Despite anonymous Hamas sources cited in a KAN News report on Sunday and strongly implied Israeli support last week for the idea that the terror group’s No. 3, Marwan Issa, was killed by the IDF on March 9, multiple defense sources say that whether he is living is still an open question.
On Sunday, KAN News cited anonymous Palestinian sources that privately, Hamas was ready to acknowledge that Issa, the deputy to Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, had not survived the Israeli strike on March 9.
This came after multiple defense sources, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, all hinted on March 11 that he was killed in Nuseirat, in central Gaza, while hiding in one of Hamas’s tunnels.
The anonymous Palestinian sources further told KAN that his body was still buried underneath the rubble.
Why is the IDF chief refusing to confirm Issa’s death?
However, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi explicitly refused to confirm his death on Sunday night.
Halevi did say that the operation to attack him, whether it had killed him or almost killed him, had been a significant intelligence coup because it led to a precise hit on Issa in an underground tunnel.
In reality, when Halevi suggests that Hamas is working hard to conceal Issa’s fate under the large amount of rubble, he seems to imply that the issue with knowing his fate is the rare fact that Issa was hit while underground.
Still, it was unclear if the IDF and other defense sources were refusing to confirm his death until Hamas or someone unearthed his body as a technical matter or because they had some actual specific suspicion of their being a ruse to cover up Issa having survived.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday said that it was ongoing field intelligence information that the IDF continued to gather in its operations in northern and central Gaza, which led to the successful locating of Issa.
He said the same continued field intelligence information would make a future operation in Rafah successful.
The IDF said no hostages were injured in the operation against Issa despite regular indications that Hamas’s high command surrounded themselves with them as human shields.
Some suggested that Issa did not have hostages nearby and that the lack of clarity had to do with nearby tunnels, while others surmised that Israel may have succeeded in attacking him at a moment when he moved away from the hostages, maybe even slightly above ground.
Generally, there seemed to have already been some increased confidence in Israel by last Monday afternoon, when a video posted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alluded to the IDF operation.
“We are on our way to complete victory,” he said, adding, “We have already killed number four in the Hamas; three, two, and one are on the way.”
“We will reach everyone,” he concluded.
The number four to whom Netanyahu alluded was Hamas’s deputy chief outside of Gaza, Saleh al-Arouri, who was killed in January in a drone strike in Lebanon.
Although Netanyahu did not name al-Arouri, his video was the first and most direct confirmation to date of Israel’s involvement, though many Israeli officials have dropped hints before.
One thing that was unclear from Netanyahu’s video was how exactly he was calculating Hamas’s top seven or so leaders.
Technically, Ismail Haniyeh is Hamas’s top official, and even if one placed Gaza Chief Yahya Sinwar as No. 1, Deif as No. 2, and Issa as No. 3, it would not make sense to put al-Arouri above Haniyeh, given that he was Haniyeh’s deputy.
In addition, some view former Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and Sinwar’s brother, Muhammad Sinwar, as potentially higher than al-Arouri.
A spokesman for Netanyahu did not clarify the issue, and it is possible that the one-through-four listing was not 100% accurate as much as it was trying to demonstrate that Israel may now have gotten two of the Hamas high command and could be close to getting more.
Other than al-Arouri and Issa, the two highest Hamas officials killed previously were two of its five brigade commanders, Ayman Nofel and Ahmad Randur, but both were below the high command level.
ISSA HAS REPRESENTED the Hamas military brigades in its political bureau. Designated by the US State Department as a terrorist for his role in Hamas in 2019, Issa was one of the founding members of the terror group in 1987, at the beginning of the First Intifada.
Israel, as confirmed by Arab media, has accused Issa of participating in the planning of the October 7 massacre in Israel. On October 8, the European Union also added Issa and Deif to its list of designated terrorists.
Comments are closed.