JERUSALEM: Israel has threatened that every Hamas member faces death when it invades Gaza but two accused masterminds of the Oct 7 attacks are at the top of its hit list.
Military strategist Mohammed Deif and political leader Yahya Sinwar have already spent time in Israeli or Palestinian jails and been the targets of multiple attempts to kill them.
The hunt for the two most senior Hamas leaders in the besieged Gaza Strip will be fierce this time.
In the war of words leading up to the impending ground offensive, Israel has said that Sinwar is “a dead man walking” after Hamas fighters killed about 1,400 people and abducted more than 200 in the worst attacks suffered by Israel since its creation 75 years ago.
Israel has responded with a withering bombardment of Gaza that has killed more than 3,700 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and with a volley of deadly warnings.
“Hamas terrorists have two options: Be killed or surrender unconditionally. There is no third option,” Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said.
Hamas spokesmen have responded that the Palestinian group is “not scared”.
Security sources outside Gaza say Deif and Sinwar are now embedded in a network of tunnels built to resist the bombing campaign launched after the brutal attacks on communities and military bases near the border shook Israel to its core.
But the pair have spent years operating in the shadows.
Israel has singled out the 61-year-old Sinwar, who was elected Hamas leader in Gaza in 2017 after Ismail Haniyeh became the movement’s supreme leader. Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht called Sinwar the “face of evil” and declared him a “dead man walking”.
Sinwar was a founding member of Hamas in 1987 during the first Palestinian intifada or uprising and rose through the ranks as a fierce advocate of armed struggle.
A graduate of the Islamic University in Gaza, he learned Hebrew during 23 years in Israeli jails.
Sinwar was serving four life terms for the killing of two Israeli soldiers when in 2011 he became the most senior of 1,100 Palestinians released in exchange for French-Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Source: CNA
