Mohammed Deif
Ex-security chiefs: Hamas military chief is sophisticated and lucky
Former Shin Bet chief believes sophisticated Deif was lucky to escape; Ex-Mossad head thinks Hamas' military leader was not in building hit by IDF.
The announcement by Israeli defense sources on Wednesday morning that Hamas' military chief survived an assassination attempt during Operation Protective Edge raised a simple question: Why have all attempts over the past two decades to kill the most wanted terrorist failed?
Ynet spokes to retired senior officials in the defense establishment to find an answer.
"Intelligence is not mathematics," said former Shin Bet chief and serving Yesh Atid MK Yaakov Peri. "It is not an exact science. Almost all the targeted killings were executed according to precise information. In a large part of the cases we succeed and in some of the cases we do not."
Funeral of Deif's wife and child (Photo: Reuters)
Peri, who was a member of the Security Cabinet during the summer war in Gaza, noted that Mohammed Deif's wife and child were killed in the strike on his house last August. Peri believes that Deif was in hiding but has likely since returned to running Hamas' operations from his bunker.
"He does not always stay in the same bunker; he moves around and maintains a high level of secrecy," he added.
What separates Deif from the other wanted terrorists?
"I do not think that he knows any better than the others," claimed the former Shin Bet chief. "At the end of day, we are talking about the head of the military arm of Hamas. Though a thousand times different, we need to treat him as a chief of staff, as the commander of forces."
Peri warned that Deif was not to be underestimated. "The man has gained much operational experience; he is gravely wounded from previous assassination attempts, and he has rings of operatives around him who protect him. There is no doubt he is a sophisticated operative. You can say one more thing about him – he has a special kind of luck."
'If he was there, he would have died'
Former Mossad chief (res.) Maj. Gen. Danny Yatom stressed that terrorists like Deif make every effort to "not make out lives easy. They hide, they avoid using phones, they do not speak over radio, and it makes them very hard to find."
Hamas bombmaker Yahya Ayyash
Yatom believes that there was a high probably that Deif was not even in the building during the August attempt. "If he had been there when the strike occurred, he would have died. I guess that means he wasn't saved by a miracle. He needs luck to say alive and we need luck to succeed in killing him."
Yatom said Deif has been more cautious and has learned from previous assassination attempts, like the January 1996 killing of Hamas bombmaker Yahya Ayyash with an explosives-laden cellphone.
"He was at the head of the most wanted list for many years and the assassination operation was very sophisticated," recalled the former Mossad chief. "We managed to reach his phone – it was his wish to tell his parents about his newborn son which sealed his fate."
