A commander who lost his wife and infant in the resistance but has not given up.
The Zionists have tried to assassinate him seven times so far, each time failed.
The British website of the BBC reported on “Mohammad Al-Daif” the commander of the resistance group “Kataeb Izz al-Din al-Qassam” of the military branch of Hamas and wrote that the Zionist regime tried to assassinate him at least twice in the recent Gaza war and failed.
The report said that last month an audio file of Commander Izz al-Din al-Qassam was released, strongly warning Israel that it would pay a “heavy price” if it did not comply with Hamas demands. The voice belonged to Mohammed al-Daif, commander of Hamas’ military wing, who is now Israel’s first and foremost target; A person who has re-entered the media arena after seven years of silence.
Heidi Zilbermann, a spokeswoman for the Israeli army, told the BBC that he had been assassinated twice in the recent Gaza war, but had escaped more than five times in the past two decades.
He acknowledged that Israeli military officials, who had been trying to oust a large number of resistance commanders in the recent Gaza war, had grown tired of the so-called cat-and-mouse game.
“It is clear that the Israelis have a list of people who they believe are the basis of Hamas’s military power and that Muhammad al-Daif is at the helm,” Matthew Levitt, a West Asian analyst, told the BBC.
BBC added: “Everything we know about Zaif comes from the Palestinian and Israeli media. That he was born in the camp of Khan Yunis in 1965. [56 years old] When the Gaza Strip was under the control of the Egyptian government. “His name is on the identity card of ‘Muhammad Diab Ibrahim al-Masri’, and since he is always on the run and somehow the guest is the same every day and he stays in the house of friends and acquaintances, he has been given the title of Muhammad al-Daif.”
No further information is available on him. Al-Daif joined the Hamas movement as a young man in the middle of the first intifada in 1987 and quickly rose through the ranks. According to Matthew Levitt, Mohammad al-Zaif was close to Hamas leaders, including the martyr Yahya Ayash (known as the Engineer). Yahya Ayash was assassinated in 1996, and Mohammad al-Daif also planned and carried out several revenge operations.
According to the BBC, “Mohammad Al-Daif” developed the weapons capability of Izz al-Din al-Qassam, including al-Qassam rockets, as well as digging tunnels, and is said to spend most of his time fleeing Israeli terror operations and military operations. At the beginning of his term, he was assassinated four times, in one of which he lost an eye.
The story of this assassination operation dates back to 2006 when an Israeli fighter targeted the house of a Hamas leader in Gaza. A retired Zionist general told the BBC: “Many thought he could not continue as a commander at all, but he recovered as much as he could, and although he lost one eye, he has another.”
The BBC then wrote that Mohammed al-Daif was known among his enemies as a cat with nine souls because of his escapes from assassination operations. The fifth assassination attempt was made during the 2014 Gaza war, when an Israeli fighter bombed a house in the Sheikh Rezwan neighborhood of Gaza, killing his wife Vadad and his infant Ali.
The Israeli regime thought it had killed Mohammed al-Daif, but he was not bombed, and Hamas later announced that Mohammed al-Daif was alive and would continue to command military operations.
Al-Daif’s name once again came to the fore on the eve of the recent clashes in Palestine, and the Palestinians shouted his name in their demonstrations, whether in the Al-Aqsa Mosque or in other parts of the old neighborhood of occupied Jerusalem.