Hamas, or "fervor" in Arabic. The Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiy, whose acronym stands for Islamic Resistance Movement, which attacked civilians in Israel on Saturday morning, was established in 1987 at the start of the first Palestinian uprising, in the wake of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its three founders, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a spiritual leader and still revered, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, who was killed by Israel, and Mohammed Taha, who succumbed to a long illness, have died. The men who now lead the politico-military organization are their successors, who were born after the founding of the Israeli state.
Ismail Haniyeh. He is the head of Hamas' political bureau. He spoke with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Sunday about the "Al-Aqsa Deluge" operation launched in the early hours of Saturday. The two men had met in June in Tehran.
Haniyeh, 61, has been a Hamas figure for decades. A confidant of Sheikh Yassin, although more moderate, he was the architect of Hamas' electoral victory in the Gaza Strip in 2006, and he was prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. He has been based in Doha, Qatar, for about three years. "Even if his influence may have diminished in the face of the rise of more radical elements, Haniyeh remains surrounded by a certain prestige: he is the one who ratified the separation from the Palestinian Authority and he who made Gaza a Hamasthan," says Stéphane Boussois, a specialist in geopolitics and the Arab world.
On Saturday, after the attack erupted, Haniyeh spoke on television, addressing Arab countries that have normalized relations with Israel in recent years. "We say to all countries, including our Arab brothers, that this entity, which cannot protect itself from the resistants, cannot provide you with any protection," he said. "The battle has moved to the heart of the Zionist entity," he warned, saying the Palestinian armed factions would expand their offensive to the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Mohammed Diab El-Masry, known as Mohammed Deif. There is only one photograph of him, dating back to 1989, and few know where Israeli intelligence's "Target No. 1" resides, for his planning of a large number of attacks in Israel. Appointed supreme commander of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades in 2002, he is presented as the main architect of the spectacular operation launched on Saturday.
This Palestinian, aged 57 or 58, is nevertheless very weak: he is said to have lost his legs, an arm and an eye during several assassination attempts by the Israeli services. In 2014, his wife and two of their children were killed in the bombing of their home in Gaza City. Deif is presented as dead by Israel, a report that is quickly denied. "We promise you that Mohammed Deif will be the military commander of the army that will liberate the al-Aqsa mosque" in Jerusalem, Hamas replied. He reportedly escaped two more assassination attempts in May 2021.
Mohammed Deif, photographed in 1989 by Israeli authorities. DR
Invisible, but very present, he claimed to have launched 5000,2011 rockets on Saturday, to "put an end to all the crimes of the occupation" of Israel. It is possible, according to Stéphane Boussois, that the elusive Deif has taken control of politics militarily, in a game of three-cushion billiards against Haniyeh. Its goal: to obtain Israeli hostages as bargaining chips, building on the precedent set in 1027, when <>,<> Palestinian prisoners were exchanged for soldier Gilad Shalit.
Saleh al-Arouri. Hamas' No. 2, he founded the Al-Qassam Brigades in 1990 and worked to find weapons for his fighters. Of the Hamas leaders, he is the only one named a terrorist by the US authorities, who have put a $5 million bounty on his head through the "Rewards for Justice" program. Al-Arouri is a staunch supporter of an alliance of Iranian-backed jihadist groups against the Jewish state.
He was imprisoned in Israel for 18 years, before being deported to Syria in 2010. He established relations with Damascus, which were severed two years later due to Bashar al-Assad's repression of the Syrian people. Al-Arouri then moved to Turkey, from where he allegedly encouraged the kidnapping and execution of three Israeli teenagers, Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar and Naftali Fraenkel, in 2014. He is also said to have worked on the establishment of arms factories in Jenin, in the West Bank.
At the end of August, he was living in Lebanon, under threat of an Israeli operation. Al-Arouri "knows very well why he and his friends are in hiding. Anyone who tries to harm us, finances, organizes and spreads terror against Israel will pay a high price," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned at the time.
Saleh al-Arouri, left, in a video conference with Fatah Secretary-General Jibril Rajoub (right) in 2020. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman
Yahya Sinwar, the movement's leader in Gaza, has in recent months supposedly been more concerned with the day-to-day management of Gaza - where problems are legion - and the lifting of the blockade than with stoking the war against Israel alongside Islamic Jihad. Wrongly, it seems, since the Hamas operation had been meticulously organized for months with Sinwar's agreement. The 60-year-old founded, at the request of Sheikh Yassin, the Majd, Hamas' police force, to identify Israeli spies within the organization. Sentenced to 30 years in prison for a quadruple murder, he benefited, after 22 years in Israeli jails, from the agreement to release Private Shalit in 2011.
Yahya Sinouar, left, on February 21, 2020 in Gaza with Ismail Haniyeh. AFP
Khaled Meshaal. He helped found Hamas from Kuwait, where he went into exile with his family, before having to leave again in 1990. In 1997, while he was head of Hamas' political bureau, he was the victim of an attempted poisoning by Israel that brought him international renown. Two Israeli agents spray his ear with poison. Revealed by Jordanian intelligence, the operation forced Israel to hand over the antidote but also to release Sheikh Yassin, who had been imprisoned since 1989. In 2004, Meshaal became the movement's supreme leader after the assassination of Yacine and his successor Abdelaziz al-Rantissi.
A great defender of the armed struggle against the State of Israel, Meshaal also defends the idea of a long-term truce in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders. Beirut, Damascus, Cairo, Tehran... Based outside Gaza, he criss-crossed the various capitals of the Arab-Muslim world to obtain political and financial support.
The 67-year-old lives in Doha, Qatar, after living in Damascus, Syria. "He remains indispensable within Hamas," says Stéphane Boussois, "but, like all the Palestinian leaders welcomed in Qatar at the request of the Americans, he no longer has such a free hand."