Pinned
Ronen Bergman and Patrick Kingsley
Here are the latest developments.
Israel tried to kill a top Hamas military commander believed to be an architect of the Oct. 7 attack in an airstrike on Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. The Gaza authorities said about 90 people had been killed in the strike, which hit an area Israel had designated as a humanitarian zone.
At a news conference, Mr. Netanyahu said Israel did not yet have “absolute clarity” as to whether the commander, Muhammad Deif, had been killed. Mr. Deif is the leader of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing.
“His hands are steeped in the blood of many Israelis,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “At the beginning of the campaign, I laid down a rule: The Hamas murderers are dead men, from the first to the last.”
A mysterious figure who has long been one of Israel’s most wanted men and has escaped multiple assassination attempts, Mr. Deif is considered the most senior Hamas figure in Gaza after its leader there, Yahya Sinwar.
Hamas said in a statement that Israel’s “allegations about targeting leaders are false” and were “merely to cover up the scale of the horrific massacre.”
The strike hit inside a strip of coastal land on the Mediterranean Sea known as Mawasi where Israel began urging Gazans to seek safety early in the war. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have sought refuge in the area, according to U.N. officials.
In a statement about the strike, the military said the attack hit “an open area surrounded by trees, several buildings and sheds,” and it posted an aerial photograph of a plot of land filled with palm trees and a few buildings. Four Israeli officials said the military had targeted Mr. Deif while he was inside a fenced Hamas-run compound that was not used as a camp for displaced people.
Video from the scene of the strike appeared to corroborate parts of the military’s statement but not others.
Israel first designated the area a “humanitarian zone” in October, after it began encouraging residents of Gaza City to move southward ahead of its ground invasion. The area was at first roughly a half-mile wide and about three miles long, but later expanded to roughly four miles wide and nine miles long, according to military maps.
Video footage taken by Mustafa Abutaha, a professor of English, showed a large crater in a tree-lined plot of land near a four-story residential building. A high wall separated part of the plot from the road, suggesting that it was an enclosed compound. But as he filmed the video, Mr. Abutaha said the plot had housed displaced people. Shortly afterward, a second man passed in front of the camera, holding a motionless child.
Two Israeli officials said that Mr. Deif had been targeted while he was above ground, after leaving Hamas’s tunnel network under Gaza. All the Israeli officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Here’s what else to know:
Israeli officials said the strikes on Saturday had also targeted Rafah Salameh, the top Hamas commander in Khan Younis, who was with Mr. Deif at the time of the attack.
The Gazan authorities said that a second, smaller strike hit the center of Khan Younis, a nearby city to the east of Mawasi.
A senior American official said that Israel had told Washington that it targeted Mr. Deif, but the official said that neither Israel nor the United States could yet confirm his status.
On Saturday, relatives of hostages held in Gaza completed a four-day march between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The marchers aimed to heighten pressure on the Israeli government to agree to a deal with Hamas that would stop the fighting in Gaza and release their relatives.
Hiba Yazbek, Aaron Boxerman and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
July 13, 2024, 2:32 p.m. ET
Aaron Boxerman
Amid a flurry of negotiations this week to reach a cease-fire deal and release the remaining hostages, Mr. Netanyahu on Saturday vowed that he would not “move one millimeter” from the framework that President Biden laid out in May. Hamas had demanded amendments, but Netanyahu said he would not allow “even one change.”
July 13, 2024, 2:13 p.m. ET
Aaron Boxerman
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel told reporters that Israeli forces tried to assassinate Muhammad Deif, the Hamas military chief, on Saturday. At a news conference, Netanyahu said Israel did not yet have “absolute clarity” as to whether the top Hamas commander had been killed.
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July 13, 2024, 2:35 p.m. ET
Aaron Boxerman
Mr. Netanyahu said that Ronen Bar, the Shin Bet intelligence director, presented the details of the operation at midnight. The prime minister said he had asked the security chief whether there were hostages in the area, the scale of the strike’s potential collateral damage and what kinds of munitions were to be used. “When I received answers that soothed my concerns, I gave the go-ahead,” Mr. Netanyahu said.
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July 13, 2024, 2:13 p.m. ET
Eric Schmitt
Three senior U.S. officials confirmed that Muhammad Deif, the Hamas military commander, was the target of the Israeli airstrike on Saturday. The officials said Mr. Deif and another senior leader were above ground at the time of the attack and not in one of the tunnels Hamas uses to hide weapons and fighters beneath Gaza.
The officials did not confirm whether Mr. Deif or the other commander had been killed.
Two officials said the operation had been in the works “for a while.”
It was not immediately clear if the U.S. provided intelligence to the Israelis ahead of the attack on Saturday, but American intelligence agencies, particularly the C.I.A., have previously provided Israel with information about senior Hamas leaders, including Mr. Deif and Yahya Sinwar, the top Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip.
July 13, 2024, 3:04 p.m. ET
Eric Schmitt
An official in the U.S. Department of Defense later said the Americans had not been involved in or told about the operation ahead of time: “I’m not going to discuss intelligence matters, but there was no U.S. involvement in this I.D.F. operation.”
July 13, 2024, 2:03 p.m. ET
Adam Rasgon
What is Mawasi, the ‘humanitarian zone’ where a Hamas commander was targeted?
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The Israeli airstrike targeting the commander of Hamas’s military wing on Saturday hit Mawasi, a narrow strip of coastal land in southern Gaza that Israel has designated as a “humanitarian zone.”
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have sought refuge in the area, according to U.N. officials. They have set up tents and makeshift shelters in the hopes of evading airstrikes and street battles between the Israeli military and Hamas fighters. Despite the area’s designation as a “safer zone,” Israel has dropped bombs there and accused Palestinian militants of operating amid the civilian population to fire rockets.
Israeli officials said the military had targeted the commander, Muhammad Deif, while he was inside a fenced Hamas-run compound that was not used as a camp for displaced people.
Israel first designated the area a “humanitarian zone” in October after it began encouraging residents of Gaza City to move southward ahead of its ground invasion into northern Gaza. It initially encompassed an area roughly a half-mile wide and about three miles long, according to a military map.
By December, it had been expanded to an area roughly 1.5 miles wide and five miles long, according to a military map. In May, when Israel launched its invasion into the southern city of Rafah, it expanded the zone to encompass much of central and southern Gaza, up to roughly four miles wide and nine miles long, according to a military map.
Many of the roughly million people who left Rafah as Israel pressed further into the town squeezed into the expanded Mawasi “humanitarian zone.”
Palestinians in the area have described harrowing conditions, including overcrowding, a lack of clean water, long lines for bathrooms, and rivers of sewage. For much of the population, finding food has also been a daily struggle, especially for those who cannot readily afford goods in markets.
“The situation is catastrophic,” said Ali Jebril, 27, a wheelchair-bound basketball player staying in a tent in Mawasi. “We’re living through a nightmare.”
July 13, 2024, 12:58 p.m. ET
Ameera Harouda
Mohammad Yousef, 48, said that he was having breakfast with his elderly mother when “suddenly the tent collapsed over our heads and the sand buried us.” The blast and shrapnel wounded four of his nine family members, who were taken to nearby hospitals, he said. “I have never heard or seen an attack as strong as this one.”
Mr. Yousef said he had helped rescue people from under the debris after the strike, adding that many of the recovered had what appeared to be "fatal injuries.” Some of the bodies he encountered, he said, were “cut in half.” The Israeli military did not warn the civilians in the area to evacuate before the strikes, which were “a complete surprise,” he said. “That’s why the death toll was so high.”
Mr. Yousef and his family were displaced 12 times before ending up in Mawasi in Khan Younis, where they have been sheltering for over five months. “It was the only place we felt comfortable and relatively safe,” he said. “This is the first time this has happened here, and I am surprised,” he added.
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July 13, 2024, 12:07 p.m. ET
Patrick Kingsley
Louise Wateridge, a U.N. official, spent the afternoon at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where doctors treated some of the civilians wounded by the strike. Ms. Wateridge said in a phone interview that she saw roughly five wounded children, one of whom was paralyzed from the waist down, according to doctors at the hospital.
Ms. Wateridge said that a shortage of disinfectant in Gaza meant that doctors were cleaning wounds with water alone. A fuel shortage had prevented hospital staff from powering the hospital’s washing machines and air conditioning units, Ms. Wateridge added. As a result, patients lay in the stifling heat on bloodstained mattresses without sheets, she said. “You associate hospitals with hygiene and cleanliness,” she said. “It was very far from that.”
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July 13, 2024, 11:48 a.m. ET
Patrick Kingsley
Deaths of Hamas leaders in Israeli strikes can take weeks to confirm.
It may be some time before the fate of Muhammad Deif, the Hamas military leader targeted in an airstrike on Saturday, is known because Hamas and Israel have previously taken weeks to confirm the deaths of militant commanders killed in Israeli strikes.
Israel has made assassinating Hamas leaders a component of its strategy in Gaza since the war started last year. On Nov. 16, one month after Hamas-led fighters first stormed southern Israel, the military said it had targeted two commanders, Ahmed al-Ghandour and Aiman Siam, in a strike earlier that month in northern Gaza. But it was not until Nov. 26 that Hamas and Israel confirmed their deaths.
Similarly, Israel said on March 11 that it had targeted Marwan Issa, Mr. Deif’s deputy. On March 26, the Israeli military formally confirmed that he was killed in the strike. Hamas has yet to confirm it.
Fuel shortages in Gaza have limited the use of heavy machinery, making it harder for rescuers to sift through rubble to find and identify bodies. The strikes also sometimes maim bodies beyond recognition, making identification difficult.
Israeli officials said Saturday that Hamas may be reluctant to grant Israel a propaganda victory by acknowledging the death of senior commanders.
July 13, 2024, 10:01 a.m. ET
Hiba Yazbek and Ameera Harouda
Gaza’s collapsing hospitals struggle to deal with the numbers of wounded in the latest strike.
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The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said on Saturday that its rescue and emergency crews had evacuated more than 100 wounded people along with 23 bodies from the site of the strikes. The Gaza health ministry said earlier that in total, more than 70 people were killed in the attacks.
The rescue group said that many of the wounded had been taken to nearby hospitals run by the Red Crescent.
“All the hospitals in the area are full of the wounded,” said Dr. Wahid Qudaih, the medical director of the Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, adding that there were not enough beds to accommodate all of the patients.
“A large number of patients are lying on the floor while staff are dealing with critical cases and all of the medical staff and equipment and field hospitals are exhausted,” Dr. Qudaih said in a telephone interview.
The medical system in Gaza has collapsed under the weight of the war, without enough electricity, fuel or medical supplies to treat the large numbers of wounded people, which mount daily.
“It was an unusual event regarding the number of cases and the nature of injuries,” Dr. Qudaih said of Saturday’s assault. “We have some seriously wounded people who might lose their lives at any moment,” he said, adding that children were among those hurt.
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July 13, 2024, 8:06 a.m. ET
Aaron Boxerman and Riley Mellen
A video captures casualties and damage from the Israeli strike on southern Gaza.
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Video Shows Aftermath of Israeli Strike in Southern Gaza
A professor of English, Mustafa Abutaha, filmed the damage from an Israeli strike on a populated area close to the Mediterranean Sea.
People were shopping as usual in this place. You see the smoke. It’s really dangerous. More than 500 people were living here. You see the gas. The gas tanks.
Video filmed by a witness to the Israeli strike on southern Gaza on Saturday showed fires and plumes of smoke in a tree-lined plot of land surrounding a residential building.
Filmed by Mustafa Abutaha, a professor of English, the video showed crowds of civilians gathered in and around a large crater in the ground, apparently searching for people buried in the churned earth. A man carrying a motionless child rushes past the camera.
Mr. Abutaha’s video — which was verified by The New York Times — matched other clips emerging from the scene, which appeared to show a major blast crater and rescue efforts at the site of the strike. Israeli military officials said the attack aimed to kill Muhammad Deif, the leader of Hamas’s armed wing, and another senior Hamas commander.
The Israeli strike devastated a plot inside Mawasi, a strip of coastal land that Israel has designated as a “safer zone” for Gazans, Mr. Abutaha said. Palestinians seeking shelter have crowded into the area, living in sprawling clusters of tents.
“I saw the rockets with my eyes,” Mr. Abutaha said in a video message. “You see this — a child, a little girl,” he added as the child was carried past. “You see the situation is very terrible.”
July 13, 2024, 7:00 a.m. ET
Adam Rasgon
Who is Muhammad Deif?
Muhammad Deif, the shadowy leader of Hamas’s military wing, is believed to be an architect of the Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and ignited the nine-month-old war in Gaza. A mysterious figure who has repeatedly escaped Israeli assassination attempts, Mr. Deif has been one of Israel’s most wanted men for decades.
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He is revered within some Palestinian circles for overseeing the development of Hamas’s military capabilities and has been a symbol of the group’s resilience, finding ways to survive despite being a top target of one of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East.
On Oct. 7, as Hamas launched its attack on Israeli towns and military installations, Mr. Deif released a recorded speech declaring that the group had launched its operation so “the enemy will understand that the time of their rampaging without accountability has ended.”
“Righteous fighters, this is your day to bury this criminal enemy,” he said in the speech, which was broadcast on Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV. “Its time has finished. Kill them wherever you find them,” he added. “Remove this filth from your land and your sacred places. Fight and the angels fight with you.”
Hamas is backed by Iran and Mr. Deif supports the relationship.
He has not been seen publicly in years, and few photos of him are in the public domain. In January, the Israeli army published an image of a man it said was Mr. Deif; the picture showed him resting under a tree with a wad of cash in hand.
He is believed to be disabled, possibly missing an eye and limbs. Israel bombed his home in 2014, killing his wife and infant son.
In May, Karim Khan, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, requested an arrest warrant for Mr. Deif, accusing him and two other Hamas leaders of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Mr. Deif was born in 1965 to a poor Palestinian family and grew up in the Khan Younis refugee camp near Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, and Mohammed Dahlan, an exiled leader of Fatah, another Palestinian faction that rivals Hamas.
“He’s a legendary figure in Hamas,” Ibrahim Madhoun, an analyst close to Hamas, said in an interview, comparing him to Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader and founder of Hamas. “His fingerprints are on the transformation of the Qassam Brigades from a limited number of armed cells to a formal army that has tens of thousands of fighters.”
Mr. Deif has commanded the so-called Shadow Brigade, which guards Israeli captives held by Hamas, and invested significantly in manufacturing weapons and bringing new technologies to the Qassam Brigades such as reconnaissance drones, according to Mr. Madhoun.
Israeli analysts also recognize that Mr. Deif has changed Hamas’s military arm into a more powerful and organized fighting force.
Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli intelligence officer specializing in Palestinian affairs, described Mr. Deif as one of Hamas’s most important military strategists.
“He’s the beating heart of Hamas’s military wing,” he said, noting that Mr. Deif was at the helm of a force that has elite fighters, naval commandoes and air capabilities. “He has developed a force that almost has statehood capacities.”
