Debunking the Lie That “’Israel’ Created Hamas”

The Palestinian Islamic organization Hamas is both an armed group and a political movement. It is supported by a large proportion of the Palestinian population, primarily due to its leading role in resisting Israel.

Despite its deep roots in Palestinian society, there is a pervasive, false narrative about the origins of Hamas that is widely promoted, particularly in the West – including among some sympathetic to the Palestinian national liberation cause.

That narrative goes like this: Hamas was encouraged or even created by Israel to undermine the secular Palestine Liberation Organization of the late leader Yasser Arafat.

But this narrative is a myth that emerged from both anti-Hamas elements within Palestinian society and by Israeli intelligence.

Among the former is Muhammed Dahlan who – ironically – later worked closely with the Central Intelligence Agency and was instrumental in the failed, US- and Israel-backed coup against the Hamas government that was elected by the population in 2006.

The main claims to this narrative – and a more recent iteration used as a cudgel by opponents of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – fall apart upon closer scrutiny.

Historian Khaled Hroub, a prominent expert on Hamas, explained to The Electronic Intifada why the myth is baseless.

Long and layered history

The narrative that Israel created or supported, whether directly or indirectly, Hamas has a long and layered history.

One of the earliest influential instances of this narrative in the English-language media is a March 1981 report by David K. Shipler for The New York Times.

Shipler quotes Yitzhak Segev, then Israel’s military governor of Gaza, stating that “the Israeli government gave me a budget and the military government gives to the mosques.” Shipler adds, without explicitly attributing these claims to Segev, that these “funds are used for both mosques and religious schools, with the purpose of strengthening a force that runs counter to the pro-PLO leftists.”

In a later edition of his 1986 book Arab and Jew, which won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, Shipler synthesized Segev’s remarks by stating that Segev told him that Israel had “financed the Islamic Movement as a counterweight to the PLO and the communists.” Shipler parenthetically remarks that this funding “helped nourish the seeds of Hamas.”

Since then, the “counterweight” line has been attributed not to Shipler but to Segev, whose position as military governor lent this putative narrative credibility. The misattribution has been made by numerous publications and commentators, including The Intercept and analyst Alon Ben-Meir.

Another early article in the American press that popularized this narrative is a 1992 piece for the Los Angeles Times by Yossi Melman, a longstanding opponent of Netanyahu, titled “Hamas: When a Former Client Becomes an Implacable Enemy.”

This was compounded by Andrew Higgins’ 2009 article for The Wall Street Journal titled “How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas.”

That piece quotes Avner Cohen, an Israeli official responsible for “religious affairs” in Gaza at the time of Hamas’ ascendance, who remarks that “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.” Paraphrasing Cohen, Higgins states that Israel “for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged” the Islamic Movement in Gaza as a supposed counterweight to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization.

As this article will demonstrate, the actual history is much more complex and the facts do not support the “Israel created Hamas” myth.

Yet the myth proliferated after Hamas’ surprise offensive on 7 October 2023, code-named Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Mainstream and establishment media have also echoed these claims, including Mark Mazzetti and Ronen Bergman’s widely read December 2023 article for The New York Times titled “‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas.” Around the same time, CNN also amplified the related narrative that a Qatari cash pipeline to Hamas-governed Gaza was not only approved but championed by Netanyahu, who, according to CNN, was criticized by some of his coalition partners “for being too soft on Hamas.”

Zionist outlets have used this narrative as a cudgel against Netanyahu, who they claim was overly permissive in his handling of Hamas. Tal Schneider, a political correspondent for The Times of Israel, averred in an op-ed published on 8 October 2023 that Israel’s longstanding policy had “propped up” Hamas, thereby effectively paving the road for Hamas’ operation the previous day.

Josep Borrell, the former European Union foreign policy chief, remarked in 2024: “Yes, Hamas was financed by the government of Israel in an attempt to weaken the Palestinian Authority led by Fatah.”

Not only does Borrell claim that Israel allowed for Qatari funding to Gaza, but he also implies that this amounted to Israel financing Hamas.

This misrepresentation of history is unsubstantiated and misleading.

Political rivalry catalyzed myth

The earliest insinuations of the “Israel created Hamas” myth come from figures close to Israel’s intelligence and military establishment, including Segev and his aforementioned remarks about the Israeli government allocating funds to the mosques during the nascent Islamic Movement’s mosque-building phase.

In his book Hamas: Political Thought and Practice, historian Khaled Hroub notes that Israeli assessments and interpretations concerning the ascendance of Palestinian Islamism were varied and sometimes contradictory. Some viewed the rise of Islamists as an Israeli “plot,” while “others posited that Israeli policy merely ignored the phenomenon; still others asserted that the Israeli stance was absolutely and implacably hostile and aimed to repress the phenomenon.”

But the myth was cemented by Hamas’ rivals in the Palestinian political arena – chiefly Yasser Arafat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, whose ideological opposition to Hamas is rooted in the founders of the secular Fatah party’s splitting from the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood (whose existence predates that of the state of Israel) in the 1950s.

In his book, Hroub observes that “the PLO information apparatus wholeheartedly adopted [the Israeli] interpretations and worked to propagate them,” favoring the interpretation declaring “Hamas to be merely a creation of Israel to weaken the PLO.”

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, sits in his office in the Gaza Strip, 17 November 2001.

Tensions between the PLO, the vanguard of the Palestinian national liberation struggle since the 1960s, and Hamas, which emerged in the late 1980s, rose shortly before the 1991 Madrid Conference that prefigured the Oslo accords signed by Israel and the PLO.

The PLO extended an invitation to Hamas to participate in a preparatory committee aimed at reconstructing the Palestinian National Council, a body representing Palestinians in their homeland and in the diaspora. After Hamas demurred, the PLO’s official organ Filastin al-Thawra instigated “a vituperous campaign … that accused Hamas of deserting the unity of nationalist ranks,” as Hroub describes in his book.

“The PLO’s statements focused on the idea that Hamas had been established to satisfy an Israeli aim, or at least that it had been established with the consent of Israel in order to weaken the PLO,” Hroub states.

During the Madrid Conference, Hamas published a communiqué discrediting the PLO due to what the former characterized as the latter’s capitulation to the occupation.

Tensions increased further after several Palestinian factions – including Islamic, nationalist and left-wing/Marxist organizations – coalesced into a united front opposed to the so-called peace process.

These factions called for a general strike while the Madrid Conference was convened between 28 and 30 October 1991. As Hroub notes in his book, “the success of the strike was remarkable and worrying to the PLO leadership.”

The leadership of Hamas and 10 other factions meanwhile convened at a conference held in Tehran from 22 to 24 October 1991. After Hamas opened an office in the Iranian capital in early 1992, PLO leaders “constantly” accused Hamas of “owing allegiance to a foreign power,” according to Hroub.

In late 1992, Arafat claimed that Hamas received $30 million annually in support from Iran – “an allegation that Hamas denied categorically as being both alarmist and exaggerated,” Hroub observes. The Arab and Western press soon echoed these claims.

Arafat sought to cast aspersions on Hamas, which vehemently opposed negotiations with Israel and Fatah’s abandonment of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return. Given that Hamas also began coordinating with leftist and nationalist factions, Arafat and the Fatah leadership feared that, with Hamas at the helm, the coalitions of factions opposed to the peace negotiations track might become a viable alternative to the PLO.

Over the next several years, Arafat and other Fatah leaders tried to mollify this worry by attempting to cajole Hamas into joining the PLO. When Hamas, which insisted on the PLO implementing significant reforms, rebuffed these efforts, Arafat launched a campaign to delegitimize Hamas.

Arafat claimed in an interview with Dina Nascetti published in the 13 December 2001 edition of the Italian weekly magazine L’Espresso that then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, “with his intransigence,” had “favored the Islamic extremists, whose attacks have given him an excuse to invoke self-defense.”

Incidentally, the author states in the same article that Mossad “takes care of” Arafat’s security when he travels outside the Palestinian territories, with the implication being that Israel would prefer Arafat over more “extreme” Palestinian elements – contradicting Arafat’s claim that Hamas enjoyed preferential treatment.

In the subsequent issue of L’Espresso, Nascetti published a second interview with Arafat in which the Palestinian leader’s remarks were even more pointed. When questioned about Hamas’ “terrorism,” Arafat responded by saying:

“Hamas was formed with Israel’s support. The aim was to create an organization that would antagonize the PLO. It received funding and training from Israel. They continued to benefit from permits and authorizations, while we were denied even the permission to build a tomato factory. [Yitzhak] Rabin himself called it a fatal mistake.”

Although this quotation, or selective portions of it, has since been reproduced far and wide, Arafat’s claim about Hamas having received training from Israel was both unprecedented and wholly unsubstantiated.

It is possible that Arafat had in mind an unsourced claim produced in 1989 by Michal Sela of The Jerusalem Post, which stated that Israel’s “military government believed that their [the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood’s] activity would undermine the power of the PLO and of leftist organizations in Gaza. They even supplied some of their activists with weapons, for their protection.”

However, the actual origins of Hamas bear little resemblance to what was alleged by Arafat.

Muhammad Dahlan speaks during a Fatah rally in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 23 January 2006.

Heidi Levine SIPA

In 1973, the Islamic Center, known in Arabic as al-Mujamma al-Islami, was founded by the teacher and charismatic religious leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and other figures from the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood who would later become closely associated with Hamas, including Mahmoud al-Zahar, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, Ibrahim Fares al-Yazouri, Abdul Fatah Dukhan, Issa al-Najjar and Salah Shehadeh. The Islamic Center’s focus was providing charity and welfare to refugee camps and poor urban areas neglected by other political parties.

As Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela recount in their 2000 book The Palestinian Hamas, the number of mosques in Gaza doubled from 77 in 1967 to 150 by 1986 – the period leading up to Hamas’ formation. There were 200 mosques by 1989.

The mosques served as clandestine political sanctuaries safe from Israeli surveillance and as venues where the Islamic Movement could spread its message, build support and gain influence.

This phase occurred in a wider context in which “Islamist parties rose speedily in the political scene,” not only in the Levant but also in the Gulf region and North Africa, Hroub told The Electronic Intifada.

In neighboring Jordan, where political and social dynamics mirror those in Palestine, Hroub added, “Islamists won almost one-third of the seats in the 1989 parliamentarian elections.”

Within this regional change, according to Hroub, Palestinian Islamists shifted their strategy “from re-Islamization of society and focusing on charity and social work to resistance and confrontation against Israel.”

Hroub added that “along with this change of strategy, [the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood] changed their name to Hamas,” emerging as such towards the end of the period during which the Brotherhood was focused on building social institutions; the eruption of the first intifada in Gaza in early December 1987 coincided with Hamas’ formation.

Israeli permits

A key facet of the “Israel created Hamas” myth is rooted in this phase of institution building from which Hamas emerged.

“Two main Islamist hubs are usually mentioned in this context,” according to Hroub: the Islamic Center and the Islamic University of Gaza, founded in 1973 and 1978, respectively.

The fact that Israel issued a permit to the Islamic Center six years after its founding, allowing it to operate above board, seeded the myth that Israel not only consented to the formation of Hamas but encouraged it.

In reality, the Islamic Center’s permit was temporarily rescinded soon after its issuance and only reissued after a lengthy arbitration process.

Additionally, as Mishal and Sela acknowledge, Yassin and his Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood colleagues submitted “repeated requests” for licensing to the Israeli military administration beginning in 1970, but were rejected. Indeed, as the authors write, these rejections were “not least because of [Israel’s] opposition to traditional Islamic elements.”

Meanwhile, the Islamists’ secular rivals and their associations were beholden to the same Israeli colonial authorities, from which they also received permits to operate legally during this period – as was Birzeit University near the West Bank city of Ramallah in 1978.

Useful cudgel

Yet the misleading claim that Hamas readily received permits from a forthcoming Israel has proven enduring and continues to be a useful cudgel wielded by the resistance movement’s opposition.

It has its roots in a 1985 courtyard debate at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) between a young Yahya Sinwar, belonging to the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood’s student activist circle, the Islamic Bloc, and Fatah’s Muhammad Dahlan.

As Nihad al-Sheikh Khalil recounts in his 2011 book The Muslim Brothers Movement in the Gaza Strip (1967–1987), during the years 1984-1986, the student activists of the Islamic Bloc at IUG participated in a number of “discussions and debates” with Fatah students, which “took place spontaneously within the university courtyards.”

Citing an interview with Subhi al-Yazji, currently a professor at IUG, al-Sheikh Khalil conveys that these discussions revolved around the Palestinian cause and armed struggle. “The most notable” such debate, al-Sheikh Khalil writes, was conducted “between Yahya Sinwar and Muhammad Dahlan in 1985,” with the conversation focusing “on the exchange of accusations between the two sides [i.e., Fatah and the Islamic Movement].”

During their discussion, Sinwar condemned the Fatah leadership’s “peace overtures” while Dahlan “reproached the Muslim Brothers for not carrying out armed struggle against Israel and for operating the Islamic Association with a permit from the occupation.”

Over the subsequent decades, Dahlan would continue articulating different versions of this claim, including in a November 2015 interview with Al Jazeera in which he said that Hamas “cooperates with Israel” indirectly by securing Gaza’s boundary with Israel.

Ironically, Muhammed Dahlan later began to work directly with the CIA. He collaborated with the US and Israel in an effort to reverse the results of the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in 2006, in which Hamas won a majority of seats, contrary to the expectations of the Palestinian Authority’s Western patrons.

These efforts resulted in a short-lived civil war between Fatah and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank in 2007. Coup efforts by Fatah were decisively crushed in Gaza with Dahlan forced to flee, but were successful in the West Bank where Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority continues to play a subcontractor role to Israel and prevents new elections from taking place.

False claims about cooperation with Israel quickly snowballed, gaining traction amongst the detractors of the Islamic Movement, and, after it came into being, Hamas.

Following Arafat’s excoriating aforementioned public remarks, the “permits narrative” was strategically instrumentalized by both the Hebrew press and the Shin Bet. As Hroub observes, this served “Israel’s strategy of firmly establishing that its Arab and Palestinian foes are not capable of carrying out any undertaking that may influence events outside Israel’s masterful control.”

Over the following decades, this narrative developed into the received view within much of Western academia, bolstered by political scientist Beverley Milton-Edwards’ influential 1996 book Islamic Politics in Palestine. Linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky also repeated the claim in 2010, saying that “in its early days, Israel supported Hamas as a weapon against the secular PLO.”

This narrative allowed for leaders in Fatah to besmirch Hamas while the former backtracked on the tenets of the 1968 Palestine National Covenant by rescinding armed struggle.

Benign Hamas

A claim related to the “Israel created Hamas” myth argues that, before the first intifada, Yassin and his group were viewed as non-threatening to the occupation and treated as such.

This claim stems from Israel’s arrest of Yassin in 1984 following the discovery of a weapons cache in Gaza. It rests on the perception that the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, which fought against Zionist forces before the conquest of Palestine in 1948, had abandoned armed resistance after the group launched a series of guerrilla raids against Israel from Jordan between 1968-1970 in the wake of the 1967 War and subsequent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Hroub writes in his history of Hamas that the raids were initiated by the broader Arab leadership and opposed by the Gaza branch, which viewed the idea as “futile.”

In the decade following the raids, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood focused on recruitment and deferred confrontation with Israel “under the conviction that they were preparing a new generation,” according to Hroub.

Given this retreat from armed resistance during the 1970s, conventional wisdom held that any weapons possessed by Yassin could not have been intended for armed resistance against Israel and were likely intended to be used against Palestinian rivals.

This is, however, at odds with the actual history.

Supporters of Hamas celebrate the faction’s election victory in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, 27 January 2006.

Ahmad Khateib Flash 90/KRT

The earliest signs of an Islamic armed resistance branch emerged in 1980, when the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership dispatched some of its members abroad to receive military instruction.

Beginning in the early 1980s, in the wake of the Islamic revolution in Iran and the ascendance of political Islam in the wider region, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood created several organizations explicitly for the sake of armed resistance. These included a military apparatus named the Islamic Resistance Movement – anticipating the formal name of Hamas – and a subsequent security apparatus, Munathameh al-Jihad wa al-Dawa, abbreviated “Majd,” as well as a secret military committee established in late 1982 and early 1983.

Ahmed Yassin created the aforementioned military branch in the Gaza Strip, initially commanded by Abdulrahman Tamraz and later by Salah Shehadeh, who would eventually become one of the leaders of Hamas’ armed wing. This nascent military wing formed by Yassin was exposed, leading to a crackdown by the Israeli authorities, who arrested Yassin in early 1984.

According to a contemporaneous article in The Jerusalem Post, an English-language Israeli publication, an Israeli military court in Gaza imprisoned a man from Nuseirat refugee camp “for selling weapons to an Islamic underground [sic] charged with plotting to wage ‘a holy war’ on Israel.”

The paper added that five other Gazans, including Yassin, “pleaded guilty to illegal possession of submachine guns, grenades, rifles and pistols” and paraphrased an Israeli military spokesperson asserting that the men “are believed to be the nucleus of religious anti-Israel activity in Gaza.”

This is not the first instance of the occupation persecuting the Islamic Movement prior to Hamas’ formation.

In 1972, the Islamic Movement tried to establish a library in Gaza City’s Al-Abbas Mosque in coordination with the Islamic religious endowments authority, but was rebuffed, as al-Sheikh Khalil details in his 2011 study of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza.

In response, according to al-Sheikh Khalil, Yassin “took it upon himself to build the library.” But during the beginning of its construction, Israeli police destroyed the foundation “so that the building could not be completed.”

Mosque-building turned out to be a slow and iterative process, for “when construction work began, the Israeli police or the occupation army would come and demolish the building, especially if it was in its early stages.”

Israel held a contradictory position toward the Islamic Movement’s mosque-building, sometimes sanctioning construction – such as with Jawrat al-Shams Mosque, the inauguration of which Israel’s military governor attended in September 1973 – and in other cases, impeding it.

The approach appeared to waver based on the individual Israeli colonial official involved, indicating the absence of a coherent government policy regarding the mosques.

Avner Cohen, the aforementioned religious affairs official, “became increasingly suspicious” that the Islamic Movement was using mosques to organize armed resistance against Israel, as Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Ferrel recount in their 2010 book Hamas.

Avner appealed to the Israeli military to outlaw the Islamic Center but was told that banning houses of worship would violate international law, according to journalist Charles Enderlin in his 2009 book Le Grand aveuglement. Cohen’s efforts were not entirely wasted, however, as only three days after he published his 1984 internal report on Gaza’s mosques, the Israeli authorities arrested Yassin.

As Azzam Tamimi recounts in his 2009 book Hamas: The Unwritten Chapters, an Israeli military court declared Yassin “guilty of plotting to destroy the State of Israel and sentenced him to 13 years imprisonment.”

Yassin was released a year later as part of a prisoner exchange in which three Israeli soldiers captured during the 1982 Lebanon War were exchanged for various prisoners held by Israel. Once free, Yassin was barred from engaging with the Islamic Center, but clandestinely, with Saleh Shehadeh, reconstituted the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood’s covert military formation, this time under the banner of the Palestinian Mujahideen, with the purpose of waging armed resistance against Israel in Gaza. Shehadeh organized armed resistance against the Israeli military between 1985 and 1987.

So where did the idea that Yassin and company’s weapons were to be used against fellow Palestinians emerge from?

As Tamimi summarizes in his book, “rumors were circulating in Gaza to the effect that the [Muslim Brotherhood] had been buying weapons in order to use them against their opponents in the other Palestinian factions.”

Having made powerful enemies in rival factions, the rumors regarding the Muslim Brotherhood “found ready credence, owing to the tension that gripped Gaza at the time,” with competition between Fatah and the Muslim Brotherhood playing out in battles over the administration of the Islamic University of Gaza.

“Israel funded Hamas”

The “Israeli created Hamas” myth became more prevalent following 7 October 2023, appended by the novel claim that Netanyahu enabled the Hamas offensive by allowing Qatar to transfer funds to Gaza.

This telling rests on a misrepresentation of the protracted 2018-2019 Great March of Return negotiations between Hamas and Israel, which yielded an Israeli concession to allow Qatar to pay the salaries of civil servants in Gaza, among other measures to ease economic stagnation, to provide humanitarian aid and to repair war-damaged infrastructure, in exchange for Hamas tamping down the intensity of the protests along the Israel-Gaza boundary.

Avigdor Liberman, then Israel’s defense minister, resigned in protest from Netanyahu’s government in November 2018, in part due to his opposition to the Qatari funding. Naftali Bennett, Israel’s education minister at the time, charged that Netanyahu was effectively paying Hamas “protection money” in order to purchase calm.

Civil servants in Gaza wait to receive their salaries at a post office in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, 9 November 2018.

Mahmoud Khattab APA images

Netanyahu’s political opponents continue to claim that the infusions of funding from Qatar to Gaza enabled the Qassam Brigades to prepare for its 7 October 2023 operation, despite the safeguards in place to ensure that payments were made directly to civil servants and families with eventual Israeli oversight and pledges by Hamas not to touch donor funds.

While Western media reports point to the Qatari infusion of funding into Gaza as an example of funding for Hamas, that money paid for the operation of critical civilian infrastructure and the alleviation of the economic hardship borne by years of Israeli and Western sanctions on the territory.

Funding to relieve the humanitarian situation in Gaza is not the same as funding Hamas, even if it is widely misrepresented as such.

“Qatari aid to the Gaza Strip is fully coordinated with Israel, the UN and the US,” an official from the Gulf state told Reuters in October 2023.

There is no proof to support the claims that the Qatari funds flowed to Hamas – which has other means of financing its military activities – but plenty of contemporaneous documentation of the intended beneficiaries receiving the funding.

Busted myth

It is a fallacy to state that Hamas is a creation of Israel or that Israel encouraged the formation of the group.

“Hamas is the outcome of a deeply rooted organization within the national Palestinian context, whose process of formation evolved over more than half a century,” Khaled Hroub told The Electronic Intifada. It emerged “within a broader regional ideological transformation (the rise of Islamism).”

“To reduce this historical movement and emergence to a reductionist claim that it was created by Israel, is simply nonsense,” Hroub added.

To acknowledge that Israel exploited “the existence of Hamas to further divide the Palestinians and facilitated control over them, is one thing.”

“To claim that Israel invented or created Hamas is totally another, if absurd, thing,” Hroub said.

Israel and its security apparatus may have at times been happy for the myth to persist, viewing it as preferable to accepting “the fact that this organization emerged and became strong against Israel’s will and its omnipresent intelligence.”

By perpetuating the myth, Israel preserves its image of omnipotent superiority and reinforces “the belief, and fear, that everything that happens in Palestine, and perhaps in the region, is foreknown by them,” according to Hroub.

Indeed, the persistence of the myth has facilitated myriad media commentators to readily claim that Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was both known in advance to the Shin Bet and permitted to transpire such that Israel could exploit it as an opportunity to resolve the so-called “Gaza question” and its concomitant demographics problem.

Such claims are the logical endpoint of the “Israel created Hamas” narrative.

Unfortunately, otherwise discerning minds have repeated these myths, with the adage that “Israel funded Hamas” becoming a consensus view, foreclosing the conceptual possibility of the Palestinian resistance’s functioning as an independent political actor with self-sufficiency and agency.

Dispossessing Palestinians of their agency is a major plank in Israel’s psychological warfare campaign.

But the military offensive led by Hamas on 7 October 2023 forever destroyed the myths of Israeli invincibility and omniscience – a reality underscored by Iran’s devastating retaliation against US and Israeli attacks.

Mujamma Haraket is a translator and academic researcher in political philosophy with a specialization in non-state actors, political Islam and the history of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in particular. The author’s scholarly writing has been published in academic forums and in forums like Orinoco Tribune and Liberated Texts.

source: Electronic Intifada

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=31611 #alQassam #gaza #hamas #palestine #westAsia #westBank

⭕Sous la protection de la police #Israélienne, des bulldozers #Israéliens ont enseveli et rasé de nombreuses tombes à l'intérieur du cimetière #Al-Qassam à #Haïfa occupée. #West-Bank-Notifications

Abu Obeida Warns of Regional Escalation, Calls for Action for al-Aqsa

The spokesperson for the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, Abu Obeida, warned on Sunday that the region is facing a broad military aggression, accusing the zionist occupation of expanding its attacks and spreading destruction across multiple fronts.

Abu Obeida said the ongoing escalation reflects what he described as blatant violations that undermine international norms, adding that the aggression has extended beyond Gaza to Lebanon, Yemen, and even targeted regional states.

He added that the assault on Lebanon came after 14 months of sustained escalation, stressing that the scale of violence reflects a widening confrontation across the region.

Al-Aqsa, prisoners at the center of escalation

Abu Obeida stressed that any harm to al-Aqsa Mosque or Palestinian prisoners “will not pass without response,” calling for mass mobilization in defense of both.

He urged Palestinians in the West Bank, al-Quds, and the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948 to move toward al-Aqsa, while also calling for broader demonstrations across the region and globally.

He further called on Palestinians to carry out what he described as “qualitative operations” in defense of detainees, warning against internal divisions and distractions amid what he framed as a critical moment for the region.

Criticism of prisoner policies, ceasefire process

Addressing proposed measures related to Palestinian detainees, Abu Obeida described a potential “execution law” as a “stain of shame,” warning of its implications.

He said that efforts being advanced through mediators are highly dangerous, adding that the Palestinian side has fulfilled its commitments responsibly in order to remove pretexts used by the occupation.

Abu Obeida also called for pressure to ensure the zionist side adheres to the first phase of the ceasefire agreement before moving to subsequent stages, accusing it of obstructing progress and urging the United States to assume responsibility.

Iran, Lebanon, Yemen linked to Gaza

Turning to regional developments, Abu Obeida condemned attacks on Iran, drawing parallels between incidents there and events in Gaza.

He expressed support for Lebanon and its resistance, voicing confidence in Hezbollah, and reiterating calls for increased confrontation with Israeli forces.

He added that actions carried out by Iran, Lebanon, and Yemen are part of a broader continuum linked to the Gaza war, describing them as an extension of Operation al-Aqsa Flood.

Abu Obeida concluded that escalating attacks across the region signal deeper instability, asserting that such strategies will not achieve their intended goals and warning that imposed political outcomes are unlikely to succeed.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=31011 #alQassam #gaza #hamas #palestine #resistance #westAsia

Al-Qassam Brigades Spokesman Abu Obeida Applauds IRGC Strikes on zionist Colony

We look with great pride at the powerful missile strikes carried out by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard this evening, targeting areas deep within the criminal enemy entity, using new tactics that resulted in dozens of dead and wounded. We consider these strikes a natural response not only to the Zionist-American aggression against Iran, but also to the massacres and acts of genocide committed against our Palestinian people in Gaza.

This Zionist Nazi enemy understands nothing but the language of force and retaliation in kind. Making it pay a heavy price is what will compel it to stop its aggression; without that, it will persist in its rampage and continue to single out our Arab and Islamic countries one after another.

The Islamic Republic today represents an advanced line of defense for the entire Islamic nation, and the aggressors will not succeed in breaking the will of the free and the rightful owners of the land. We renew our call to all the peoples of our nation to stand united in the face of our true enemy and to work together for our central causes, foremost among them the liberation of Palestine.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=30301 #alQassam #gaza #hamas #iran #palestine #westAsia

Palestinian Resistance Reaffirms Support for Iran on Quds Day

Palestine factions said the region is witnessing what they termed as an existential war triggered by the leadership of the zionist regime, particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

They stressed that his statements amount to a declaration of open aggression against Muslims and argued that this reflects the entity’s broader objective of asserting control and dominance across the region.

The movement called on “the Arab and Islamic nation to unite and maintain cohesion in order to thwart the objectives of this comprehensive aggression, in defense of our land, our holy sites, and the future of our generations.”

It affirmed that commemorating International Quds Day constitutes a victory for the central cause of the nation in Palestine and represents a rejection of the aggression and massacres carried out by the occupying regime and the US.

The movement further noted that the aggression launched by the administration of Donald Trump, “driven by miscalculations and arrogant hostility, has ignited fires across a number of countries in the region in order to protect the Zionist entity and impose its sovereignty, in pursuit of Talmudic myths aimed at destroying our holy sites, plundering our resources, and imposing humiliation and submission on our peoples.”

Below we publish statements from the Resistance:

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Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine:
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International Quds Day is an important milestone for renewing the commitment to Al-Quds and Palestine, and an occasion to mobilize the energies of free peoples in the face of zionist and American crimes.The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) affirms that marking “International Quds Day” this year transcends its symbolic dimension to express a renewed militant stance, confirming that Al-Quds will remain the beating heart of Palestine and the focal point of the struggle with the zionist project. The late leader Ruhollah Khomeini declared this day, designating the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan as its annual date, to be an important milestone for renewing the commitment to Al-Quds and Palestine, and an occasion to mobilize the energies of free peoples and keep the compass of the struggle directed towards Palestine, as it is the central cause that unites the free people of the world in the face of zionist and American crimes.

In this context, the Front sends greetings of pride and honor to the march of martyrs, paved with great sacrifices, and to the militant leaders who ascended on the road to Al-Quds and on the support fronts; those who made their lives fuel for the flame of resistance, and solidified with their pure blood the unity of the fronts and destiny, affirming that their sacrifices will remain the beacon that illuminates the path of national liberation.

Quds Day this year comes in light of the escalating, organized zionist-American war of extermination against our people and the peoples of the region, especially in Iran and Lebanon, in a desperate attempt by the zionist enemy, in an American partnership, to implement its expansionist schemes and the project of “greater israel”. The successive developments and the steadfastness of the resistance forces have proven that the choice of confrontation is the real power capable of breaking the zionist and American aggression and thwarting their projects; for the targeting of leaders, the destruction of infrastructure, the siege, starvation, the committing of massacres, and the killing of children will only increase the vibrant resistance forces’ adherence to the path of resistance as the strategic choice to wrest freedom and sovereignty, and expel the occupier from our lands and our region.

The Front also salutes the millions of masses who took to the streets across the world to mark this day in support of Palestine, Al-Quds, and Gaza, and in rejection of the criminal zionist and American war on Iran and Lebanon, affirming the failure of all attempts to isolate the Palestinian cause from its Arab, Islamic, and global depth. It calls for the escalation of popular mobilization and international demonstrations in rejection of the war of extermination and aggression on Iran, Lebanon, and all resistance fronts, and to demand an end to the military and political support for the zionist and American killing machine.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Central Media Department
13-March-2026

—  Hamas:
—
On International Quds Day: We warn against the fascist occupation government escalating its aggression against Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa, and we call for unifying the nation’s efforts in confronting the schemes of the zionist enemy.This year’s International Quds Day comes in light of the zionist occupation escalating its aggression and schemes against Islamic and Christian sanctities in the occupied city of Al-Quds, at the heart of which is the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque. The fascist occupation government continues its Judaization and settlement schemes in Al-Quds, closing the gates of Al-Aqsa to worshippers, and preventing the defenders stationed there from reaching it and observing spiritual retreat during the last ten days of the blessed month of Ramadan, in flagrant violation of all international norms, charters, and divine laws, amid suspicious international silence and abandonment.

On International Quds Day, the nature of the conflict is clearly revealed; as the war and escalation in the region coincide with a dangerous escalation in Palestine, reaching the point of closing the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque to worshippers during the month of Ramadan for the first time since 1967.

What is happening is not isolated events, but rather links in a single project aimed at breaking the will of the peoples of the region and destroying the elements of resistance and steadfastness in the nation, in preparation for imposing realities that serve the illusions of the zionist expansionist project and its alleged myths.

The masses of our Palestinian people and our Islamic nation commemorate International Quds Day, which comes every year on the last Friday of the blessed month of Ramadan, by recalling the status of Palestine and its crown jewel, the city of Al-Quds and the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque. They remember their duty toward their holy city and the journey site of the honest Messenger, and the necessity of fulfilling their responsibilities in defending them by all means and confronting the schemes of the zionist enemy.

International Quds Day, which this year comes in light of the zionist-American war targeting our region and our peoples, is an opportunity to unify the nation’s efforts and strengthen joint action supporting the steadfastness of the people of Al-Quds, those stationed there, and the defenders of Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa. Defending them, supporting them, and protecting them from the danger of the occupation and its aggression and crimes is a joint responsibility around which the Arab and Islamic nation unites: leaders, governments, peoples, institutions, and organizations.

Al-Quds is not a detail in the equation of politics or a card in the calculations of interests; rather, it is the compass of truth in this nation, and Palestine will remain the standard of justice by which positions are revealed and wills are tested, until the aspirations of our people for liberation and return are achieved.

Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)
Friday: 24 Ramadan 1447 AH
Corresponding to: 13 March 2026 AD

—  Mujahideen Movement:
—
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful”Indeed, Allah loves those who fight in His cause in a row as though they are a single structure joined firmly.”

International Al-Quds Day is a luminous and steadfast milestone in the conscience of the nation, and an affirmation of the centrality of the conflict between truth and falsehood.

Today, the masses of our nation observe International Al-Quds Day in light of the continued cowardly zionist-American aggression against our people and the peoples of our nation, especially in Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq, in a clear attempt to break the will of the peoples of the region and subject them to the zionist-American project of hegemony and arrogance.

At the heart of this scene, Al-Quds and Palestine remain the title of the great confrontation, as the zionist occupation continues its crimes against our people, escalates the policy of Judaization and settlement, attempts to erase the Arab and Islamic identity of the holy city, conducts operations of Judaization and open war on all cities and villages of the West Bank, and continues the war of extermination and siege on our people in the Gaza Strip, amidst open American support and blatant international complicity.

International Al-Quds Day, which was launched by the Islamic Republic of Iran decades ago, comes as it fights a direct battle with the forces of global arrogance and evil with all steadfastness and competence, with its leaders and sons offering themselves as martyrs, led by the supreme guide of the Islamic revolution, the martyred Sayyid Ali Khamenei, may Allah have mercy on him.

Al-Quds Day comes today to renew the presence of this cause in the consciousness of the nation, and to confirm that Al-Quds is not the cause of a people or a state, but the cause of an entire nation that transcends borders and geography, and brings together the free people of various nations, far from the sectarian and doctrinal divisions that the enemy of the nation works to fuel and expand.

On this occasion, we in the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement affirm the following:

First: Al-Quds will remain the axis of the conflict and the focus of the attention of the Islamic nation, for it is a blessed Islamic land and a unifying cause for all Muslims, and there is no legitimacy for the zionist occupation on its land, no matter how long it lasts.

Second: While we salute all the blessed efforts based on the activities of this great day, we praise the valor of the Iranian forces and the valor of the honorable Lebanese and Iraqi resistance fighters in confronting the zionist-American aggression.

Third: We confirm that it is the duty of the nation to mobilize its efforts and play the required role in supporting Al-Quds and the Islamic sanctities that are being subjected to a fierce zionist attack, especially the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, which has been subjected to continuous aggression, siege, and unjust closure for two weeks.

Fourth: Resistance in all its forms will remain the legitimate option for the peoples of the nation in confronting the occupation and aggression, and it is the path to protecting rights and safeguarding dignity in the face of policies of hegemony and surrender.

Fifth: We call on the masses of our nation to rally around its central cause, Palestine, and to work to restore the unity of the nation and close ranks in the face of the zionist danger that targets the entire nation and threatens its present and future.

In conclusion, Al-Quds will remain the title of this stage and the compass of the conflict, and International Al-Quds Day will remain a symbol of the unity of the free people in the nation, and a station for renewing the pledge to continue the path of resistance until the liberation of the land and the sanctities, and the restoration of the nation’s dignity and unity in the face of the zionist project and its aides.

Palestinian Mujahideen Movement
Central Media
Friday, 24 Ramadan 1447 AH
Corresponding to March 13, 2026 AD

Ahrar Movement:
—
The anniversary of International Quds Day is not a passing commemoration; rather, it is a mobilization of all Muslim peoples in the world in support of the sanctities, foremost among them the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and in support of our Palestinian people and their just cause in their conflict with the zionist occupier and those who support it.International Quds Day is a call for Islamic unity in the face of zionist-American imperial arrogance, which intends to control the Arab and Islamic world and its resources. What happened in Gaza in terms of war crimes and genocide, and what is happening in Lebanon and Iran, is evidence that this aggression is a religious, doctrinal aggression aimed at achieving alleged biblical prophecies at the expense of Arab and Islamic peoples, and realizing their so-called alleged state of “greater israel” from the Euphrates to the Nile.

We call upon the Arab and Islamic nation, governments and peoples, to cast aside all differences, exercise reason, unite their goals and objectives, and stand in one rank to confront this zionist-American aggression, and work to support the Palestinian people and protect their sanctities and the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, which has become alone, suffering under the mercy of the occupation’s leaders and their settlers, where prayer is prevented, and excavations increase beneath it in preparation for its demolition and the construction of their alleged temple on its ruins.

We extend our fraternal greetings to the Islamic Republic of Iran, its people, leadership, and Supreme Leader, for it is the sponsor and founder of International Quds Day, which has paved its way into the ranks and hearts of the Islamic world and the free people of the world, to confirm to everyone the extent of Muslims’ attachment to their sanctities, their land, and their resources, and that they are capable of protecting and liberating them.

We pay tribute to the martyrs of our Palestinian people, and the martyrs of the Arab and Islamic peoples who ascended on the path to Al-Quds and in support of it, and we salute all the pure hands pressing the trigger to liberate the land of Palestine from this rogue zionist occupation.

It is a jihad of victory or martyrdom.
Palestinian Ahrar Movement
Media Office
13/3/2026

— Popular Resistance Committees:
—
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most MercifulOn the occasion of International Al-Quds Day, we confirm that all attempts to subjugate the Palestinian people and their resistance have failed, and that Palestine and Al-Quds have become embedded in the conscience, minds, and hearts of all members of the nation and the free people of the world, and that the zionist entity has become an isolated, outcast, fragile, and defeated entity.

On International Al-Quds Day, we extend our greetings to all the pure martyrs among the leaders of the Resistance Axis, foremost among them the guide and leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the late martyred Sayyed Ali Khamenei, and all the great leaders who ascended in the battles of True Promise and Al-Aqsa Flood, and all the martyrs of our people, our resisting axis, and all the martyrs who ascended while confronting the forces of zionist-American tyranny.

On International Al-Quds Day, we affirm that the zionist-American targeting of the Islamic Republic of Iran comes precisely because of its absolute adoption of the cause of the liberation of Palestine and Al-Quds, and its great and continuous support for the Palestinian resistance.

The criminal targeting of the martyr leader, His Eminence Sayyed Ali Khamenei, came because of his effective and significant role in the awakening of the nation’s people and the unification of all arenas and fronts in order to stand in the face of the zionist criminals and the forces of hegemony and Western colonialism, foremost among them the American devil.

The revolutionary, jihadist path and approach that the Islamic Republic of Iran has committed to in supporting the Palestinian people, their resistance, and all resistance forces opposing the occupation and global arrogance represents a source of pride and dignity for all the people of the nation, the Islamic Republic, and its brave leaders.

In light of the attempts to Judaize the city of Al-Quds and the daily violations and continuous desecration that the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque is subjected to, it is the duty of every member of the Arab and Islamic nation to support the destination of our Prophet, peace be upon him. Al-Quds was and will remain the compass of this conflict and its title, the path of the fighters everywhere, and a title for the unity of the struggling nation. Any abandonment or attempt to abandon an inch of Al-Quds is a betrayal of Allah, the Messenger, the religion, the homeland, and the sacrifices of the martyrs throughout history.

On International Al-Quds Day, we renew our full standing and solidarity with the Islamic Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran, its leadership, and its people, as well as with the brotherly Lebanese people and their resistance, represented by the Islamic Resistance and the brave resisting Hezbollah, as well as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, and we call for further unity and integration at all levels and spheres in order to confront and defeat the zionist-American aggression against Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza.

Popular Resistance Committees in Palestine
Friday, 24 Ramadan 1447 AH, March 13, 2026 AD

— Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades Spokesman Abu Obeida:
—
On International Quds Day, we praise the rocket strikes carried out by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps targeting the zionist enemy entity, as part of the continuous bombardment operations on the entity, using qualitative and cluster missiles, which healed the chests of our bereaved people and lit up the hearts of the free people before they illuminated the sky of “Tel Aviv.”

The exit of millions of the dear Iranian people today in support of Al-Aqsa, despite the rabid war against them, and the union of the leaders with the masses, is further proof of their principled position supporting Palestine, and that the Islamic Republic, under the leadership of Sayyid Mojtaba Khamenei, will continue on the same path that was charted by the martyr Sayyid Ali Khamenei with his blood.

International Quds Day, which the masses of our Islamic peoples commemorated in support of Palestine, is an opportunity to unite the energies of the nation and correct the compass towards its major issues. For Al-Quds is groaning under the occupation, your Al-Aqsa Mosque is empty of worshipers, and your real enemy is the zionist entity that is lurking for you and expanding the circle of its aggression against our nation day after day.

— Fatah Al-Intifada Movement:
—
International Quds Day comes today in light of a phase of dangers and challenges centered around the brutal American zionist war and aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran, the leader of the Axis of Resistance from Palestine to Yemen, which is defending and repelling the aggression with its fourth true promise, adhering to its rights and principled positions, and the ability of its leadership to continue the confrontation under the banner of Ayatollah, Hujjat al-Islam, Imam the Leader Ali Khamenei, may Allah have mercy on him, who is preceded by many martyred leaders, nuclear scientists, and innocent citizens. This comes in the context of the continuation of the blessed Al-Aqsa Flood battle, which is nearing two and a half years, as the Palestinian people and their brave resistance wage the most magnificent epics of heroism and legendary steadfastness in the face of the war of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and horrific massacres committed by the enemy in the Gaza Strip, the proud West Bank, and Al-Quds, and in conjunction with the repeated attacks by the zionist occupation on brotherly Lebanon, where the Islamic Resistance led by Hezbollah is confronting it with valor in defense of the land and the people.We, in the Central Committee of the Fatah Al-Intifada Movement, remain committed to the covenant and continue on the path of Al-Quds, committed to the approach and choice of resistance as the only path to liberation and return to Palestine, all of Palestine, from its river to its sea, and the establishment of the Palestinian state on the entire national territory with Al-Quds as its eternal capital.

Iran will be victorious.
Victory to the resistance fighters.
Freedom for the prisoners and detainees.
Glory and immortality to the righteous martyrs.
It is a revolution until victory.

Fatah Al-Intifada Movement – Occupied Palestine
March 13, 2026

— Palestinian Islamic Jihad:
—
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.In these blessed Ramadan days, we recall the anniversary of International Quds Day, which was established by the founder of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and its leader, Imam Khomeini (may Allah have mercy on him), as an expression of the adherence of Muslims in all corners of the earth to their sanctities in Palestine, foremost among them the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque. It is a call for unity and solidarity for the sake of liberating the land and the sanctities, supporting the Palestinian people and their cause, and confronting the “israeli” occupation and its supporters.

What our region is witnessing today is an existential war ignited by the leaders of the usurping zionist entity, headed by the war criminal Netanyahu, who declared with no ambiguity that his entity is waging an open aggression against all Muslims, without exception, in a clear indication of the entity’s goals to impose its control and hegemony over our region and our nation.

The treacherous aggression launched by the foolish Trump administration, driven by miscalculations and hateful arrogance, has ignited fires in many countries of the region to protect the zionist entity and impose its sovereignty, in fulfillment of Talmudic myths that aim to destroy our sanctities, plunder our wealth, and impose humiliation and submission on our peoples. We call upon the entire Arab and Islamic nation to unite and stand together to thwart the goals of this comprehensive aggression, in defense of our land, our sanctities, and the future of our generations. Commemorating International Quds Day is a victory for the nation’s central cause in Palestine and a rejection of the aggression and the massacres of the criminal entity and the American administration.

On this occasion, we extend our greetings to the Islamic Republic of Iran, a dear and proud people, a courageous government, and a towering and steadfast leadership, for its heroic steadfastness in the face of the American-“israeli” aggression. It has presented its leader, Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei, as a martyr for the sake of the nation’s rise and the deterrence of aggression, in defense of the freedom of its peoples and in support of the Muslims’ sanctities in Palestine.

We also extend our greetings to all the fighters who are waging the most honorable battles against the zionist enemy on all fronts, especially the heroes of the Islamic Resistance in southern Lebanon who are offering their souls as a sacrifice for their land and sanctities.

And it is a jihad of victory or martyrdom.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement
Friday, 24 Ramadan 1447 AH, March 13, 2026 AD.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=29867 #alAqsaFlood #alQassam #fatahAlIntifada #gaza #hamas #iran #iranWar #palestine #pflp #pij

Al-Qassam and Axis of Resistance Hail Iran’s Revolution, Support and Remain United Against Imperialism

The spokesperson for the al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida, reaffirmed on Wednesday the movement’s full solidarity with Iran, warning that any aggression targeting the Islamic Republic would be considered an attack on the entire Islamic nation and Palestine.

In a statement issued on the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Abu Obeida said that the threats and hostilities facing Iran are a direct retaliation against its leadership and people for their unwavering support of the Palestinian resistance.

Such actions, he added, are a criminal assault on the sovereignty of a resisting Islamic state and a form of coercive interference aimed at imposing realities through force.

Confidence in Iran’s military capabilities

Abu Obeida expressed full confidence in the Iranian Armed Forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), highlighting their performance in the True Promise 3 battle in June 2025, during which they “taught the Zionist enemy harsh lessons.”

He said Iran retains the capacity to repel aggression and strike back forcefully in defense of its sovereignty and regional role.

Retaliation for support of Palestine

He stressed that the ongoing threats, economic blockade, and military attacks on Iran are part of a desperate attempt to punish Tehran for its open and consistent support for the Palestinian people.

Abu Obeida praised Iran’s backing of the resistance, especially during Al-Aqsa Flood, which he stressed was a turning point that shattered the Zionist entity’s prestige and thwarted all of its declared objectives.

Abu Obeida concluded by reaffirming that the Axis of Resistance remains unified, and that Iran’s strength reinforces the Palestinian struggle in its ongoing confrontation with the occupation.

Earlier today, top Iranian official Ali Larijani met with the Hamas leadership in Qatar, where he reaffirmed that Iran will always champion the Palestinian cause.

Resistance Organizations Release Statements

Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman, Abu Obeida:
—
We declare our solidarity, along with our people, with Iran—its leadership, government, and people. We consider any aggression against the Islamic Republic and its brotherly people to be an aggression against our Islamic nation, a criminal infringement on the sovereignty of a resistant Islamic state, and rejected thuggery aimed at interfering in its internal affairs and attempting to impose facts on the ground through brute force.We express our confidence in the determination and steadfastness of the Iranian Armed Forces and the Revolutionary Guard, who taught the zionist enemy lessons during the “True Promise 3” battle in June 2025, and they are capable, with the help of God, of repelling aggression and exercising their natural and legitimate right to self-defense and delivering harsh blows to the aggressors.

We emphasize that the threats facing the Islamic Republic today, and the preceding attacks and siege, are a desperate attempt to seek revenge against its great people and its resistant leadership because of its stance alongside our Palestinian people and its direct and declared support for its valiant resistance; which has been able, thanks to God and then the support of the free people of the nation, to achieve legendary steadfastness in the “Al-Aqsa Flood” battle, breaking the prestige of the zionist enemy and thwarting all its declared goals.

Hezbollah 
—
A statement issued by Hezbollah on the anniversary of the victory of the blessed Islamic Revolution in Iran: The blessed Islamic Revolution in Iran, whose victory was led by Imam Khomeini (may God bless his soul), and whose care, policy guidance, and strengthening of capabilities and presence were continued by Imam Khamenei (may his shadow endure), appears on its 47th spring anniversary stronger, more influential, and more capable of inspiring the oppressed with the values of liberation, independence, and the rejection of occupation, dependency, and guardianship. It also appears more determined to adhere to its principles, constants, and civilizational and political foundations, and possesses greater influence and credibility among oppressed peoples and countries struggling to rid themselves of all policies of subjugation and blackmail regarding their security, stability, economy, and independence of decision-making.The beating of the drums of aggressive war against it today, by the bullying American administration or by the stray and unleashed zionist entity, is nothing but definitive and tangible evidence of how greatly the forces of international and regional tyranny and despotism sense the growing effectiveness and capabilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the expansion of its civilizational and political liberation model and its awakening influence on peoples and its activities against the plans of arrogance, domination, and hegemony in our region and in many countries of the world.

Despite all the conspiracies coordinated between America, Western countries, and the zionist entity to encircle and besiege the Islamic Revolution since its victory on February 11, 1979, until this day, with the aim of toppling it and eliminating its liberationist and developmental project, the continued brilliance, consolidation, and development of Iran over forty-seven years represents a blatant witness to the abject failure and clear disappointment of all hostile conspiratorial policies. These policies have revealed the danger of those participating in them, not only to our Arab and Islamic region but to the present and future of peoples across various continents of the world, and have exposed the savage political and aggressive model they adopt to confiscate the right of people to determine the fate of their countries, and to crush their existence and control their lands and homelands.

As the enemies of the Islamic Republic gather today to threaten it, wage war against it, and attempt to isolate it, this collusion actually reveals that Islamic Iran alone constitutes the actual equivalent counterweight to all the countries of the aggressive camp and the parties, entities, and forces involved in it. This alone doubles the confidence of the oppressed in their bet on Iran’s strength, the solidity of its position, and its steadfastness regarding its rights in the field of nuclear enrichment for peaceful purposes, in the field of missiles to defend its sovereignty and people, or in the field of its policy supporting the resistance forces against occupation and hegemony.

Power that is not based on a legitimate right is tyrannical thuggery destined to be exposed and collapse. Meanwhile, a legitimate right supported by power is the fastest way to take root, expand, and establish the model and example that attracts struggling peoples seeking to achieve security, justice, stability, and progress. This is the model and example that the blessed Islamic Republic of Iran provides to humanity today; starting from its commitment to supporting the cause of Palestine and supporting the legitimate rights of its resisting people, to its blatant condemnation of the zionist occupation and its continuous aggressions against Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and the entire Arab region, as well as its condemnation of the genocide committed by the zionist enemy against Gaza and its people, in addition to supporting the Lebanese people and their right to resist the zionist occupation, liberate their land, and protect their security and stability, reaching its courageous positions supporting the right of states to exercise full sovereignty over their land without any arrogant intervention or blackmail in their security and economy, and its permanent standing alongside those with legitimate and just rights against those who plunder their countries and covet domination over their resources.

We in Hezbollah and the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon highly appreciate and express our pride in the Islamic Republic and its liberationist model. On the anniversary of its victory, we extend our congratulations and blessings to its leader, His Eminence Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei (may his shadow endure), to all its officials, and to its dear and courageous people, whose awareness and unity grow in the face of enemies.

“And victory is only from Allah, the Almighty, the Wise.”

Secretary-General of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, Ziyad al-Nakhala:
—
To His Eminence, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Sayyed Ali Khamenei (may God protect him). Peace, mercy, and the blessings of God be upon you.On the occasion of the forty-seventh anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, I extend to your dear self my warmest congratulations and blessings. We see with pride and honor that this revolution has presented a model for great Islam and has charted a new path for international relations, based on the pride of Islam and from a position of strength and humanity, represented by the Islamic Republic of Iran under your wise leadership and your will, which has distinguished this blessed journey for more than thirty years.

Iran today stands tall in the face of the forces of evil; it is the sanctuary for the hearts of all believers and free people across the globe, and particularly the faithful and courageous Palestinian people, who have fought with all bravery for more than two years against the most formidable diabolical forces in the world, supported without limit by the diabolical powers represented by the United States of America. You stand today in confrontation with them without fear and without hesitation. We highly appreciate your standing by our brave and great people, as supporters, backers, and sustainers in all fields.

As we continue our battle against the zionist enemy, we assure you that the banner of resistance will, God willing, remain raised in Palestine, in Lebanon, and in every place until the fall of the zionist project and its removal from our lands.

In concluding my message, I extend to your dear self my congratulations on the arrival of the blessed month of Ramadan. May God make it a blessed month for you and for the Islamic nation. We ask God for your victory, success, and long life, and that He grant you His support and blessings. Indeed, He is capable of all things.

Ziyad al-Nakhala
Secretary-General of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine
Saturday, 19 Sha’ban 1447 AH
February 7, 2026 AD

A statement issued by the Resistance Committees in Palestine on the occasion of the 47th anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran:

On the 47th anniversary of the victorious Islamic Revolution in Iran, we extend our greetings, congratulations, and sincere blessings to the Iranian people and their struggling leadership, headed by the Guide and Leader of the Revolution, Mr. Ali Khamenei. This revolution changed the course of history, overthrew the regime of tyranny and oppression, and established an independent Islamic state that does not submit to the dominance of arrogant powers and global hegemony.

The Islamic Republic has become a solid regional power that has imposed its position in all arenas and confirmed its presence as a fundamental pillar in regional equations, breaking the arrogance of the Zionist entity and humiliating it in the three operations of Al-Waad Al-Sadiq.

The revolution and the Islamic Republic in Iran have formed a true incubator and support for all oppressed peoples and all resistance movements, as well as a fundamental supporter of the Palestinian cause and resistance.

We stand alongside revolutionary Iran and Islam in facing Zionist-American plots aimed at destabilizing the Islamic Republic, and we salute the great Iranian people who stand with all strength and dignity, refusing to surrender or submit to colonial powers seeking to plunder the nation’s resources and wealth.

We wish for more progress, power, stability, and unity for the Islamic Republic under the leadership of His Eminence Leader Ali Khamenei in facing arrogant powers, enhancing Islamic unity to guarantee a future for our nation.

Resistance Committees in Palestine.
Tuesday 22 Sha’ban 1444 AH, corresponding to February 10, 2026 CE

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=28240 #alQassam #axisOfResistance #gaza #hamas #hezbollah #iran #palestine #pij #westAsia

On “The Guest,” Mohammed al-Deif Abu Khaled’s Decades-Long Resistance Work (Part One)

This article, the first part of a multi-part series that I will be publishing over the subsequent weeks, provides an overview of Mohammed al-Deif’s (known by his kunya, “Abu Khaled”) most formative operations. It seeks to delineate and illuminate how al-Deif’s leadership shaped the Martyr Izz-al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Given al-Deif’s enigmatic presence and disciplined operational security, with him having scarcely been photographed or proffered recorded remarks, this requires plumbing the lesser-known resources.

What immediately follows is a transcript documenting the sole interview al-Deif ever participated in, translated into English for the first time. The interview was conducted with Iyad al-Daoud of Al Jazeera, as part of the 2005 program, In the Guesthouse of the Rifle. The film presented an overview of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), narrated by witness accounts provided by resistance members themselves. On the evening of 9 August 2014, Al Jazeera rebroadcast the film, which had been made shortly after the Zionist occupation’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005. With strict security precautions in place, the director was blindfolded and guided to an area where al-Qassam members were conducting training operations. In addition to al-Deif, al-Daoud also interviewed the prominent military commander, Aḥmad al-Jabari, who was subsequently martyred in an assassination operation that the occupation undertook on 14 November 2012. He also interviewed numerous anonymous combatants. “It is notable that among them were a number of young fighters who, as the narrator notes, were pursuing their university studies. A group known as “al-murābiṭīn” was also documented as they followed the movements of the occupation army as the latter ambulated along its observation positions.

Mohammed al-Deif, the General Commander of the Brigades of the Martyr ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Qassām: We are a people who have been oppressed, wronged, and expelled from our homes. We seek what is our right. What was it like before 1948? There was no Zionist occupation. This occupation arose by a decision from the United Nations, and the League of Nations turned into the organized gang of the United Nations such that it did not realize our right to these lands. As you have all seen, its [international] laws are only applied to the weak, and thus not applied to the Zionist entity.

We have departments for training, scientific and cultural departments; we also have development and educational departments within the military apparatus. And we are thinking of establishing a military court for the Al-Qassam Brigades so that we can mandate and adhere to a system of formal rules.

[…]

Iyad al-Daoud: 1 January 1992 was the official announcement of the formation of the Qassam Brigades, which came into being after an operation that eliminated the rabbi of the Kfar Darom settlement in Gaza. This beginning was preceded by much preparation.

Ahmed al-Jaabari: We set out to resist the occupiers. Of course, we deployed munitions and organized ourselves, and then we began training. I was arrested and tried, spending 13 years in prison—from early 1982 until early 1995.

Mohammed al-Deif: Our work began in a wing called “the Palestinian Mujahideen.” So began our first military action in 1988, and I was imprisoned in 1989 due to my work with the Palestinian Mujahideen.

[…]

Mohammed al-Deif: There is a supreme military council for the battalions, of course, and there are brigades everywhere. The brigades are made up of several battalions, and the battalions are made up of several companies, and the companies are made up of several platoons, and the platoons are made up of several squads, and the squads are made up of individuals.

Ahmed al-Jabari: Within the military apparatus, we also have special training departments and sectors dedicated to scientific research, development, cultural work, and education. There are also plans to establish a military court for the Martyr Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades so that we can continue the founding journey that was started by our mujahideen brothers who preceded us, led by the founding sheikh, Sheikh Salah Shehada, may God have mercy on him.

Mohammed al-Deif: In 1998, we had two cells, and we moved to the West Bank and crated two cells there as well, such that the entire Gaza Strip and the West Bank had four cells in total, two in the Gaza Strip and two in the West Bank. […] By God, I was moving around these lands from the north of the Gaza Strip to the south to the West Bank, working everywhere in this beloved homeland.

Iyad Al-Daoud: And since then, he has been striking everywhere and never revealing himself. They see his actions, but do not know what he looks like.

Mohammed al-Deif: Initially, our work was against [collaborating] agents, then our work became shooting directly at the [occupation] army and conducting bombing operations. Yahya Ayyash was the one who arranged these. The next stage consisted of martyrdom missions until we reached the stage of the tunnel war and stormed the settlements. We ended up eliminating settlers, border guards, army officers, and intelligence. There were many arrangements that we undertook and all aspects of resistance activity were covered, which precipitated the [occupation’s 2005] withdrawal. When our work turned to the “tunnel war,” it marked a qualitative change, as it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

[…]

Iyad al-Daoud [speaking to Ahmed al-Jabari]: […] Israeli sources say you are the second in charge after Mohammed al-Deif.

Ahmed al-Jabari: Let them say what they want.

Iyad al-Daoud: Sir, this is a place where we love God and his doctrine [of honesty reigns]. What is your official position?

Ahmed al-Jabari: I don’t have a position. I am a mujahid fighting in the way of God Almighty. Wherever there is a field of action in the way of God Almighty, you will find me there, fighting like all the others.

Iyad Al-Daoud: So you do not officially represent Muhammad Al-Deif in the field?

Ahmed Al-Jabari: No, I have the honor of being Mohammed al-Deif’s [de facto] representative in the field, but we do not carry such titles.

Iyad Al-Daoud: Have you carried out operations yourself? And do the soldiers die and receive medals like in the Arab armies?

Ahmed al-Jabari: Of course we are not recipients of medals, nor do we want medals at all. The medal of honor is fighting in the way of Allah. Thanks to Allah, we had the honor of participating, planning, and equipping some of the jihad operations.

Iyad al-Daoud: Sources in the al-Qassam Brigades confirm that they have carried out more than 200 military operations, causing nearly fifty percent of Israeli deaths and injuries in the Gaza Strip since the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000.

Ahmed al-Jaabari: I can tell you that ninety percent of the operations carried out by the Qassam Brigades are unique and distinctive because the Qassam Brigades’ operations room will never launch an operation until all matters related to that operation have been planned and completed.

Mohammed Al-Deif: Planning the operation to storm the Gafara Dasmona settlement took us four to five months, as we had to figure out how to get the weapons in. We used a large gas cylinder, which we cut from the bottom, put explosives inside of, and sealed. Of course, one cylinder wasn’t suitable, so we took three cylinders each time. It was important, when entering [the settlement], the cylinder to be opened and the gas released. So my brother went in and opened it, and the gas was released. We rejected operations that had a ten or five percent success rate. For most operations, we found that the success rate was generally more than seventy or eighty percent.

[…]

Anonymous participant [one of the manufacturing department engineers]: Today we are working on an explosive. This place is not a permanent location for preparing the explosive in its third stage. We can move from it and will modify it as necessary. There is an American model that is identical to this explosive. We studied this model and our manufacturing efforts followed the American model. This explosive poses a great danger to the occupation. As an officer in the [Zionist] Defense Forces admitted, that the bomb possessed by the Qassam Brigades can function at a greater distance than the bombs in the possession of the Zionist Defense Forces. This explosive is considered a special weapon for every member of the Al-Qassam Brigades. By the grace of God, large quantities have been distributed to all members of the Al-Qassam Brigades in the Gaza Strip.

Iyad Al-Daoud: How many bombs are manufactured daily?

Anonymous participant: The work is not measured on a daily basis. We have a certain amount that we manufacture monthly, but we cannot disclose it. Of course, the explosive has undergone significant and continuous stages of development. Several leaders of the mujahideen, officials of the Al-Qassam Brigades, and manufacturing researchers participated in this process, including the mujahid commander, may God protect him, Mohammed al-Deif, commander of the Al-Qassam Brigades, and the martyr “Abu Bilal” Al-Ghoul [viz., Adnan al-Ghoul], as well as the martyred mujahid engineer, Yahya Ayyash. There are many other martyrs, including Yasser Taha and Zahir al-Nassar, who worked on developing this bomb, which was initially just an explosive that functioned with a sulfur stick and was ignited manually. It was not mechanical or as advanced as the explosives we use today.

Iyad Al-Daoud: Given that such local manufacturing proves the creativity of Palestinians in adapting the tools of the conflict, what is most important is the human element and the ability to persevere and give. It reminds us that what is more valuable than the weapon is the person who carries it.

Anonymous participant [a perpetrator of the Barakin al-Ghadab Operation]: I entered the tunnel at 5 a.m. after dawn prayers with my brother from the Suqur al-Fatah faction, and we stayed there until just before sunset. We carried out the bombing at 5:30 p.m., then we went to the tower and eliminated seven occupation soldiers. My colleague in the Fatah Falcons was fortunate enough to be martyred in the way of God, and I remained in the battle for a quarter of an hour, then returned to my mujahideen brothers safe and sound, by the grace of God and His guidance.

[…]

Anonymous participant: I am carrying out this martyrdom operation to please God Almighty and to take revenge on the Zionists, to avenge all our martyrs, our children, our women, and our elders, and to avenge Ahmed Yassin and Al-Rantisi.

Iyad Al-Daoud: Have you written your will?

Participant: Yes.

Iyad Al-Daoud: When did you record it?

Participant: About a year ago, shortly after the assassination of Dr. Abdul Aziz Al-Rantisi, may God have mercy on him.

Iyad Al-Daoud: How do you feel now that you have been involved [in resistance activity] for almost a year?

Participant: Death is merely a means to an end, or martyrdom is merely a means to an end, which is to liberate our homeland and lift injustice from humanity.

Mohammed Al-Deif: Life is all about fate. I am married, [and this too] is part of [my] life’s fate. If we want to say that death is simply meaningless, then why would we take security precautions? We move forward and continue, taking into account every security measure, and they [viz., the other resistance fighters who were interviewed] talked a lot about our security precautions in many circumstances. Perhaps you found it difficult to obtain a meeting for this [documentary] because we approach our security very seriously.

[…]

Twelfth participant: The Qassam Brigades are fighting the Zionist tide that kills children, and we, God willing, will eliminate their soldiers, not their children and civilians.

Ahmed al-Jabari: The Jews who came to Palestine were murderers, criminals, rapists, and occupiers. These are the Jews we are fighting. We have no problem with the Jews who live and pray in synagogues in Britain or America. But if they come to Palestine, they are our enemies, and we will fight and eliminate them on Palestinian soil.

Iyad al-Daoud: Is this part of your philosophy—to not take the fight abroad?

Ahmed al-Jabari: Of course, this is the policy of my movement and of the military apparatus.

Mohammed al-Deif: There were no operations against Israeli civilians except in response to the killing of civilians, even though we could have eliminated many. Instead, we undertook targeted operations that were responses. As Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said, ‘Stop killing civilians, and we will stop killing civilians.’

Iyad al-Daoud: Are there clear plans for the West Bank?

Ahmed al-Jaabari: Of course. Speaking about the West Bank without revealing too much, we spare no effort to extend a helping hand to our brothers in the West Bank so that they can achieve liberation, freeing their land just as we liberated Gaza with the help of our mujahideen brothers and their jihad.

Iyad al-Daoud: […] It can be said that the leadership of the Qassam Brigades is seeking by all means to transfer the experience of the Gaza Strip to the West Bank, especially since Al-Deif was a “guest” there and contributed to the establishment of the West Bank resistance apparatus during the early 1990s.

Mohammed al-Deif: The West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the ‘48 territories are all Palestinian land, which means that we must play a role [in freeing it]—this is our duty and obligation. Not only us as Palestinians, but every Muslim in the world has the right and the obligation to fight for the liberation of this land because it is Islamic land [waqf].

Iyad al-Daoud: Despite the difficult beginnings and less than ideal circumstances, the Qassam Brigades derived their legitimacy from their achievements on the ground. It produced hundreds of leaders from among thousands of martyrs and detainees and managed to become a formidable force in all aspects of the conflict, placing it among the world’s major liberation movements and at the top of the blacklist of those wanted for terrorism.

Ahmed al-Jabari: We are a resistance movement. We are a military organization that takes up arms and will keep those arms, and will keep up this cause. We will continue our strategic goal, which is the complete liberation of Palestine. This jihad is ongoing, and this resistance is continuous. It will neither be stopped by ‘fair justice’ nor unjust oppression. We will continue with our actions and security precautions, God willing, until we complete the journey of liberation.[1]

From the Palestinian Mujahideen to Al-Qassam

During the early 1990s, al-Deif remained constantly on the move, with his on-the-ground work extending across the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. During these years, al-Deif presided over the Qassam Brigades. He oversaw the kidnapping of occupation soldiers and martyrdom operations throughout Palestine, launched explosives toward Tel Aviv, and placed all of the enemy’s cities and settlements within range of the resistance’s missiles. Al-Deif spent 35 years of his life being hunted by the occupation, constituting the longest pursuit in Palestinian history, and, indeed, in the world. During this time, he succeeded in establishing and building an organized military force with which he spearheaded two Intifadas and fought five wars.

Al-Deif inaugurated his resistance career when he joined the ‘Palestinian Mujahideen’ (al-Mujahidun al-Filastiniyyu), which Sheikh Salah Shehadeh founded and supervised as the first military wing of Hamas. The “Palestinian Mujahideen” recruited the most elite and devoted members of the Islamic movement, who constituted the central elite that would lead the military action in its early stages, such as Yasser al-Nimrouti, Jamil Wadi, and Imad ‘Aql.[2] Mohsen Mohammed Saleh, in “The Beginnings of Hamas’s Military Work and the Emergence of the al-Qassam Brigades,” writes that:

After the formation of “the Palestine Apparatus” in late 1985, which took charge of directing action for Palestine at home and abroad, the leadership decided to “invite all its members in all areas of occupied Palestine to participate in demonstrations and clashes with the occupying enemy and even to call for such action.” In light of this, the leadership in GS [viz., Gaza Strip] unanimously agreed in 1986 to start military action. The military apparatus was rebuilt under the name of the “Palestinian Mujahidun [Freedom fighters],” and Ahmad Yasin returned to lead it in mid-June 1987. On 17/11/1987, the military action was launched. Yasin entrusted Salah Shehadeh to form the military apparatus in northern GS, and ‘Abdul ‘Aziz al-Rantisi in southern GS. Due to al-Rantisi’s administrative detention on 15/1/1988, the leadership of this region was entrusted to Salah Shehadeh who thus became the field commander of the military apparatus in GS.[3]

As I delineate in “The History Behind Hamas’s Intelligence Apparatus and Understanding its Approach to the Abu Shabab Gang and Other Collaborator Networks: On Al-Majd, Al-Mujahidun Al-Filastiniyyun, and Al-Qiwa Al-Tanfîdîyâ”:

Before the Palestine Apparatus’ formulation in early 1985, the Palestinian Mujahidun’s predecessor framework existed within the auspices of a less defined ‘military committee’ that was tethered to the Palestinian Ikhwan; after the Palestine Apparatus was formed in early 1985, this military committee was absorbed within it. When the Palestinian Mujahidun became independent in 1986, it became independent from the Palestine Apparatus. It should be highlighted that, after it was founded, the Palestinian Mujahidun by no means displaced or overtook the organizational structure of the Palestine Apparatus, which was significantly large an organization and a political body, proper; rather, the Palestinian Mujahidun merely outstripped the facet of the Palestine Apparatus that had been involved in outward-facing military operations within Gaza […] The newly coalesced Palestinian Mujahidun (Al-Mujahidoun Al-Filastinyoun) inaugurated its military actions on 17 December 1987, shortly following the beginning of the First Intifada, with Salah Shehadeh forming the Northern Gaza military cell and ‘Abdul ‘Aziz al-Rantisi directed the southern cell. When al-Rantisi was sentenced with an administrative detention term on 15 January 1988, the southern cell’s leadership coalesced under Salah Shehadeh’s directorship, with the latter subsequently serving as the field commander for the entirety of the Palestinian Mujahidun military apparatus in Gaza.[4]

During this period, the organization tasked Mohammed al-Deif with forming a military group in the southern Gaza Strip. Two years after its establishment and clandestine work, the Palestinian Mujahideen suffered a severe blow when the Zionist occupation uncovered Cell 101, which had been responsible for kidnapping two occupation soldiers. After this, the occupation army launched a widespread campaign of arrests, affecting a large number of the organization’s members, including al-Deif, who was sentenced to two years in prison. During this period, he and Salah Shehadeh were deeply affected by the plight of imprisoned Palestinians. They formed a plan to: as soon as al-Deif was released from prison, he would form a cell dedicated to kidnapping occupation soldiers and exchanging them for the release of imprisoned Palestinians (and Hizbu’llah mujahideen).

A few months after his release, al-Deif resumed fighting, this time under the banner of the Al-Qassam Brigades. He joined the first ranks of the new organization that Yasser al-Nimrouti formed in January 1992, and this organization would lead military work throughout the 1990s. During this period, al-Deif established lines of coordination and communication among the organization’s military structures in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. At the end of 1993, al-Deif returned to the Gaza Strip after extremely harsh events unfolded on the ground, including the martyrdom of key members of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the dismantling of numerous military cells, the signing of the Oslo Accords, and the beginning of the return of the Palestinian Authority to the Gaza Strip. These developments marked a new phase in al-Deif’s military career, beginning in 1994, when he assumed the position of military commander of the Al-Qassam Brigades in the Gaza Strip. Within a few months, he rebuilt the organization in a more structured manner and maintained coordination with military groups in the West Bank, a process that culminated in the kidnapping of soldier Nachshon Waxman, an operation that marked al-Deif’s first public appearance announcing the kidnapping at the time. The Waxman operation is considered one of the most important kidnappings in the early history of the Al-Qassam Brigades, as it was the first event coordinated between Al-Qassam’s various cells in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Figures ranging from al-Deif and Salah Jadallah from Gaza worked with Yahya Ayyash in the West Bank and Jihad Ya’mur from Jerusalem.[5]

The Zionist entity did not know of al-Deif until the mid-1990s, after the Al-Qassam leadership, headed by al-Deif, made a strategic decision to avenge engineer Yahya Ayyash. In 1996, prisoner Hassan Salama carried out three major operations, and these operations resulted in the deaths of approximately 47 Israelis. Among the violent repercussions was the fall of the Shimon Peres government and the authorities’ implementation of a massive arrest campaign, which led to the liquidation of many organizational and military structures in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Al-Deif became the Zionist occupation’s most wanted individual. Yet the security services failed to locate him, despite widespread and massive arrest campaigns that affected most of those who were on the occupation’s wanted list throughout the West Bank and Gaza. The occupation repeatedly tried to pressure him to surrender his weapons and join the security services, which he categorically refused. On one occasion, al-Deif remarked that: “history will record that not everyone surrendered and laid down their arms.”[6] In early 2000, he was arrested by the Preventive Security Service in Gaza City and held for several months before escaping from prison during the Al-Aqsa Intifada with the help of two prison guards.

The Al-Aqsa Intifada was spearheaded by numerous military leaders, some of whom remained outside prison and others who traveled abroad, such as Sheikh Salah Shehadeh, Fawzi Abu al-Qaraʿ, Adnan al-Ghoul, Saad al-Arabid, Muhammad Abu Shamala, and Raed al-Attar.. The most influential figure at that time, al-Deif, oversaw the resistance’s reorganization. Within a few years, they were able to establish an extensive military structure, which became the nucleus of the resistance project. It continued to grow throughout the following years, reaching its peak in the Al-Aqsa Flood.

It is here worth quoting Hassan Kamal’s biography at length, where the author adumbrates several important qualities that al-Deif possessed:

The Al-Qassam Brigades went through significant and complex turning points, some of which had a profound impact on the structure and direction of the brigades, and some of which could have ended their structural and administrative existence, given the extremely difficult security and military situation. This was reflected in the biography of al-Deif, who became the central equation in the history of the Al-Qassam Brigades after 1993. It was represented in three strategic stations that had a major impact on the history of the Palestinian people after the Intifada of Stones [viz., first Intifada], in which al-Deif played a central and sometimes decisive role in the course of events:

The first stage: the signing of the Oslo Accords and its heavy repercussions on the Palestinian people, and the questions it raised at the time, the most important of which were “What should we do? How do we deal with the new reality?” The nationalist and Islamist movements were sharply divided in their responses to this question. The Islamist movement was divided into three positions: the first saw what had happened as a near-total defeat that could not be resisted and thought that it was necessary to see this experiment through to the end. The second position saw the need to confront the Palestinian Authority and the occupation at the same time, considering them as one and the same, and this opinion was very popular among the Islamist base, specifically the fighters among them. The third position clearly distinguished between the Palestinian Authority and the occupation, refusing to consider large sectors that had been fighters and opponents of the occupation a few months earlier to be on the same side

At the same time, he saw the need to continue the jihad and not surrender weapons, a position led by Abu Khaled al-Deif and the groups of the pursued that he leads. During that period, al-Deif focused exclusively on targeting the occupation. He managed to manage relations with figures in the Authority and influence them, as he was keen to forge close ties with many Fatah leaders and security officers, such as Jamal Abu Samhadana, Jihad Abu al-Amareen, Amr Abu Sitta, and others.

The second stage: After the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, a huge and intense debate returned within the Islamic movement and the groups of the pursued on how to deal with the new event. A clear trend emerged among them that what was happening was merely a temporary period that Arafat would take advantage of to improve his negotiating position, and that any real involvement in this situation would mean a repeat of the Oslo scenario and the subsequent violent arrests among the pursued. Some of the older members even adopted this view and refused to get involved in the uprising. The second opinion was the exact opposite, arguing that even if the uprising was supported by Arafat, it was necessary to engage fully in it and develop it in such a way that the defeatist current in power could not divert it from its course. Abu Khaled al-Deif adopted this approach, drawing on his experience after his release from prison in 1991 and his ability, within a limited period, to form a military structure capable of broad involvement in the uprising. At the same time, the challenge of organizing and unifying military structures emerged during the first year of the uprising. In 2001, enormous efforts were made, led by al-Deif and Salah Shehadeh, which resulted in the unification of the military structure into a single entity, which was the core of the large military structure of the brigades.

The third stage: the question of resistance and its relationship with the enemy after Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Hamas entered the elections and won by a large margin. There was real and widespread fear among the Islamic movement’s base that Hamas would be “contained” and gradually distanced from its resistance line. This was completely thwarted by Operation “al-Wahm al-Mutabaddid” in 2006, during which Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped. Following this, Israel formulated a policy of tightening the blockade on the Gaza Strip, leading to the Wafa al-Ahrar deal, which resulted in the release of a Palestinian political and military elite, some of whom led the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, such as Yahya Sinwar, while others attempted to revive the armed resistance in the West Bank.

Al-Deif was an exceptional figure in the history of Hamas’ military wing and one of the exceptional leaders in the Palestinian jihad movement, due to his moral and psychological qualities, which were reflected in the structure of the military wing and contributed to transforming a set of personal qualities into established traditions in military work. These psychological traits allowed him to have a profound influence on those he dealt with and enabled him to forge relationships that transcended Islamists and had a profound impact even on his fiercest opponents. Three of his fellow captors during his presentence sentence security services belonged to the al-Qassam Brigades. They were the ones who smuggled him out of prison in Gaza. One of them was Yahya Abu Bakra, a leader of the Al-Qassam Brigades

Al-Deif was loyal to his comrades and to all those who contributed to embracing the resistance. It is said that one of the basic conditions he agreed to in order not to clash with the Preventive Security Force that surrounded him in 2000 was not to harm the people of the house that hosted him. Loyalty, in addition to other values, of course, was a fundamental component informing his decision to avenge the death of Yahya Ayyash, whose assassination could not pass without the occupation-enemy paying a clear price.

The second characteristic relates to patience, perseverance, and forbearance. He decided to return to fighting less than a month after his release in 1991—fthe same decision he made after his release from the Authority’s prisons in 2000. Within a few months, al-Deif began leading large groups of fighters in the Gaza Strip.

The third characteristic, extreme organization, was a trait clearly evident in his ability to lead the largest military force in the history of the Palestinian people, developing and accumulating its strength amid a series of major complications on the ground, particularly during the Al-Aqsa Intifada. This included organizational capabilities that enabled him, within a short period of time, to muster and mobilize thousands of fighters during the early years of the intifada. Nevertheless, al-Deif was not merely a commander-in-chief managing a military force of tens of thousands, but was also a key player and practical supervisor of the force’s development, contributing personally to the military manufacturing project that Adnan al-Ghoul and a group of other leaders inaugurating with him.

His fourth characteristic was extreme modesty, detachment from worldly affairs, and a commitment to Islamic education. This was to be found in most of mujahideen, but it was even more so a quality found in the commanders, as the actions of the commanders have always informed that of the soldiers. This became clear after his martyrdom, particularly after seeing the kind of modest life that his family and children lived under. Their condition was like that of others in their community. His wife and family recounted his insistence on having their children memorize the Qur’an and his great interest in memorization projects in Gaza, especially among the jihadist ranks.

The fifth characteristic is the fading of personal concerns and the dissolution of the individual into the spirit of the group. Despite Abu Khaled’s enormous legitimacy in the history of the Islamic movement, he stayed out of the limelight and there is almost nothing written about him during the first 20 years of his jihadist life. He was keen to avoid getting involved in any internal disputes, no matter how small or large, focusing instead on building an institutional force that belonged to the Palestinian people as a whole. The peak of Palestinian creativity was embodied in the Al-Qassam Brigades, which were formed from strong organizational pillars and structures, strongly linked to the idea of resistance. They trained until they were able to fight and confront the occupation, waging the fiercest Palestinian wars despite the martyrdom of their commander-in-chief in the middle of the battle—in addition to the martyrdom of half of the members of the military council.

The martyr Muhammad al-Deif, “Abu Khaled,” remained a source inspiration, exalted by popular referendum and consensus. His leadership was neither an organizational decision nor a a political pursuit led by some members of the Qassam Brigades. Rather, it emerged spontaneously from the heart of Palestinian society, which chants at every martyr’s funeral, at every demonstration, march, and occasion: “Put the sword against the sword… We are the men of Muhammad al-Deif.”[7]

In the next section, I will provide an account of one of the most important and foundational resistance projects conducted by al-Deif.

The Nachshon Waxman Operation

In October 1994, the Qassam Brigades issued a communique following the kidnapping of a Zionist occupation soldier, Nachshon Waxman, that occurred during that same month. The communique demanded the release of more than 150 prisoners affiliated with the fasāʾil of the Alliance of Palestinian Forces, all of whom were serving long-term prison sentences, in exchange for the release of the soldier. In addition to demanding the release of these prisoners—specifically 50 belonging to Hamas, 25 to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, 50 to Fatah, 20 to the PFLP, 10 to the DFLP, 20 to Hizbu’llah, and 15 to the PFLP-GC—Hamas also demanded the release of Sheikh Yassin and all Palestinian female detainees.[8] The occupation, however, did not release any of these detainees.

Specifically, Prime Minister Rabin stated that he would not yield to the kidnappers’ demands, and he also blamed Yasser Arafat for supposedly providing shelter to the kidnappers in the Gaza Strip. The deadline set by the Qassam Brigades was overtaken by the Zionist occupation’s military attempt to rescue him before the deadline expired. Acting on intelligence reports, the occupation’s military planned and launched a rescue mission intended to extract Waxman from the village of Bir Nabala in the West Bank, but the operation unfolded disastrously. When soldiers stormed the building, Waxman was killed by his three Hamas captors during the assault. In the same exchange of gunfire, the captors also killed another soldier, Captain Nir Poraz.

Five days after the unsuccessful rescue attempt to free Waxman, the Qassam Brigades carried out another attack. On 19 October 1994, a Qassam operative boarded a crowded commuter bus in central Tel Aviv while carrying a bag containing twenty kilograms of explosives, and the device detonated as the bus traveled along the city’s main street. The explosion resulted in the death of twenty-one denizens of the Zionist entity, one Dutch national, and the bomber himself; it also injured fifty other people. Following the bombing, Qassam released a videotaped statement declaring that the attack served as revenge for the deaths of the three Qassam activists who had been killed during the Waxman rescue attempt, and the organization identified the attacker as twenty-seven-year-old Salah Abdel Rahim Suwi.

Suwi appeared in the video and declared that “We will continue our brave suicide operations. There are many young men who long to die for the sake of God.” [9] In response to the failed operation, Rabin ordered another crackdown on the movement. He also declared a complete closure of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip while simultaneously pressuring the Palestinian National Authority (viz., PNA also known as “PA”) to take action against wanted Hamas activists located in the Gaza Strip. The PA responded by arresting hundreds of Hamas leaders and activists, while the occupation military targeted the West Bank with additional operations. Arrest campaigns were organized against Hamas and its supporters throughout October and November, and in both Nablus and Hebron, hundreds of individuals were detained during raids conducted on homes, workplaces, and mosques. Throughout this period, however, al-Deif, who was critical in the Waxman operation, eluded capture.

The following is a narrative description of the Waxman operation, collating the extant sources detailing what transpired.[10]

On 3 October 1994, Hassan Jihad Yaghmour traveled to Nablus to be introduced to the Qassam mujahideen whom he had not yet met. When he arrived, Commander Salah Darwazah introduced him to the three men: Hassan Taysir ʿAbd al-Nabi al-Natsheh from Jerusalem; ʿAbd al-Karim Yasin Badr, a veteran of earlier Qassam capture operations who offered observations and recommendations based on his two prior experiences, allowing the group to draw lessons from those operations; and Salah al-Din Hasan Jadallah, known as Abu Muhammad, from the Gaza Strip. The occupation forces had already placed all three men on wanted lists for military activities. Hassan Jihad Yaghmour took responsibility for transporting the three men to a new house in the Bir Nabala area as the occupation forces did not know him at that time. To strengthen their security precautions, Commander Salah Darwazah secured a large cargo vehicle to transport the three wanted men after their passage through Nablus. Hassan Jihad Yaghmour simultaneously drove ahead in his private car to guide them and to secure their route.

After leaving Nablus, the group drove toward Jerusalem and encountered a military checkpoint that had not previously stood at one of the city’s entrances, which surprised them. Soldiers often stopped cars at the checkpoint and conducted thorough searches. Hassan Jihad Yaghmour drove a car with a yellow license plate, indicating that the car was registered to a citizen of “Israel.”

As soon as the car stopped at the checkpoint and the soldier approached it and noticed that it had a yellow license plate, the mujahid Yaghmour greeted him. The soldier then asked the passengers for their personal documents. Within moments, his eyes fell on a cell phone in the car. He asked Yaghmour to use the phone for a moment, and Yaghmour replied, “You are most welcome.” After the soldier used Jihad’s cell phone, he signaled him to pass without checking the personal documents of the three wanted men, thanking him for giving him the opportunity to talk to his family.

After the mujahideen were able to pass through the checkpoint, they set off for the Bir Nabala area. On the way, the mujahideen began to chat, and the mujahid Hassan al-Natsheh told Jihad Yaghmour that he and Badr had been wanted by the enemy since they carried out a shooting operation against a Zionist cargo truck near Jerusalem. They then used their time to discuss the planning of the capture mission they planned to undertake. Only two steps remained in the preparation phase: firstly, the mujahideen’s safe arrival at the designated safe house so that they could familiarize themselves with it, its entrances and exits, and its weak points. The second step was to switch to the car that would be used in the operation.

In the evening, the mujahideen arrived safely at their new hideout and agreed among themselves that Sunday, 9 October 1994, would be the day of the operation. The group began to make preparations, while Jihad Yaghmour went to rent a car from one of the Zionist car rental companies that would be suitable for this mission. Previous operations had been carried out using either stolen cars, private cars belonging to one of the mujahideen, or cars belonging to the employer of one of the mujahideen. In all three cases, the military groups exposed themselves to danger because the owners of the cars were known to the occupation forces. This time, however, the car that would be used in the operation was rented, shielding the resistance fighters from the occupation’s watch.

On the day of the operation, Yaghmour went to King David Street in Western Jerusalem, where several rental companies operated. Yaghmour entered the first company, called Alon, and tried to rent a private car, but failed after the owner of the company asked for his ID card, which meant that he would have to reveal his real name. Jihad left this company and tried to rent from a second company, but failed again for the same reason. However, he finally managed to rent a car from Shakonir, also located on the same street. The car was a red Volkswagen, and the owner did not ask for his ID card. However, he had to deposit $1,000 as a security deposit for the company. With that, the last obstacle had been overcome. After receiving the rented car, he returned at exactly three o’clock in the afternoon that day to Bir Nabala, where he met the mujahideen with his new red car. There, the three mujahideen had prepared themselves and reviewed the plan. Everyone then dressed in the clothes of religious Zionists and put large black hats on their heads.

Mujahid ʿAbd al-Karim Badr carried an Uzi submachine gun and sat next to the driver, Hassan Jihad Yaghmour. Mujahid Hassan al-Natsheh carried a Galil rifle and sat in the rear seat. Mujahid Salah Jadallah, who carried a pistol, also sat in the back. The two in the back would deceive the soldier into thinking that they were passengers like him. Yaghmour had disguised himself in a shirt with the Zionist occupation’s flag on it. Next to him was Badr, dressed as a rabbi and wearing a kippah. Behind them were the other two, who were dressed as Zionist settlers. Natsheh wore a shirt emblazoned with the Zionist entity’s flag and Jadallah wore clerical garb. This time, their destination was downtown, specifically Ramla (and Ben Yehuda). The mujahideen would travel to the Beit Hanina area, and from there they headed to Ramot junction, near the Ben Gurion Airport. As they drove along, their eyes scanned the sides of the road and monitored the parking places and buses. Hebrew music blared from their radio.

At the side of the road, an occupation soldier stood, looking to hitch a ride. Yaghmour slowed down. Badr remarked to his fellow passengers, “We don’t want him, he’s not carrying a weapon!” Yaghmour nevertheless asked the soldier, “Where are you going?” “To a nearby kibbutz, in this direction,” replied the soldier. “I’m sorry, we’re going in the opposite direction,” said Yaghmour, as the car turned around and headed back down the road.

Yaghmour stopped at the intersection leading to Tel Aviv and took a road to the Yehud Industrial Zone. There, he spotted a Subaru parked on the opposite side of the street. An occupation soldier carrying a weapon and a black military bag got out. Yaghmour accelerated and swerved sharply, causing the passengers’ hats and the Torah scroll placed on the dashboard to tilt. He slowed and honked his horn. The soldier raised his hand and waved, signaling that he was looking for a ride.

Yaghmour stopped the car about twenty meters past the soldier, who ran over, his bag bouncing on his back. “Where are you going?” asked Yaghmour, rolling down the window as Orthodox Pop music played from the car’s speakers. The soldier responded, “To Ramla. Are you going there?” Yaghmour answered “yes” and the soldier opened the door. He sat down next to the two passengers.

The soldier tried to talk to one of them, but the passengers neither turned nor responded to him. Thus, the soldier turned his head towards the side window. The car slowed down after entering a traffic jam on the road leading to the airport, and the radio continued to loudly play music. The soldier, who had just left his station in southern Lebanon, placed his rifle on his lap and closed his eyes. His rifle was unloaded. At that time, the occupation authorities prohibited their soldiers from carrying loaded weapons within the borders of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948. They were allowed to carry ammunition, but only separately from their weapon.

The soldier, who had drifted asleep, woke up after the car had passed a traffic jam and was heading towards Jerusalem. The car was flanked by woods on both sides of the road. The young man wearing the Zionist entity’s flag on his chest jumped on the soldier, put his arm around his neck, and shouted: “Allahu Akbar!” The soldier grabbed his rifle while attempting to resist al-Natsheh’s grip.

The soldier quickly tried to insert the magazine into his rifle in order to shoot at the mujahideen, but the mujahid ʿAbd al-Karim Badr, who was sitting next to Yaghmour, pulled the magazine from him after jumping from his seat to the back seat where the capture took place. “Kill him, Salah!” shouted al-Natsheh, squeezing the soldier’s neck with all his might, while his colleague joined him in pinning down their prey, who was trying to point the rifle at one of the young men.

Yaghmour shouted, “Don’t kill him, we want him alive!” Badr jumped and grabbed the pistol strapped to Salah Jadallah’s waist. Using all his might, he then struck the soldier’s head with the butt of his pistol. The soldier was subdued. At the same moment, Badr reached with his other hand and pulled the magazine out of the rifle. When Hassan and Jadallah realized that the danger had been neutralized, they covered his mouth with their hands so he couldn’t scream and stuffed a piece of cloth into it.

The three mujahideen managed to tie his hands and feet, cover his head with a piece of cloth, and place a black bag over his head to cover half of his upper body. They then placed him in the rear of the car (behind the seats). The soldier began to scream and threaten. He then asked the mujahideen to leave him alone and not harm him. They reassured him and tried to calm him down several times, telling him that they would not harm him if he remained silent, and that they did not want to kill him.

The soldier’s cries turned into crying and begging: “Don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me!” His mumbles were audible from behind the cloth muzzling his mouth.

“If you don’t want to die, listen to what I have to say,” said Yaghmour, speaking in clear Hebrew. “We are the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. We have captured you so that we can release our leader Ahmed Yassin and our brothers from your prisons.” “So you don’t want to kill me?” replied the soldier. His panic soon began to fade. “We want you alive. It’s not in our interest to kill you!” replied Yaghmour. Waxman responded, saying “I promise you I won’t make a sound and I won’t do anything. I haven’t attacked any Palestinians and I haven’t worked against the intifada. I serve in the Golani Brigade in southern Lebanon.”

Everyone understood Hebrew except Jadallah, who was from Gaza, so he asked them, “What is he saying?” Badr said, “He wants to wash his hands of our blood, as if the Lebanese are not one of us!” Hassan then asked him, “Where are you from?” “From Jerusalem,” replied the soldier. The young men burst out laughing, “Oh… he’s from our hometown!”

To reassure the soldier, Yaghmour spoke to him in Hebrew throughout the journey. He learned that the captured soldier’s name was Nahshon Waxman and that he lived with his mother in the Ramot area near Jerusalem. He also learned that he had served in southern Lebanon for three months and was planning to travel to Ramla, where his friend lived.

The soldier looked at them with questioning eyes, and the driver said: “Thank God, we made it through the Erez crossing!” The soldier burst into tears: “Please don’t take me to Gaza, don’t take me to Gaza! I beg you… I don’t want to go to hell.”

After a short period of time, the mujahideen arrived at the Jerusalem Road, and from there they drove to the Beit Shemesh junction. They then turned towards the Givat Ze’ev settlement. From there, they continued traveling until they finally reached the Bir Nabala area, where the house they had prepared to hide the captured soldier was located. By then, it was almost 7:30 p.m. After making sure the location was safe and securing the area thoroughly, the mujahideen took Waxman out of the car and brought him into the house, placing him in the bedroom (which was the most secure and fortified room). He remained there until the early hours of the morning. The third phase of the operation was then initiated.

The third phase began when Yaghmour went to a photography shop in the Beit Hanina area to rent a video camera. He then returned to the house where the captured soldier and the three mujahideen were staying. Upon his arrival, Yaghmour spoke calmly to the captured soldier, reassuring him once again that no one would harm him as long as he remained calm and did not try to resist or escape. He then asked him to prepare to deliver a message in front of the camera, in which he was to reassure his family that he was alive and well. In the message, he would demand that his government’s prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, meet the mujahideen’s demands.

Whenever the resistance fighters wanted to remove their masks, they would put the soldier’s mask on their faces and vice versa, so that the soldier would not recognize their features and they would not be pursued by the Zionist intelligence services if the deal went through and the soldier returned to his family. Badr took the video, while the mujahid Salah Jadallah stood behind the soldier, his face wrapped with a keffiyeh, holding the soldier’s weapon and ID card; he read the military statement of the Qassam Brigades, written in Yaghmour’s handwriting. The statement read as follows:

{Fight them, and Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of a believing people.}

Military statement issued by:

Al-Qassam Brigades

The Martyr ʿIzz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades claim responsibility for the capture of the Zionist soldier named Nahshon Mordechai Waxman, ID number 03228629, who is now in our custody alive and provided sustenance and is being treated as a prisoner in accordance with Islamic law. In light of this, we demand the following from the Zionist government:

First: The immediate and swift release of the leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, Sheikh Salah Shahada, Sheikh ʿAbd al-Karim ʿUbayd, and Sheikh Mustafa al-Dirani.

Second: The release of all prisoners belonging to the Martyr ʿIzz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

Third: The release of 50 persons from the Hamas movement from among those with high sentences.

50 persons from the Islamic Jihad movement from among those with high sentences.

50 persons from the Palestinian National Liberation Movement Fatah from among those with high sentences.

20 persons from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (George Habash).

10 persons from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

20 persons from Hezbollah.

5 persons from the Popular Front – General Command.

The next day, the cell sent the tape recording of Waxman, along with his military papers, to the mastermind of the operation in Gaza. The man behind the operation, who had remained unknown to them, had recruited them with great perspicacity, selecting them from different areas so that they would not be detected or associated with one another by the occupation. Thus, some were selected from Jerusalem, Hebron and other areas in the West Bank, and Gaza.

Upon receiving the tape, a man appeared who wore a Palestinian keffiyeh and a green shirt. Holding a piece of paper, he read a supplemental recorded statement about the operation to be distributed to the Zionist press:

The Al-Qassam Brigades claim responsibility for the capture of Israeli soldier Nahshon Mordechai [Waxman], and we demand the immediate and swift release of the leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin …

The masked man warned the occupation government that any attempt to manipulate or circumvent the demands would lead to the prisoner’s execution.

When Hebrew media broadcast the clip, the Zionist entity saw, for the first time in its history, Muhammad bin Diab bin Ibrahim al-Masri, better known as “al-Deif.” He presented a list of prisoners whom the occupation authorities were required to release in exchange for Waxman, including 50 prisoners from Hamas, 25 from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement, 50 prisoners from Fatah with long sentences, 20 prisoners from the Popular Front, 10 from the Democratic Front, 20 from Hizbu’llah, and all Palestinian female prisoners.

To be continued.

[1] “Hosted by Venice… Al-Qassam Brigades,” Al Jzeera, 10 August 2014; retrieved online (30 January 2026): https://shorturl.at/bR90m

[2] The Qassam Brigades’ own publications, including al-Nimrouti’s biography, refer to him as the first commander of Qassam; see the official Qassam magazine “Al-Mيدان,” issue No. 3.

[3] Mohsen Mohammed Saleh, “Political Analysis: The Beginnings of Hamas’s Military Action and the Emergence of al-Qassam Brigades” (English version), retrieved online (21 September 2025): https://tinyurl.com/4tffmk4j

[4] “The History Behind Hamas’s Intelligence Apparatus and Understanding its Approach to the Abu Shabab Gang and Other Collaborator Networks: On Al-Majd, Al-Mujahidun Al-Filastiniyyun, and Al-Qiwa Al-Tanfîdîyâ,” Substack, 27 September 2025; retrieved online (25 January 2026): https://mujammaharaket.substack.com/p/the-history-behind-hamass-intelligence

[5] Ghassan Du‘ar, Imad ‘Aql, Legend of Jihad and Resistance (London: Filastin al-Muslimah, 1994).

[6] Hassan Kamal, “Biography of the venerable shadow: Muhammed al-Deif,” Metras, 13 February 2025; retrieved online (25 January 2026): https://shorturl.at/HeOey .

[7] Ibid.

[8] Military communique of the Martyr ‘Izzidin al-Qassam Brigades, 11 October 1994; also see Khaled Hroub, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2000), p. 123.

[9] Palestine Report, 23 October 1994, p. 1.

[10] What follows is a reconstruction based on the following sources: Ghassan Du‘ar’s Harb al-Ayyam al-Sab‘ah: ’Usud Hamas (Amman: Filastin al-Muslima, 1993); Ghassan Du‘ar, Imad ‘Aql, Legend of Jihad and Resistance (London, Filastin al-Muslimah, 1994); See United Nations General Assembly, Report of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories, 24 March 1995; retrieved online (8 February 2026): https://unispal.un.org/pdfs/D4AB68AAA63D90FC85256219005770C9.pdf ; Hassan Salama, The Buses Are Burning (2022); Abeed al-Qudus al-Hashimi, “The Story of the Cunning Man: Mohammed al-Deif,” Metras, op. cit.

 

source: Mujamma Haraket

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=28117 #alQassam #gaza #hamas #mohammadDeif #palestine #resistance #westAsia

Abu Obeida: Death, Complete Eradication Await Traitors in Gaza

The Zionist enemy’s collaborators in Gaza will face their death and inevitable elimination at the hands of the Palestinian people’s justice, of which the Israeli occupation will not be able to rescue them, warned Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing.

In a statement released on Monday, Abu Obeida strongly condemned the collaborator’s actions as service to the Zionist enemy and its agendas. “What these infiltrating collaborators are doing to our people and our honorable resistance fighters reflects full alignment with the occupation and direct execution of its schemes. Their role is nothing more than a function of its security apparatus.”

According to Abu Obeida, collaborators act with impunity under Zionist military protection, particularly in areas occupied by its forces.

“These cowards only feign strength under the protection of the Zionist army and its tanks. Their betrayal, targeting civilians and attempting to overpower resistance fighters weakened by siege and starvation, is not valor, but a desperate effort to prove themselves.”

Abu Obeida warned of the inevitable fate awaiting these collaborators, threatening, “A dark fate awaits the traitors, those tracking our heroes and serving as tools of the occupation. Their end is near: death and complete eradication. The enemy will not shield them from the justice of our people, and they will find no grave in our land to accept their filthy remains.”

Salute to heroic Rafah fighters

He concluded with a tribute to the steadfast resistance fighters besieged in Rafah, highlighting their unshakable stance and historic bravery.

“All honor to our heroic fighters trapped and surrounded in the Rafah corridor, those who rejected humiliation and submission, and chose martyrdom over surrender. Their legacy will be taught to generations to come, and their names will be inscribed in the eternal pages of dignity and resistance.”

Hamas previously announced that it had made extensive efforts through various political leaders and mediators, including full engagement with the US administration as one of the guarantors of the agreement, to resolve the issue of the trapped fighters and ensure their safe return home. However, the Zionist regime undermined all these efforts.

It had submitted specific proposals and mechanisms to resolve the fighters’ situation, yet the regime chose the path of violence, killings, and detention, obstructing the mediators’ work aimed at alleviating the suffering of the Resistance’s heroic fighters.

Thereby, Hamas held the occupation fully responsible for the fate of the fighters and called on mediators to take urgent action to pressure the entity to allow their safe return. Hamas’ fighters are a “unique symbol of sacrifice, resilience, heroism, and a representation of the dignity and freedom of the Palestinian people,” the statement concluded.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=28121 #abuObeida #alQassam #gaza #hamas #palestine #resistance #westAsia

Abu Ubaida💚🇵🇸🍉
His body may be gone, but his words remain, echoing with truth and resistance.
A promise kept. A hero remembered.
Rest in power, voice of the people.
#AbuUbaida #AlQassam #FreePalestine #ResistanceLivesOn #gaza #2026

Who Was Abu Obeida, the Man Who Sowed Fear in the Hearts of Colonizers

Al-mulatham, as he has become known among Arabic speakers, a romanized Arabic word meaning “the masked one”, al-Qassam Brigades spokesperson Abu Obeida has become a legendary figure among pro-Palestinians and a source of horror for the Israelis throughout not just this war on Gaza, but any and every operation carried out by the Palestinian Resistance against the Zionist occupation.

“Permission [to fight back] is [hereby] granted to those being fought, for they have been wronged. And indeed, Allah is Most Capable of helping them [prevail],” Al-Hajj 22:39. Those are the first words Abu Obeida uttered publicly during a humble press statement from the Jabalia refugee camp in late September 2004. Though his mask was different, donning a balaclava at the time, Abu Obeida’s voice would resonate with the supporters and opponents of the Palestinian cause alike.

Reports claim that he was 18 at the time of said address, where he was allegedly told to simply read aloud and leave the conference, according to Metras. Though it was merely a few minutes long, the address would change his name forever, making him synonymous with triumph for Palestine and devastation for the Zionist regime.

Israeli faltering in Gaza: A tale as old as time

The statement at the time was highlighting Israeli failures in military operations in northern Gaza, and specifically the refugee camp in the city of Jabalia, in the midst of the battles leading up to the liberation of the Gaza Strip from Israeli occupation. “[The unfolding battles] are the epitome of Israeli military failure, for the enemy possesses a deadly military force, comprising fighter jets, tanks, and missiles, which it is using to bomb civilians and target women and children. Meanwhile, the valiant Resistance, which has none of the aforementioned, is targeting soldiers and occupiers,” Abu Obeida said, noting that the al-Qassam Brigades had killed at least seven Zionist soldiers within three days of battles.

Just like that, Abu Obeida quickly rose to legendary status, admired by supporters of the Resistance against the Israeli occupation across religions, sects, and nationalities. It was not until 2007, however, that he was officially named the spokesperson of the al-Qassam Brigades, a role he assumed one year after announcing the landmark operation in which the Resistance captured Zionist soldier Gilad Shalit, who remained in captivity for more than five years.

The addresses mirror those Abu Obeida would make later on in his career, breaking the news of Zionist losses and failures in Gaza through his fiery addresses that touched the heart of every listener, regardless of the language barrier.

The morale of the Resistance

With each round of confrontations, with each war waged on Gaza, Abu Obeida rose more and more in prominence, with people from all walks of life waiting for his threatening yet reassuring eyes, veiled with a red koufiyyeh, to deliver news desired by the public, dreaded by the Israelis.

Throughout the years, Abu Obeida gained a wider and wider regional as well as international attention, especially during 2008’s Battle of al-Furqan, which saw the Zionist occupation launching an onslaught on Gaza a mere three years after its liberation. While communication lines were massively disrupted, Abu Obeida still appeared as a consistent figure, offering the public updates, making threats against the Israeli occupation, and announcing Israeli losses while reassuring supporters that the Resistance forces remained intact.

He offered morale not only to spectators outside of Gaza, but also to the people of Gaza themselves, appearing as a beacon of optimism in the midst of heavy bombardment that indiscriminately claimed the lives of thousands of Palestinians. Defiantly, during the war, Abu Obeida once declared, “Gilad Shalit misses you” in reference to the Israelis as he underlined that the Israeli regime was concealing casualties and losses caused by Resistance operations targeting the occupied Palestinian territories.

Later on, between 2010 and 2014, Abu Obeida received more screen time, and with each public appearance, his popularity grew exponentially. He was a champion of rejecting ‘peace’ talks with the Zionist occupation, framing them as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause and warning against the Israeli plans to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank, which, in turn, gave al-Qassam more impetus as the guarantors of Palestine and its ultimate liberation.

In 2014, during the Battle of the Withered Grain, Abu Obeida once more made an announcement as momentous as his announcement years earlier, declaring that al-Qassam had captured yet another Zionist soldier, this time from al-Shujaiyya, a stronghold of Palestinian resilience. Oron Shaul had been captured by Hamas on July 21. Days later, on August 1, al-Qassam captured Hadar Goldin near Rafah. Shaul would not return until 2025, when the Israeli occupation forces retrieved his remains during their latest invasion of Gaza.

He was also just as important in 2020, laying the groundwork for 2021’s Battle of Seif al-Quds by stressing that Israeli plans to further occupy the West Bank served as a “declaration of war”. In May of 2021, during said battle, he was the one to break the news that bloomed glee in the hearts of the supporters of the Palestinian cause, announcing that the Resistance’s rockets were hitting all major occupied Palestinian cities, stressing that such operations had become “easier than drinking water” for Hamas. He also later proclaimed that the battle saw the Resistance achieve a victory in the face of the Zionist occupation, painting the latter as a “fragile enemy”.

The man who unleashed the flood

Because he is a military spokesperson, it is not likely that he played a role in carrying out October 7’s Operation al-Aqsa Flood. However, Abu Obeida valiantly defended the people of Gaza, declaring that any attacks targeting civilians would be met with a proportionate response against the Zionist occupation, offering one ultimatum after another in a bid to lighten the blows being dealt to Palestinian civilians amid the unfolding genocide.

Week after week, month after month, Abu Obeida, visibly losing weight due to the ongoing famine in Gaza, remained a guarantor of morale for the Palestinian and Arab people alike, with even children awaiting his televised appearances and donning military fatigues similar to his and raising their index finger just like him, impersonating him in praise as he became an idol to many.

Due to his anonymity, safeguarded by the symbolic koufiyyeh for over two decades, Abu Obeida transcended his mere person, becoming a movement of his own and driving the message of a collective struggle, essentially becoming a cultural-political symbol embodying liberation.

Throughout the years, Abu Obeida maintained the same tone and cadence when speaking, allowing him to become a trademark of defiance in his own right, as he employed a stern language plentiful in literary and Quranic vocabulary, laced with a martial language that caused fear to reverberate through the hearts of the enemies of liberation.

Abu Obeida, just like liberation, became inevitable, and the hope he gave to tens of millions around the world is unmatched, becoming as synonymous with the Palestinian struggle as the koufityeh, the renowned upside-down red arrow, and the AK-47. He was incredibly skilled and was proficient at framing the deafening blows dealt to the Zionist regime.

The man who changed the media

Abu Obeida earned the title “the media commander”, and rightfully so, as he professionally conveyed the proper narrative to ensure that the Resistance’s victory could be seen before all, no matter the outcome.

The masked, shadowy figure, despite his identity remaining concealed, has become one of the most easily recognizable people on the planet due to his addresses that uplifted a people watching their brethren get genocided, as he served as a weapon in the face of the Zionist occupation, more dangerous than any arms in Hamas’ arsenal.

The man who finished all of his remarkable statements with, “It is a struggle [ending in] triumph or martyrdom,” attained the highest honor Man possibly could, achieving the martyrdom he had long desired and worked his entire life toward as he tirelessly ensured that the Resistance’s message and actions made their rounds around the globe and sparking an unmatched pro-Palestinian effort all over the world through his nimble, well-crafted statements that ensured that no matter what the occupation did, it was framed as a defeat for the occupier.

While his birthdate is yet to be discovered, the resilient fighter’s date of martyrdom will be etched in history as August 30, 2025, after he spent his entire adult life making sacrifices for the sake of the Resistance and the cause that shaped his entire identity and that of his homeland.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=26301 #abuObeida #alAqsaFlood #alQassam #gaza #hamas #palestine #westAsia