Israel seeks proof of whether strike killed Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif
Israel’s military says it could take weeks to confirm if Hamas’s top commander Mohammed Deif had died in a Gaza air strike.
Israel’s military is assessing whether it successfully killed Hamas’s top commander Mohammed Deif in an air strike in southern Gaza a day earlier, military officials said.
An Israeli official said on Sunday there was reason to believe the strike achieved its aim, but it could be days or weeks until Israeli authorities can determine with certainty whether Deif was killed.
Rafa Salama, a Hamas brigade commander who was targeted alongside Deif, was declared dead by Israel’s military on Sunday.
Hamas officials denied Deif had been killed and said he was in good enough health to listen to a press conference about the attack held on Saturday night by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Mohammed Deif hears you now and mocks your false statements that are empty of their content,” said senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya in remarks to the Arabic press republished separately by the group on Saturday.
Mr Netanyahu said during the press conference that there was no confirmation Deif had been killed.
Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi on Sunday accused Hamas of trying to hide the results of the strike.
If Deif is in fact dead, he would be the most senior leader of the US-designated terrorist group to have been killed by Israel in more than nine months of fighting in the Gaza Strip, which followed the Hamas-led October 7 attack that left 1200 people dead in Israel, mostly civilians, and more than 240 taken as hostages.
A Hamas spokesperson on Sunday denied media reports that Hamas had pulled out of negotiations that would pause the fighting in exchange for the release of hostages still held in Gaza.
Israel and Hamas revived US and Arab-mediated attempts to reach an agreement in the past week after several previous failures to do so.
Israel hasn’t received a formal response from Hamas about any change in the negotiations, but that doesn’t mean it won’t come soon, an Israeli official said.
It could take Israel days or weeks to gather enough intelligence to feel confident in stating what happened to Deif.
Israel took two weeks before announcing it had successfully killed Deif’s deputy, Marwan Issa, after a March 10 strike in central Gaza. His death was never officially confirmed by Hamas.
To assess whether Deif was killed, Israel will likely tap into the same intelligence assets that helped locate him right before he was targeted, said Yossi Kuperwasser, a former head of research for Israeli military intelligence.
Some types of intelligence are viewed as more reliable than others. A photo of Deif’s dead body would be more conclusive than human intelligence, said Kuperwasser.
Israel is likely to approach the issue with “a high level of caution” given the fact that Deif has been thought to have been killed in the past, only to emerge alive. The strike on Saturday marked at least the fifth time Israel has tried to kill him.
The strikes sent large plumes of smoke into the air and left a huge crater in the ground, according to videos from the scene.
“Judging by what happened on the ground, it’s very difficult to believe that someone survived the strike,” Mr Kuperwasser said.
Gaza officials said 90 people were killed by Saturday’s attack, more than half of them women and children.
The officials said the strike was in the al-Mawasi area, where Israel has told Palestinian civilians to move to avoid fighting elsewhere.
More than 38,000 people have been killed in the enclave since the start of the war, most of them civilians, according to Gaza health authorities. The numbers don’t say how many were combatants.
Israeli officials said the strike was carried out in a fenced area controlled by Hamas within a broader open area, not a place with tents, and that most of the people killed were militants, including people assigned to guard Deif and Salama.
The high Palestinian death toll from the strike sparked criticism from Hamas’s main political rival, Fatah, which said the group was endangering Palestinian civilian lives.
“Hamas should be protecting civilians not hiding itself among them,” said Munir al-Jaghoub, a Fatah official in the West Bank, in a televised interview with Al Arabiya on Saturday.
Hamas accused Mr Jaghoub of “adopting the narrative” of Israel and said the idea that Deif was the strike’s target was an excuse by Israel for killing dozens of civilians.
Saleh al-Batati and Abeer Ayyoub contributed to this article.
The Wall Street Journal
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