These are the latest in a long history of Israeli assassinations and attempts against Hamas’s most senior figures. Here’s what to know about the militant group’s top leadership.
Ismail Haniyeh is the group’s political leader and has been based abroad since 2019; his whereabouts are not known. He was a key aide to the group’s founder, Ahmed Yassin, who was killed in an airstrike in 2004, the Associated Press reported.
Hamas came to power in Gaza in 2006 after defeating the rival Fatah political party, which controls most of the West Bank, in legislative elections. (No votes have been held since.) Since that year, Hamas has repeatedly launched missiles at Israel from Gaza; Israel in turn has blockaded the territory and its inhabitants by land, air and sea, allowing only a small flow of goods and people through two land crossings, which have been cut off amid the fighting this week.
Haniyeh was elected president of Hamas’s political bureau in 2017 and reelected in 2021.
The State Department designated Haniyeh as a terrorist in 2018, saying: “Haniyeh has close links with Hamas’ military wing and has been a proponent of armed struggle, including against civilians.”
Mohammed Deif is the shadowy leader of Hamas’s military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, which was created around 1991. He is known for “deploying suicide bombers and directing the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers,” according to the State Department, which designated him a terrorist in 2015.
It is unclear whether Deif is his name or a nom de guerre. His whereabouts are not known; he does not appear in public, according to the Associated Press. He is rumored to use a wheelchair since an Israeli attack in 2006, The Post reported in 2014.
“Today the people are regaining their revolution,” he said in a rare recorded message on Saturday, announcing the start of Hamas’s assault on Israel, which he dubbed “al-Aqsa Storm.” The operation takes its name from al-Aqsa Mosque — which is located on a holy site known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount — which Israelis have raided in recent months.
On Wednesday, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon, Ahmed Abdulhadi, told The Washington Post that Israeli forces this week struck Deif’s family’s house, killing his brother, as well as Deif’s home, which was empty at the time.
Hamas previously said that Deif was the target of a failed assassination attempt in 2014, which killed his wife and infant son.
In 2014, when Israel and Hamas engaged in a seven-week war, which killed more than 2,200 people in Gaza and six civilians and 67 soldiers in Israel, The Post reported that Deif was behind Hamas’s strategy of firing rockets and building tunnels for fighters to infiltrate Israel. A former Israeli national security adviser, retired Gen. Giora Eiland, said at the time that Deif was Hamas’s decision-maker.
Yahya Sinwar is Hamas’s political leader in Gaza. Born in 1962, Sinwar previously served as the leader of what would later become the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades.
He was imprisoned in Israel for the kidnap and murder of two Israeli soldiers in the late 1980s, before being released as part of a prisoner swap to secure the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011, according to the State Department.
The State Department designated Sinwar a terrorist in 2015, alongside Deif.
Israeli officials said they targeted Sinwar’s home and office in the south of the Gaza Strip during an uptick in hostilities in 2021.
Kobi Michael, an analyst and former Israeli government official, told The Post at the time that while Sinwar was a “hard line leader,” he had promoted Egyptian mediation during border conflicts in 2018 and 2019 and had sought to improve the humanitarian and economic situation in Gaza.
Sarah Dadouch, Adam Taylor, Claire Parker, Noga Tarnopolsky and Sudarsan Raghavan contributed to this report