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Mohammed Deif: Al-Qassam Brigades Leader, Phantom who Survived Multiple Close Calls

A presumed image of Mohammed Deif released by Israel last year
A presumed image of Mohammed Deif released by Israel last year
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Mohammed Deif: Al-Qassam Brigades Leader, Phantom who Survived Multiple Close Calls

A presumed image of Mohammed Deif released by Israel last year
A presumed image of Mohammed Deif released by Israel last year

Before the current war in Gaza, Mohammed Deif, leader of Hamas’ military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, was known only to his family and a few within Hamas.

His true appearance remained a mystery until Israel released his image late last year, marking it as the fourth depiction. Previous images ranged from a young man to a masked figure and a silhouette.

The latest shows him calmly alongside someone with gray hair, a light beard, and one eye.

Deif maintained a high level of secrecy in all his movements. Even when his mother passed away in January 2011, it was unclear if he attended her funeral.

There were rumors he did, unrecognized, while others claimed he never attended due to security concerns. Some even suggested he disguised himself as an elderly man to bid his mother farewell before disappearing.

Deif appears not to use modern technology and is not fond of making public appearances. Rarely does he release voice messages, such as when he announced the start of new battles with Israel, including the Oct.7 Al-Aqsa Flood attacks.

Even during the current war, Israel’s pursuit of Deif in every corner of Gaza has proven elusive until now, with the targeting in Khan Younis marking the first revealed attempt after over nine months of conflict.

In fact, Israel has sought Deif since the mid-1990s. Shimon Peres, then Prime Minister in 1996, requested Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to arrest him, only for Arafat to express surprise at the name, seemingly unaware of him.

Peres later admitted discovering Arafat protected, hid, and lied about him.

Profile Overview

Real Name: Mohammad Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Deif. Born in 1965 to a Palestinian refugee family from Al-Qubeiba, settled in Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza.

Deif grew up in poverty, briefly leaving school to help support his family by working with his father in textiles and later starting a small poultry farm. He also worked as a driver before becoming a target of Israeli pursuit.

Known for his friendly demeanor and interest in theater, Deif joined Hamas in late 1987 through mosque connections. He completed his studies at the Islamic University of Gaza in 1988, earning a Bachelor’s degree in Science.

Arrested by Israel in 1989 without trial, he spent 16 months in prison accused of involvement in Hamas’ military wing. Upon release, he co-founded the Al-Qassam Brigades and played a significant role in operations against Israel throughout the 1990s.

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Winter Is Hitting Gaza and Many Palestinians Have Little Protection from the Cold

Reda Abu Zarada, 50, displaced from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, warms up by a fire with her grandchildren at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP)
Reda Abu Zarada, 50, displaced from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, warms up by a fire with her grandchildren at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP)
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Winter Is Hitting Gaza and Many Palestinians Have Little Protection from the Cold

Reda Abu Zarada, 50, displaced from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, warms up by a fire with her grandchildren at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP)
Reda Abu Zarada, 50, displaced from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, warms up by a fire with her grandchildren at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP)

Winter is hitting the Gaza Strip and many of the nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced by the devastating 14-month war with Israel are struggling to protect themselves from the wind, cold and rain.

There is a shortage of blankets and warm clothing, little wood for fires, and the tents and patched-together tarps families are living in have grown increasingly threadbare after months of heavy use, according to aid workers and residents.

Shadia Aiyada, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah to the coastal area of Muwasi, has only one blanket and a hot water bottle to keep her eight children from shivering inside their fragile tent.

“We get scared every time we learn from the weather forecast that rainy and windy days are coming up because our tents are lifted with the wind. We fear that strong windy weather would knock out our tents one day while we’re inside,” she said.

With nighttime temperatures that can drop into the 40s (the mid-to-high single digits Celsius), Aiyada fears that her kids will get sick without warm clothing.

When they fled their home, her children only had their summer clothes, she said. They have been forced to borrow some from relatives and friends to keep warm.

The United Nations warns of people living in precarious makeshift shelters that might not survive the winter. At least 945,000 people need winterization supplies, which have become prohibitively expensive in Gaza, the UN said in an update Tuesday. The UN also fears infectious disease, which spiked last winter, will climb again amid rising malnutrition.

The UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, known as UNRWA, has been planning all year for winter in Gaza, but the aid it was able to get into the territory is “not even close to being enough for people,” said Louise Wateridge, an agency spokeswoman.

UNRWA distributed 6,000 tents over the past four weeks in northern Gaza but was unable to get them to other parts of the Strip, including areas where there has been fighting. About 22,000 tents have been stuck in Jordan and 600,000 blankets and 33 truckloads of mattresses have been sitting in Egypt since the summer because the agency doesn’t have Israeli approval or a safe route to bring them into Gaza and because it had to prioritize desperately needed food aid, Wateridge said.

Many of the mattresses and blankets have since been looted or destroyed by the weather and rodents, she said.

The International Rescue Committee is struggling to bring in children’s winter clothing because there “are a lot of approvals to get from relevant authorities,” said Dionne Wong, the organization’s deputy director of programs for the occupied Palestinian territories.

“The ability for Palestinians to prepare for winter is essentially very limited,” Wong said.

The Israeli government agency responsible for coordinating aid shipments into Gaza said in a statement that Israel has worked for months with international organizations to prepare Gaza for the winter, including facilitating the shipment of heaters, warm clothing, tents and blankets into the territory.

More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry's count doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it has said more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The war was sparked by Hamas’ October 2023 attack on southern Israel, where the armed group killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in Gaza.

Negotiators say Israel and Hamas are inching toward a ceasefire deal, which would include a surge in aid into the territory.

For now, the winter clothing for sale in Gaza's markets is far too expensive for most people to afford, residents and aid workers said.

Reda Abu Zarada, 50, who was displaced from northern Gaza with her family, said the adults sleep with the children in their arms to keep them warm inside their tent.

“Rats walk on us at night because we don’t have doors and tents are torn. The blankets don’t keep us warm. We feel frost coming out from the ground. We wake up freezing in the morning,” she said. “I’m scared of waking up one day to find one of the children frozen to death.”

On Thursday night, she fought through knee pain exacerbated by cold weather to fry zucchini over a fire made of paper and cardboard scraps outside their tent. She hoped the small meal would warm the children before bed.

Omar Shabet, who is displaced from Gaza City and staying with his three children, feared that lighting a fire outside his tent would make his family a target for Israeli warplanes.

“We go inside our tents after sunset and don’t go out because it is very cold and it gets colder by midnight,” he said. “My 7-year-old daughter almost cries at night because of how cold she is.”