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Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri (; 12 August 1965 – 13 July 2024), better known as Mohammed Deif (), was a Palestinian militant who served as the sixth commander of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. He succeeded Salah Shehade following the latter's assassination in an Israeli airstrike in July 2002, until his assassination in July 2024. He was succeeded by Mohammed Sinwar, the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar. He was a central figure in the Gaza war and one of the masterminds of the October 7 attacks, alongside Yahya Sinwar.
Deif was born in 1965 in the Khan Yunis Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip, to a family that had fled or been expelled during the 1948 Palestine war. He reportedly left school temporarily to support his low-income family, later graduating with a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the Islamic University of Gaza in 1988, where he had established a theater group.
Deif joined Hamas in 1987, weeks after it was established during the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation. He later became known as Mohammed Deif, meaning "guest" in Arabic—possibly in reference to the nomadic lifestyle he adopted to avoid being targeted. During the 1990s and early 2000s, he planned several Suicide attack attacks, including the 1996 Jaffa Road bus bombings. He became the head of the al-Qassam Brigades in 2002 and developed the group's capabilities, transforming it from a cluster of amateur cells to organized military units. He masterminded the group's strategy of combining rocket attacks on Israel with tunnel warfare, and was central to planning the October 7 attacks that initiated the Gaza war.
Deif had been on the Israeli military's most wanted list since 1995 for killing Israeli soldiers and civilians. He was detained by the Palestinian Authority at Israel's request in 2000 before escaping months later. He had been targeted in multiple Israeli assassination attempts since 2001, surviving at least seven attempts on his life. His wife, infant son, and 3-year-old daughter were killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2014. The United States and the European Union added Deif to their terrorism lists in 2015 and 2023 respectively.
Israel killed Deif in an airstrike on al-Mawasi on 13 July 2024. For over five months, Hamas denied reports of his death, eventually confirming it on 30 January 2025. In November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Deif, claiming it was unable to verify his death. The warrant was cancelled in late February 2025.
Although not much is known about the details of his early life and upbringing, he reportedly had to temporarily drop out of school to support his low-income family, working with his father in upholstery and later starting a small poultry farm. It is understood that he studied chemistry at the Islamic University of Gaza, from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1988.
During his years at the university, he had a passion for theatre, establishing a theatre group called "The Returners", in reference to Palestinian refugees longing to return to the lands they lived on before the Nakba. He played a number of roles, including those of historical figures.
Deif was close to Emad Akel and Yahya Ayyash, who were assassinated by Israel in 1993 and 1996 respectively. He trained with, and learnt bombmaking from, Ayyash. After Ayyash's assassination, Deif reduced his profile to avoid being targeted. During the 1990s and early 2000s, he was behind a number of suicide bombing attacks, including the 1996 Jaffa Road bus bombings. He also oversaw the kidnappings and later killings of Israeli soldiers Shahar Simani, Aryeh Frankenthal, and Nachshon Wachsman in the 1990s.
In May 2000, Deif was arrested at Israel's request by the Palestinian National Authority, but he escaped in December with assistance from some of his guards.
According to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, Deif's campaign of massive retaliation and the failure of Israeli intelligence services to prevent it, was one of the factors that led to the defeat of Prime Minister Shimon Peres and the Israeli Labor Party in the 1996 Israeli general election and the victory of the right-wing Likud party of Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposed the Oslo peace process:
At the beginning of February, Peres was up twenty points in the polls over his opposition, the conservative hawk Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu. By the middle of March, Netanyahu had closed the gap significantly, and Peres led by only five percentage points. On May 29, Netanyahu won by 1 percent of the vote. This was all due to the terror attacks, which Peres simply couldn't stop. Yahya Ayyash's disciples had ensured the right wing's victory and "derailed the peace process," in the words of the deputy head of the Shin Bet, Yisrael Hasson.After Netanyahu got elected, attacks stopped, with some asserting that this was because Yasser Arafat clamped down on Hamas members, but Bergman insisting that the halt was because the short-term goal of the attacks was to stop the Oslo peace process, and Netanyahu was now working towards the same goal.
As the overall commander of the al-Qassam Brigades, he is thought to be the main organizer of the raid into Israel that killed two IDF soldiers and captured Gilad Shalit in June 2006, as well as the five-year operations to deceive Mossad and Shin Bet about Shalit's location in Gaza. He was also in charge of the al-Qassam Brigades' procurement of weapons from abroad, overseeing the transfer and manufacturing of Iranian Fajr-5 rocket components into Gaza, and maintained correspondence with Iranian Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani and his predecessor Qasem Soleimani. In a letter, Soleimani had called Deif a "dear brother" and a "living martyr".
In September 2015, the US Department of State added Deif and three other Hamas leaders to the American list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists. In December 2023, the European Union added him to their terror blacklist in 2023.
After the attack, a Reuters report stated that over the previous two years, Deif deceived Israel into believing Hamas was not interested in another round of conflict. This deception campaign involved a decision not to participate in the clashes between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in August 2022 and May 2023, putting Israel under the impression that Hamas "was not ready for a fight" and could be contained by providing economic incentives to Gazan workers.
On the day of the attack, Deif gave an audio address, his first since 2021, justifying it as a response to the "desecration" of the al-Aqsa Mosque and the killing and wounding of hundreds of Palestinians in 2023. He called on Palestinians and Arab Israelis to "expel the occupiers and demolish the walls". Announcing the start of "Operation Al-Aqsa Storm," Deif said that "In light of the continuing crimes against our people, in light of the orgy of occupation and its denial of international laws and resolutions, and in light of American and western support, we've decided to put an end to all this so that the enemy understands that he can no longer revel without being held to account."
On 20 May 2024, a request for an arrest warrant against Deif and four other Palestinian and Israeli leaders was filed by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on several counts of and crimes against humanity, as part of its investigation in Palestine. The effort continued into September 2024, with the prosecutor saying that he was gathering information about Deif's "reported death." On 21 November, the court officially indicted Deif for war crimes, stating that he bore responsibility for mass killings, hostage taking and rape during the 7 October attacks. The ICC argued that it was "not in a position to determine whether Deif has been killed or remains alive" following reports that Deif was killed in an Israeli airstrike on 13 July 2024.
On 3 September 2024, the United States Department of Justice announced criminal charges against Deif and other Hamas officials for their roles in the October 7 attacks on Israel. The charges, which were filed under seal in February 2024, include conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals, and conspiracy to finance terrorism.
As of December 2023, Israeli military and security forces have killed Deif's brother, his nephew, his niece, his wife, his 3-year-old daughter, and his 7-month-old son.
In 2003 and in July 2006, Israel tried again by striking a house that hosted a meeting of the Hamas leadership. It is also said that the July 2006 attempt was an airstrike on the house of one of Deif's lecturers in university when Deif was visiting him.
It was believed that the seven assassination attempts had lost Deif an eye and limbs. Hamas did not confirm or deny these claims and did not comment on his health. Footage obtained by the Israeli military in December 2023 showed Deif using both hands and walking on his own two feet, though with a slight limp and occasionally with the aid of a wheelchair.
In October 2024, Hamas again called Deif's death a lie, while issuing a statement denying the death of Yahya Sinwar. The next day Hamas acknowledged Sinwar's death without making any additional comments about Deif's status. In early November, the London-based Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that Hamas has privately acknowledged Deif's death, but Hamas released a statement denying the newspaper's report.
On November 21, 2024 the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Mohammed Deif, arguing that it was unable to determine whether Deif had been killed and that the warrant would be withdrawn upon confirmation of his death.
On December 4, 2024, Israeli news channel Kan 11, citing Palestinian sources, reported that Hamas had located Deif's body and buried it in secret. According to the report, Hamas maintained secrecy over Deif's death due to fears that confirming it would lower the morale of its fighters, and buried him in an undisclosed location due to fears that if Israel discovered the location of his grave, the IDF would dig it up and take his body to use as a bargaining chip in a hostage deal.
On January 30, 2025, the Qassam Brigades, through their spokesperson Abu Obaida, confirmed that Mohammed Deif, along with six other senior Hamas commanders, died as a result of the Gaza war. Along with the confirmation, Hamas also officially released a photo of Deif for the first time, as his photo had previously been classified. About a month after Hamas confirmed Deif's death, in February 2025, the International Criminal Court cancelled the outstanding arrest warrant.
Prior to the Gaza war, only two photos of Deif's face were known to publicly exist, with the most recent one having been taken in the year 2000. He never appeared in public, and he rarely gave recorded audio addresses. His whereabouts were often unknown, but it was speculated that he had stayed in the underground tunnel networks in Gaza. In January 2024, the IDF released a photo of Deif holding a cup of juice in one hand and a stack of U.S. dollars in the other hand. The photo was found in a computer that Israel seized from Hamas.
In spite of his elusiveness, he was popular amongst Palestinians for his hardline stance against Israel, to the point of being a 'folk hero' for having survived many assassination attempts; he was nicknamed 'the mastermind' by Palestinians. As a sign of his popularity, his name was featured in protest slogans such as: "Put the sword before the sword, we are the men of Mohammed Deif." His position as a military leader rather than a political one also shielded him from criticism of the Hamas administration of the Gaza Strip.
After acknowledging his death, Hamas began using photos of Deif at ceremonies for the release of the hostages to the custody of the Red Cross as part of the January 2025 Gaza war ceasefire agreement.
Deif's mother died in 2011, and his father in 2022.
His family came to the Gaza Strip from further away than most members of Hamas; before Nakba his family lived in al-Qubayba in Central Palestine.
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