“They are living on borrowed time,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant stated after the October 7 assault by Hamas, referring to the management of the Islamist militant group. There’s a poster hanging on the wall of his workplace in Tel Aviv, in line with stories, exhibiting faces of Hamas commanders. At the highest of the pyramid are Hamas’s excessive command, together with Muhammed Deif, head of its navy wing Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, and Yahya Sinwar, the group’s chief in Gaza. Israel believes that Deif, the shadowy commander who escaped a number of assassination makes an attempt prior to now, was the mastermind of the October 7 assault wherein some 1,200 Israelis have been killed. They additionally say Sinwar, being the chief of the group in Gaza, will need to have been a part of the planning. While Sinwar and Deif run operations inside Gaza, Hamas’s total organisational chief is Ismail Haniyeh. Khaled Meshal, one of many founding members of Hamas’s Political Bureau and a former chairman, is one other key chief inside Islamist motion. Both Haniyeh and Meshal reside in Qatar.
Yahya Sinwar
The Israeli Defence Force referred to as Sinwar after the October 7 assault “a dead man walking”. He has not been seen within the public ever since. Israeli officers say Sinwar have to be hiding in one of many bunkers of Gaza and capturing him or killing him stays one of many targets of Israel’s assault on Gaza wherein greater than 15,000 individuals, a overwhelming majority of them girls and kids, have already been killed.
Born in a refugee camp in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, Sinwar grew up below Israeli occupation. His mother and father have been from Ashkelon (at this time’s Israel) from the place they have been pressured out when the state of Israel was created in 1948 in what Palestinians name Nakba (disaster). Some 7,00,000 Palestinians have been made refugees between 1948-49. Sinwar grew to become lively within the Muslim Brotherhood within the Nineteen Eighties and was first arrested by Israel in 1982, when he was 19. When Hamas was based in 1987, Sinwar established the group’s inside safety organisation, al-Majd, which was accused of concentrating on a number of Palestinians “for collaborating” with Israel. In 1988, he was arrested by the Israelis, convicted for the homicide of 12 Palestinians and sentenced for 4 life sentences. He spent 22 years in Israeli prisons.
Sinwar was launched in 2011 as a part of a prisoner swap deal when Israel freed 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in trade for one soldier, Gilad Shalit. By that point, Hamas was already in energy in Gaza. As a former inside safety chief who spent 20 years in Israeli prisons, Sinwar already loved a cult standing amongst Hamas’s high ranks. He rose rapidly inside the motion. In 2017, he took over Hamas’s management from Ismail Haniyeh inside Gaza. He has stored that place since.
Muhammed Deif
The Qassam Brigades chief has been on Israel’s kill checklist at the very least for the reason that early 2000s. In 2002, he misplaced a watch in an Israeli strike. In 2006, Israel struck a constructing wherein Hamas leaders had assembled. The assault significantly injured Deif, however he survived. In August 2014, after an preliminary ceasefire was introduced following weeks of preventing, Israel carried out an airstrike concentrating on him. The assault killed his spouse and two youngsters, however he escaped once more. The escapes earned him the nickname among the many Palestinians, “the cat with nine lives”.
Born in Khan Younis, Gaza, within the Fifties, Deif, whose actual title is Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, studied in Gaza’s Islamic University, which was co-founded in 1978 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas’s non secular chief. Deif was an lively member of the Muslim Brotherhood and when Hamas was based, after the primary intifada broke out in 1987, Deif joined the brand new Islamist motion.
During the intifada protests, he was briefly arrested by the Israelis. Having orchestrated a number of assaults within the Nineteen Nineties, Deif rose by Hamas’s ranks rapidly. In 2002, on the peak of the second intifada, he was appointed the top of the Qassam Brigades, after its chief Salah Shehade was killed by Israel. Named after Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, an Islamic preacher who led violent resistance towards British colonialists and Zionist settlers in historic Palestine and was killed in 1935, the Brigades was concerned in assaults on Israeli troops in addition to civilians.
After Deif took over the Brigades, Hamas carried out a number of suicide assaults inside Israel. Israel holds him personally accountable for the deaths of a lot of its residents. The U.S. has additionally designated him a terrorist. In 2015, the U.S. State Department stated Deif “is known for deploying suicide bombers and directing the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. During the 2014 conflict, Deif was the mastermind of Hamas’s offensive strategy.” Hamas doesn’t remark about his whereabouts or well being. But each his admirers and detractors say Deif is totally accountable for the Qassam Brigades.
Ismail Haniyeh
As chairman of the Political Bureau of Hamas, Haniyeh, who’s at the moment dwelling in Qatar, is seen as the general chief of the group (although it isn’t clear how a lot authority he can train over Hamas in Gaza). Like Sinwar, Haniyeh was additionally concerned with Hamas’s radical operations within the late Nineteen Eighties and bought arrested a number of instances by the Israelis.
After he was launched from jail in 1992, Israel exiled him, together with a bunch of different Hamas leaders, to a no-man’s land in southern Lebanon. A yr later, he returned to Gaza. His fast rise inside Hamas would start after he was chosen to move the workplace of the motion’s non secular chief, Sheikh Yassin, in 1997.
In 2006, when the Palestinian Authority held parliamentary elections within the West Bank and Gaza, Haniyeh was the Parliamentary chief of Hamas. The Islamist group clinched a shocking victory within the election and Haniyeh grew to become the ‘Prime Minister of the State of Palestine’. But as tensions between Fatah, the occasion of President Mahmoud Abbas, and Hamas emerged, Mr. Abbas dissolved the Hamas authorities in 2007. Haniyeh didn’t settle for his decree and continued to rule from Gaza, whereas Fatah ran the authority within the West Bank.
Haniyeh stepped down because the Hamas chief in Gaza in 2017, paving the way in which for Sinwar’s rise. In the identical yr, Haniyeh was appointed the chairman of Hamas’s Political Bureau, taking up from Khaled Meshal.
Khaled Meshal
One of the founders of Hamas, Meshal, who was born within the West Bank in 1956, has been on Israel’s hit checklist for a very long time. In 1997, whereas Meshal was dwelling in Jordan, Mossad tried to assassinate him by injecting toxic substances.
But two Mossad brokers have been captured by Jordanian authorities. The then chief of Jordan, King Hussein, requested Israel to supply the antidote to avoid wasting his life and Benjamin Netanyahu lastly did that. The failed assassination plot boosted Meshal’s standing inside Hamas’s ranks. After Israel killed Hamas leaders Sheikh Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, Meshal grew to become the group’s total chief. Hamas clinched the election victory in 2006 below his management.
He stepped down because the chairman of the Political Bureau in 2017 and is now the top of the group’s abroad department. He is seen as one of the vital influential leaders of the group.
Content Source: www.thehindu.com