The seven lives of Mohammed Deif

3 min read EUGENIO GARCIA GASCON 1 comment

EUGENIO GARCIA GASCON

The Israelis believed that Mohammed Deif had serious functional difficulties that forced him to move around in a wheelchair, but videos released this week by the army show the head of the Hamas militias in the Gaza Strip fully functional, which has exposed the secret services to criticisms that must be added to those already accumulated in recent months.

Mohammed Deif has survived seven army attacks and on several occasions Israel has left him for dead, only to have to rectify them later. Although for years the intelligence services have referred to him disparagingly as “a piece of meat”, “half a man” or “a quarter of a man”, the terrible attack on October 7 shows a leader capable of surprising Israel. all the way.

An official from Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu's party, has said that the videos reflect the existence of serious problems in the intelligence services, which considered Deif useless. This voice joins those who demand, from within the coalition and from the opposition, a profound remodeling of all the secret services, including those of the army, which are widely considered responsible for October 7 by omission.

It is an attitude shared by Netanyahu, who in the past two and a half months has resisted assuming responsibilities and has transferred them to the secret services, especially those of the army, Aman, who together with the other secret services have played a sad paper. Once the war is over, heads will roll and Netanyahu is fighting for his.

In the new videos, Deif is not only seen walking on his own two feet, with a very slight limp, but also using his hands normally, something that contradicts what the intelligence services have stated for years and that ordinary Israelis believed at face value. joints. The videos were found by soldiers inside Gaza and appear to provide a lesson in humility to the powerful army.

In two of them Deif is seen in two different places. In one he walks almost normally and in another he is sitting, but not in a wheelchair. The physical condition that emerges from these images is significantly better than that transmitted by the intelligence services and clashes with verbal descriptions to the contrary. In several attacks over the years, Deif was seriously injured and presumed dead on more than one occasion.

Intelligence services believe that after some of these attacks, Deif temporarily left Gaza to travel to Iran, where he would have received medical treatment before returning to the Strip to lead Islamist militias. According to Israel, Deif has been wounded in at least four of the seven assassination attempts he has survived, some by bombs dropped from airplanes. On one occasion, one of these bombs completely destroyed the vehicle in which he was traveling and Deif suffered serious injuries.

In some previous videos, recorded in recent years and released by Hamas, Deif appears shadowed and in profile, sending messages to the enemy. He once said that Israel will pay a high price for its behavior, especially for its actions at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and for the expulsion of Palestinian families from homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, also in the occupied sector of Jerusalem. where the Israeli government promotes the entry of the Jewish population and expels the Palestinian population.

Just a few days ago, the air force dropped pamphlets over the Gaza Strip offering a lot of money to anyone who would hand over or betray Yahiya Sinwar, the top leader of Hamas in Gaza. $400.000 is being offered for Sinwar. The Israelis have also made another juicy offer for Mohammad Deif. Both are believed to be in the south of the Strip, and the army's priority is to find them, preferably alive, so they can be interrogated.

The fact that the videos show Deif walking and physically functional completely contradicts the information provided by the intelligence services. At 58 years old, he is one of the oldest members of the al Qassam Brigades. He was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp, where fierce battles are taking place these days, and studied Chemistry at the Islamic University of Gaza. Since 2002 he has been at the head of the Brigades, which under his leadership have experienced great development.