Israel is assassinating its way to victory

This piece was originally published in a different form on 16 July.

If the Pimpernel was damned and elusive, he had nothing on Mohammed ‘the guest’ al-Masri, the head of Hamas’s military wing. The ‘guest’ moniker – ‘Deif’ in Arabic – was gained by decades of moving from house to house nightly to avoid assassination. Despite reportedly losing an eye and a leg in attacks, he continued to evade the missiles as if charmed. The 58-year-old shadow was by far the longest-surviving senior leader of Hamas.

This morning, one day after the sensational assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, the IDF has finally confirmed his death. On 10.29 a.m. on Saturday 13 July, the skies above al-Mawasi, a safe zone west of Khan Younis, opened with the eighth assassination attempt, a significant barrage of JDAMs and at least one GBU ‘bunker buster’, just in case Deif slipped into a tunnel. For the Israelis, this was an opportunity that could not be squandered.