled with bullet holes, tracing a path of violence that continues inside to bedrooms with mattresses spattered in blood, safe rooms that could not withstand the attack, even bathrooms. Inside one partially destroyed home a framed quotation from a popular television theme song hinted at what Kfar Aza meant to its residents: “I’ll be there for you, because you’re there for me, too,” it read. “In this house, we are friends.” Outside, unexploded hand grenades were scattered on the ground. A few minutes away, a Hamas flag lay crumpled in the dirt near a paraglider, used by militants to attack by air. By the time journalists were escorted into the town Tuesday, rescuers had already removed the bodies of most of the villagers killed in the attack. But reporters watched as crews carried several more bags containing bodies to a truck and then to a lot in front of Kfar Aza’s synagogue, where workers attached name tags. An AP reporter saw the bodies of about 20 militants, many of them badly bloated and disfigured. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers, in helmets and body armor, patrolled the town Tuesday, as the sounds of explosions and gunfire echoed in the distance. Veruz, retired from the military for eight years before he was recalled Saturday, said the scene was unlike anything he had ever witnessed, even in a country where violent clashes with Hamas and other militant groups are frequent. A military spokesman, Maj. Doron Spielman, agreed, comparing the toll in Kfar Aza and nearby villages he visited to scenes he witnessed as a New Yorker after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. “I remember going through 9/11 and waking up the next day, the next week, and everything had changed,” he said. “It’s the same thing again. But worse because we’re such a small country.”
Israeli village near the Gaza border lies in ruin, filled with the bodies of residents and militants (arabnews.com)
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Who is Mohammed Deif, the Hamas commander behind the attack?on Israel?
By Samia Nakhoul and Laila Bassam - October 11, 2023
DUBAI, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Israel calls last week's devastating attack by Hamas its 9/11 moment. The secretive mastermind behind the assault, Palestinian militant Mohammed Deif, calls it Al Aqsa Flood.
The phrase Israel's most wanted man used in an audio tape broadcast as Hamas fired thousands of rockets out of the Gaza strip on Saturday signalled the attack was payback for Israeli raids at Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque.
It was in May 2021, after a raid on Islam's third holiest site that enraged the Arab and Muslim world, when Deif began planning the operation that has killed 1,200 people in Israel and wounded more than 2,700, a source close to Hamas said.
"It was triggered by scenes and footage of Israel storming Al Aqsa mosque during Ramadan, beating worshippers, attacking them, dragging elderly and young men out of the mosque," the source in Gaza said. "All this fuelled and ignited the anger."
That storming of the mosque compound, long a flashpoint for violence over matters of sovereignty and religion in Jerusalem, helped set off 11 days of fighting between Israel and Hamas.
More than two years on, Saturday's assault, the worst breach in Israeli defences since the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict, pushed Israel to declare war and launch retaliatory airstrikes on Gaza that have killed 1,055 people and wounded more than 5,000.
Israel also said on Wednesday it had killed at least 1,000 Palestinian gunmen who infiltrated from Gaza.
A survivor of seven Israeli assassination attempts, the most recent in 2021, Deif rarely speaks and never appears in public. So when Hamas's TV channel announced he was about to speak on Saturday, Palestinians knew something significant was afoot.
"Today the rage of Al Aqsa, the rage of our people and nation is exploding. Our mujahedeen (fighters), today is your day to make this criminal understand that his time has ended," Deif said in the recording.
There are only three images of Deif: one in his 20s, another of him masked, and an image of his shadow, which was used when the audio tape was broadcast.
The whereabouts of Deif are unknown, though he is most likely in Gaza in the maze of tunnels under the enclave. An Israeli security source said Deif was directly involved in the planning and operational aspects of the attack.
Palestinian sources said one of the homes Israeli airstrikes hit in Gaza belonged to Deif's father. Deif's brother and two other family members were killed, according to the sources.
TWO BRAINS, ONE MASTERMIND
The source close to Hamas said the decision to prepare the attack was taken jointly by Deif, who commands Hamas's Al Qassam Brigades, along with Yehya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, but it was clear who was the architect.
"There are two brains, but there is one mastermind," the source said, adding that information about the operation was known only to a handful of Hamas leaders.
Secrecy was such that Iran, Israel's sworn foe and an important source of finance, training and weaponry for Hamas, knew only in general terms that the movement was planning a major operation and did not know the timing or the details, a regional source familiar with the group's thinking said.
The source said that while Tehran was aware a major operation was being prepared, it was not discussed in any joint operation rooms involving Hamas, the Palestinian leadership, Iranian-backed Lebanese militants Hezbollah, and Iran.
"It was a very tight circle," the source said.
Iran's top authority Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday Tehran was not involved in the attack on Israel. Washington has said while Tehran was complicit, it had no intelligence or evidence that points to Iran's direct participation in the attacks.
The plan as conceived by Deif involved a prolonged effort at deception. Israel was led to believe that Hamas, an ally of Israel's sworn foe Iran, was not interested in launching a conflict and was focusing instead on economic development in Gaza, where the movement is the governing power.
But while Israel began providing economic incentives to Gazan workers, the group's fighters were being trained and drilled, often in plain sight of the Israeli military, a source close to Hamas said.
"We have prepared for this battle for two years," said Ali Baraka, the head of external relations for Hamas.
Speaking in a calm voice, Deif said in his recording that Hamas had repeatedly warned Israel to stop its crimes against Palestinians, to release prisoners, whom he said were abused and tortured, and to halt its expropriation of Palestinian land.
"Every day the occupation storm our villages, towns and cities in the West Bank and raid houses, kill, injure, destroy and detain. At the same time, it confiscates thousands of acres of our land, uproots our people from their houses to build settlements while its criminal siege continues on Gaza."
'IN THE SHADOWS'
For well over a year, there has been turmoil in the West Bank, an area about 100 km (60 miles) long and 50 km wide that has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since it was seized by Israel in 1967.
Deif said Hamas had urged the international community to put an end to the "crimes of the occupation", but Israel had stepped up its provocation. He also said Hamas had in the past asked Israel for a humanitarian deal to release Palestinian prisoners, but this was rejected.
"In light of the orgy of occupation and its denial of international laws and resolutions, and in light of American and western support and international silence, we've decided to put an end to all this," he said.
Born as Mohammad Masri in 1965 in the Khan Yunis Refugee Camp set up after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the militant leader became known as Mohammed Deif after joining Hamas during the first Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, which began in 1987.
He was arrested by Israel in 1989 and spent about 16 months in detention, a Hamas source said.
Deif earned a degree in science from the Islamic University in Gaza, where he studied physics, chemistry and biology. He displayed an affinity for the arts, heading the university's entertainment committee and performing on stage in comedies.
Rising up the Hamas ranks, Deif developed the group's network of tunnels and its bomb-making expertise. He has topped Israel's most wanted list for decades, held personally responsible for the deaths of dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings.
For Deif, staying in the shadow has been a matter of life or death. Hamas sources said he lost an eye and sustained serious injuries in one leg in one of Israel's assassination attempts.
His wife, 7-month-old son, and 3-year-old daughter were killed by an Israeli air strike in 2014.
His survival while running Hamas's armed wing has earned him the status of a Palestinian folk hero. In videos he is masked, or just a shadow of him is seen. He doesn't use modern digital technology such as smart phones, the source close to Hamas said.
"He is elusive. He is the man in the shadows."
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