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What happened: The Israeli assessment is that it is highly likely that Hamas’s military chief of staff and second most senior commander in Gaza, Mohamed Deif, was killed in a strike on Saturday.

• While confirmation of Deif’s death still awaits, Hamas did confirm that Rafa’a Salameh, the commander of its Khan Younis Brigade, was killed in the attack on a building in which he and Deif were operating in the area of Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza.
• Having confirmed with absolute certainty that Deif was in the compound, in a wooded area in Al-Mawasi owned by Salameh, the joint IDF-Shin Bet attack reportedly occurred in four stages:
  • First, a missile was fired, striking the part of the building intelligence indicated Deif was using.
  • A second missile, fired immediately after the first, then destroyed the whole building.
  • Third, a third strike targeted the building’s perimeter, with the aim of preventing Hamas rescue teams being able to reach and treat Deif.
  • Finally, bunker-buster bombs were deployed, exploding below ground, in a bid to destroy underground facilities intelligence assessed were situated beneath the building.
• On Saturday night, Prime Minister Netanyahu confirmed the attack but remained circumspect on whether Deif had been killed.  “The State of Israel,” he said, “using the IDF and Shin Bet, attacked in Gaza in an attempt to assassinate Mohamed Deif and his deputy, Rafa’a Salameh. There is still no absolute certainty that the two were killed; either way, we will get to the entire Hamas leadership. This opportunity and others to act against the terrorists became possible because we rejected the many pressures, from within and from without, to end the war before achieving all the objectives.”
• Palestinian officials say that more than 90 others were killed in the attack, with Israeli counterparts claiming these numbers are inflated and likely to include a high proportion of terrorists.
• Elsewhere, newly appointed UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy paid his first visit to Israel yesterday. Holding talks with both Netanyahu in Jerusalem and the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, Lammy called for a ceasefire in Gaza and for the return of all Israeli hostages, as well as stressing the UK’s commitment to the two state solution.
• “The death and destruction in Gaza is intolerable,” Lammy said. “This war must end now, with an immediate ceasefire, complied with by both sides. The fighting has got to stop, the hostages still cruelly detained by Hamas terrorists need to be released immediately and aid must be allowed in to reach the people of Gaza without restrictions.
• “I am meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to stress the UK’s ambition and commitment to play its full diplomatic role in securing a ceasefire deal and creating the space for a credible and irreversible pathway towards a two-state solution. The world needs a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state.“
• “Central to this is to see an end to expanding illegal Israeli settlements and rising settler violence in the West Bank. Here, in what should be a crucial part of a Palestinian state, alongside Gaza and East Jerusalem, we need to see a reformed and empowered Palestinian Authority.”

Context: Should Deif be confirmed to have died, his killing would be of huge significance to Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas. He was, along with Yahya Sinwar and the previously assassinated Marwan Issa, one of the three principle architects of October 7th, and of supreme symbolic importance to Hamas’s ‘resistance’ narrative.

• Deif has been on Israel’s most wanted list from the time of Hamas’s emergence in the 1990s, and has survived multiple previous assassination attempts.
• Writing on Sunday, Maariv’s Ben Caspit, a long-time critic of Prime Minister Netanyahu, said “this could prove to be the war’s tipping point. Mohammed Deif was the number-one Palestinian-Hamas symbol. Yes, more so than Yahya Sinwar. His assassination is a victory picture of sorts. It doesn’t mean that we have eradicated terrorism, and it doesn’t mean that Hamas has been annihilated. But it does mean that Israel has chalked up an important strategic achievement that, if handled correctly, can be turned into a victory picture.”
• Deif is considered largely responsible for transitioning Hamas from a militia to an organised military force capable of executing operations on the scale of October 7th.  He was also positioned by Hamas iconography as the “defender of Jerusalem”, having spearheaded 2021’s rocket fire on Jerusalem.
• Salameh, too, was a veteran of the 1990s and a high priority target, coordinating Hamas’s war effort with Sinwar and overseeing the captivity of the hostages. He is also known to have played a crucial role in the abduction of Gilad Shalit in 2006 and in building Hamas’s tunnel network in Khan Younis.
• On being apprised that Deif and Salameh had been definitively located and that an assassination operation was possible, Netanyahu is said to have responded with three questions before giving the go-ahead: what scale of ordinance would be required; what levels of civilian casualties could be expected; and was it considered likely that any hostages were in the vicinity.
• If confirmed that Deif and Salameh were killed, only four senior Hamas commanders would remain alive in the Strip: Hamas Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar; his brother Muhammad Sinwar, commander of the southern Gaza region; Gaza City Brigade Commander Izz al-Din al-Haddad; and Rafah Brigade Commander Mohammed Shabana. The latter has already survived two Israeli attempts on his life.
• With Hamas’s military structure having become fractured during ongoing Israeli operations in the Strip, and with field officers acting essentially independently, the immediate impact on the continued conduct of the war will likely be limited.
• The site of the attack, in southern Gaza’s Al-Mawasi, is not an area the IDF has designated a current combat zone. The assessment is that Deif chose to evade detection by operating in an area housing a large number of Gazan refugees in makeshift tents, and to use the surrounding population as a human shield.
• The impact of the suspected assassinations of two so senior figures on ongoing hostage negotiations remains to be seen. There are two potential, and opposing, outcomes: on the one hand, Hamas may use the strike as a pretext to scupper the talks; on the other, the loss of two such important commanders may increase the pressure Hamas feels to conclude a deal.
• There is some precedent: in March, talks continued after Israel assassinated Marwan Issa, deputy commander of Hamas’s military wing.

Looking ahead: If Deif is confirmed killed, Muhammad Sinwar and al-Haddad would both be candidates to replace him as chief of staff.

• Lammy is expected to complete his visit to Israel today, after meeting with President Herzog and some of the hostage families. He is using his visit to launch a further £5 million in government funding for UK-Med, a frontline UK charity providing relief to the victims of the war.
• The latest assessment is that despite the strike on Deif, hostage negotiations are set to continue