How Israel Killed Hamas Deputy Chief – US Confirms
Leading Hamas figure Marwan Issa perished in an Israeli airstrike, according to White House spokesperson Jake Sullivan.
Mr. Issa would be the most senior Hamas leader to pass away since the war’s start on October 7th, having served as deputy military commander.
The Palestinian organization in charge of Gaza has not formally responded to reports of his passing.
According to Israeli media outlets, Mr. Issa died last week in an attack on a tunnel system beneath the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
One of Israel’s most wanted men was the deputy leader of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military arm.
The Hamas chief was intimately connected to the group’s October 7 massacre, which claimed the lives of almost 1,200 people, according to the European Union, which put him on its terrorist blacklist.
During the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, he had been imprisoned by Israel for five years, and from 1997 until the beginning of the second intifada in 2000, he was held captive by the Palestinian Authority.
Since October 7th, several key officials of Hamas have been assassinated by the Israeli force. Saleh al-Arouri, the political leader of Hamas, perished in an explosion in the Dahiyeh area in southern Beirut. Most people agree that Israel was behind the strike.
Other Hamas commanders are said to be in hiding, “probably deep in the Hamas tunnel network,” according to Mr. Sullivan, national security adviser to the White House.
He promised that the US would support Israel in its ongoing search for the leaders of Hamas, saying, “Justice will come for them, too.” However, he also emphasized that, in their first talk in a month, US President Joe Biden had conveyed his growing alarm about the escalating number of civilian casualties in Gaza during a phone chat with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mr. Sullivan claims that the US president reaffirmed his support for Israel and its “right to go after Hamas,” but he also said that an invasion of Rafah, a city in southern Gaza where an estimated one million refugees have fled during the conflict, by Israel’s military would be a “mistake.”
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The US national security adviser told reporters that the invasion “would lead to more innocent civilian deaths, worsen the already dire humanitarian crisis, deepen the anarchy in Gaza and further isolate Israel internationally.”
The Gaza health ministry, which is administered by Hamas, reports that since the conflict began on October 7, more than 31,000 Palestinian civilians have perished.
Numerous allies of Israel have become enraged by the death toll and have condemned Israel internationally.
President Biden pushed Mr Netanyahu for a “clear, strategic end game” in Gaza during the call, Mr Sullivan said. “The president told the prime minister again today that we share the goal of defeating Hamas, but we just believe you need a coherent and sustainable strategy to make that happen,” he said.
In order to explain US fears about an assault of Rafah, Mr. Biden was able to persuade the Israeli leader to agree to send a “senior interagency team composed of military, intelligence, and humanitarian officials” to Washington in the coming days.
According to Mr. Sullivan, it is anticipated that Israel will postpone its attack until after the summit.
The two “discussed the latest developments in the war” as well as Israel’s objectives in the fight, according to Mr. Netanyahu, who verified the call on X, the former Twitter. “Eliminating Hamas, freeing all of our hostages and ensuring that Gaza never gain constitutes a threat to Israel-while providing the necessary humanitarian aid that will assist in achieving these goals,” stated the Israeli prime minister, as some of the goals.
Senior US Democrats are becoming increasingly outspoken in their criticism of Mr. Netanyahu.
The top Democrat in the Senate, Charles Schumer, demanded new elections in Israel on Thursday, accusing Mr. Netanyahu of putting his “political survival” ahead of the needs of the nation.
Retaliating, Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party asserted that the prime minister’s policies were “supported by a large majority” and that Israel was not a “banana republic”.
On Friday, Mr. Biden informed reporters in the Oval Office that he had anticipated Mr. Schumer’s comments. Nonetheless, the Senate leader “expressed serious concern shared not only by him, but many Americans,” according to the president.
