Ezzedin al-Haddad becomes Hamas’s third leader in seven months

After Israel killed his two predecessors, Ezzedin al-Haddad takes over a group that is battered and depleted of veterans but still deadly.

Hamas fighters in Gaza City in February. Picture: Mohammed Saber/Shutterstock

After more than 600 days of war and years of being steered by the brothers Yahya and Mohammed Sinwar, Hamas has a new leader in the Gaza Strip.

The US-designated terrorist group has handed control of its operations in the enclave to Ezzedin al-Haddad, an experienced fighter who helped plan the deadly Oct. 7 attacks, recruits the organisation’s fighters and oversees the captivity of Israeli hostages, keeping photos of many on his phone, Arab and Israeli officials and a former hostage said.

Haddad, the group’s third Gaza boss in seven months, takes over an operation sharply diminished by war with a vastly superior Israeli force. He didn’t have much competition for the post. Of the dozen and a half senior militants on Hamas’s military council before the war, only a handful are thought to be alive.

Israel killed his predecessor, Mohammed Sinwar, in a mid-May strike on a meeting of high-ranking militants in tunnels under the European Hospital in Khan Younis. The military says it has killed thousands of rank-and-file Hamas fighters and destroyed much of the group’s arsenal.

Still, Hamas’s ability to quickly replace new commanders after they are killed shows its durability and the challenges in achieving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stated goal of wiping it out.

Arab intelligence officials estimate that Hamas could have 25,000 people in its military wing. Picture: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images

While its authority has been eroded in areas such as Rafah, along the border with Egypt, and tested by protests, Hamas remains the Gaza Strip’s dominant armed force, recently executing a number of people it accused of stealing aid or belonging to a small, Israeli-backed Gaza militia.

“They are much weaker than 20 months ago, but we should be accurate,” said Michael Milshtein, a former head of Palestinian affairs for Israeli military intelligence. “They still control the public sphere. They are still the dominant player in Gaza.” Haddad is 55 years old, a Hamas official said. Known as the Ghost of al-Qassam for his low profile, he has survived several Israeli assassination attempts, though both of his sons were killed this year in the war.

He carries a $US750,000 Israeli bounty on his head. After Israel officially announced the death of Mohammed Sinwar at the end of May, Defence Minister Israel Katz said Haddad and Hamas leader abroad Khalil al-Hayya were next on the target list.

According to the Arab and Israeli officials, Haddad worked his way up through the group’s Al-Qassam Brigades, leading bigger and bigger groups of fighters before climbing to the top. He also served in al-Majd, the internal security force once led by Yahya Sinwar that rooted out collaborators and spies.

A day before the Oct. 7 attacks, Haddad held a secret meeting with Hamas commanders and handed them a document with instructions for the coming operation, including the mass abduction of Israeli soldiers. When Yahya was killed in October, Haddad took control of Hamas’s forces in the northern Gaza Strip, while Mohammed Sinwar ran the south.

One now-released Israeli hostage met Haddad five times while in captivity, sometimes sleeping in the same apartment. The first time they met, in March 2024, Haddad walked in, sat on the ground beside two hostages and asked “ma schlomchem” – “how are you” in Hebrew, which he insisted on using for the conversation.

Haddad told them he was responsible for all the hostages in Gaza. He then pulled out a smartphone and flipped through photos of different captives, including some the former hostage recognised. He would ask if the hostage needed anything and once ordered his men to retrieve a book the hostage had left behind when being moved.

When they met later, in another home in January, Haddad seemed different, the former hostage said. His face was covered this time, and his demeanour more negative. He complained about what he alleged were Israeli war crimes and abuse of Palestinian prisoners. The former hostage later learned that one of Haddad’s sons had just been killed by Israel.

Israel’s military has inflicted heavy losses on Hamas, estimating that it has killed as many as 20,000 of the 35,000 fighters it had before the war, though it doesn’t say how it came up with that figure.

Haddad has managed to attract thousands of new fighters. The recruits have only received minimal training or in some cases leaflets showing them how to use their weapons or conduct ambushes, Arab intelligence officials said. The officials estimate that Hamas could have 25,000 people in its military wing, as well as thousands more with other Gaza militant groups, many of them very green.

Israeli tanks take up positions in May near an aid-distribution site in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza Strip. Picture: Abdel Kareem Hana/Associated Press

Those fighters are short on gear, weapons and cash, Israeli and Arab officials said. Israel’s military estimates that Hamas had more than 20,000 rockets and mortars before the war and that at most 15 per cent of that capacity remains.

Arab intelligence officials said this spring the group is so short on cash that it can’t pay most of its fighters. Israel’s blockade of humanitarian goods cut off an important source of funds for Hamas, which would seize and sell some of the goods or use the deliveries to smuggle in contraband, Arab and Israeli officials said.

The blockade also caused widespread hunger and a humanitarian crisis in the enclave. Israel has since rolled out a new distribution scheme aimed at cutting out Hamas, but it has been criticised as poorly thought out and dangerous, and many Palestinians have been killed trying to cross combat zones to reach the distribution sites.

Israeli officials say Hamas made hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and goods in the first year of the war by reselling or taxing aid or contraband and demanding protection payments.

The group gave up to 25 per cent of the aid under its control to members of its military wing until around April 2024, according to one Hamas document found by the Israeli military inside Gaza. Later, for a reason Hamas didn’t explain, the group lowered the total amount given to its military wing to 7 per cent, with another 8 per cent going to political and administrative parts of the organisation, according to the document. Israeli officials couldn’t offer an explanation for the change.

Arab intelligence officials and a former senior Israeli intelligence official said the document appeared to be genuine. A Hamas official didn’t respond to a request to comment on the document’s authenticity. Aid groups and the United Nations say Israel has inflated the significance of Hamas’s diversion of aid.

Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. Picture: Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images

Israel’s military says it now holds about 50 per cent of the Gaza Strip and is slowly taking more, aiming to push the enclave’s population into a shrinking space and separate it from Hamas. The army is aiming to be in control of 75 per cent of Gaza by late July.

Haddad, however, retains the capacity to fight. Israel’s military concedes that 75 per cent of Hamas’s underground tunnels are intact and that the group is turning unexploded Israeli ordnance into bombs that can be used in ambushes.

In early June, three Israeli soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb as their Humvee travelled in an area thought to be fully under their control. Days later, another four soldiers were killed in the central Gaza city of Khan Younis, when a booby-trap exploded as they entered a building.

“They don’t need tens of thousands of weapons,” said Miri Eisin, a former deputy head of the Israeli military’s combat intelligence corps. “They just need to kill a soldier a day.” Where Haddad will take the group isn’t clear, but he has shown more signs of pragmatism than the Sinwar brothers, according to Arab intelligence officials and two Hamas officials.

With Hamas’s rank-and-file reeling at the beginning of the year, Haddad pressured Mohammed Sinwar to accept the deal ultimately struck in January to release hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and a pause in the fighting, they said.

He pushed Sinwar to release more hostages in order to extend the ceasefire before it ultimately collapsed in March, the Arab intelligence and Hamas officials said. Aware of Hamas’s dire position, he also has been more open to discussing Israeli and international demands that its militants disarm, which was opposed by the Sinwar brothers, they said.

Ultimately, however, he shares the belief that the hostages shouldn’t all be released without an Israeli withdrawal and end to the war.

The former hostage said that in one of their meetings, Haddad expressed concern about how the hostage would characterise the treatment in captivity. The former hostage told him some captors had been better than others.

“This is life,” Haddad responded, the former hostage recalled. “There are good people, and there are bad people.”

The Wall Street Journal