The Hamas commander Israel couldn’t kill: How one-eyed, triple-amputee terror boss Mohammed Deif survived multiple assassination attempts and an airstrike that left him wheelchair-bound before ordering Israel massacre

It all started with an ominous voice ordering hundreds of Hamas terrorists to cross the border to launch a bloody attack on Israel that has seen more than 700 Israelis massacred so far.

That ominous voice, broadcast to fighters across Gaza, belonged to one-eyed terror boss Mohammed Deif, 58, who has been a thorn in Israel’s side for years despite several assassination attempts.

This fearsome figure has managed to rise through the ranks of Hamas and somehow survived five assassination attempts that saw both his legs and an arm and his wife and two children killed.

And now, Deif, who was formerly a bomb maker, has staged a carefully planned and deadly attack on Israel that has caught Israeli officials by surprise.

He ordered militants to use explosives and bulldozers to breach the fences encircling Gaza to let hundreds more through.

Deif, who was behind a decade-long program to dig tunnels under Gaza, was born Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri in the Khan Younis refugee camp in 1965, when Gaza was under Egyptian control.

His nom de guerre ‘Guest’ is considered a reference to the practice of Palestinian fighters spending each night at the property of a different sympathizer to stay out of sight of Israeli intelligence.

“We have decided to put an end to this (Israeli insults) with the help of God, so that the enemy will understand that the time of destruction without taking responsibility is over. We announce the start of the operation to flood Al Aqsa,” the figure said in the audio recording on Saturday.

“We also announce with the help and strength of God that the first strike of the Al Aqsa flood operation has targeted the enemy’s sites, his airfields and military fortifications during the first 20 minutes, with more than 5,000 missiles and rockets launched.

Gunmen from the Palestinian group Hamas stormed Israeli cities on Saturday, killing hundreds of Israelis and making off with dozens of hostages in the deadliest day of violence in Israel since the Yom Kippur war 50 years ago.

The massive raid in the early hours of Saturday left at least 700 dead in Israel and another 1,200 injured, many of them in critical condition.

“This is the day of the biggest battle to end the last occupation on earth,” said Deif, who is behind a decades-long campaign against the Jewish state, announcing the start of the operation in a broadcast on Hamas media and appealed to the Palestinians. everywhere to fight.

Deif said Saturday’s attack was in response to the 16-year blockade of Gaza, Israeli attacks inside West Bank cities over the past year, violence at Al Aqsa – Jerusalem’s disputed holy site as holy to Jews as the Temple Mount. – increasing settler attacks on Palestinians and increasing settlements.

“Enough is enough,” Deif, who has not appeared publicly, said in the recorded message.

He said the attack was just the beginning of what he called Operation Al-Aqsa Storm and called on Palestinians from east Jerusalem to northern Israel to join the fight.

He said: ‘Today the people are regaining their revolution.’

Israel, which has pursued Deif for decades, twice tried and failed to kill Hamas’ top military commander in May 2021, but he survived both attacks, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman said.

Few photographs of the elusive figure exist in the public domain.

In interviews, Palestinian and Israeli analysts, including people who knew Deif before he disappeared from public view, described him as a quiet, intense man who expressed no interest in the destructive rivalries of Palestinian factions.

They said he was alone in changing the nature of the Israeli-Arab conflict and using violence as a means to achieve it.

Deif, the commander of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, which has previously carried out terror attacks, including bus bombings in Israel, was targeted during the May 2021 Gaza attacks but escaped unharmed, the IDF says.

The IDF had previously tried to kill Deif. There were strikes in 2001, 2002, 2006 and 2014.

Seven other senior Hamas commanders were also targeted, a military spokesman added, saying some were wounded but all survived.

Among the targets was the home of Yahya Sinwar, dubbed the ‘butcher of Khan Younis’ – the leader of Hamas in Gaza and the creator of the brigade that Deif leads.

His house was destroyed, although he is not thought to have been in it at the time.

The IDF began releasing details of its ‘hit list’ as commanders asked for more time to continue the hunt amid mounting pressure for a ceasefire at the time.

An Israeli official familiar with his file on the Shin Bet intelligence service told the Financial Times that either Deif’s uncle or father had been involved in sporadic raids in the 1950s by armed Palestinians in the same area of ​​land that Deif’s fighters penetrated on Saturday .

Along with others in Hamas, Deif views the Oslo Accords, which briefly promised a negotiated peace deal in the late 1990s, as a betrayal of its resistance and original goal of replacing Israel with a Palestinian state.

“Deif has tried to start Israel’s second war of independence,” said Eyal Rosen, a colonel in the Israeli army reserves who in a previous role focused on the Gaza Strip.

“The main goal is – step by step – to destroy Israel. This is one of the first steps – this is just the beginning.’