Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty. ~Lawrence Ferlinghetti in Ferlinghetti’s Greatest Poems
The Chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court ICC has accused Mohammed Diab Ibrahim AL-MASRI, more commonly known as DEIF (Commander-in-Chief of the military wing of Hamas, known as the Al-Qassam Brigades) of crimes against humanity. Here is some background on Deif.
At the same time as the ICC prosecutor proposed an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, he proposed that the court issue an arrest warrant for Mohammed Deif.
Mohmmad Deif is a name that is no stranger to headlines and media discussions at a time when he coordinated and dealt what is arguably the most devastating blow to the Israeli occupation since its inception, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, giving hope to the Arab and all the righteous people that “Israel” was not that invincible entity it has proclaimed to be.
While picking holes in the Israeli occupation’s deterrence has been his profession for decades at this point, little is known about the Resistance leader who has put Hamas at the top of the list of threats to the very existence of the Israeli occupation through his strategic prowess and admirable patience that culminated in the Palestinian cause receiving more worldwide and regional support than it ever has.
Early life
Mohammad Masri, better known as Mohammad Deif, the leader of Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, was born in 1965 in Gaza’s Khan Younis refugee camp, whose establishment was the result of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948. His family was forcibly displaced from the village of al-Qubayba along with the hundreds of thousands of others who were forced to seek refuge elsewhere in light of the Zionist mobster massacres that took place during the Nakba.
Though there was no indication that he would become the military mastermind he is today, Deif grew up like many other Palestinians who were displaced by the Israeli occupation – in a dire and destitute environment as his family was forced to make a home out of a tin shack in the refugee camp, a situation that would go on to revolutionize numerous Palestinian Resistance leaders.
At just the age of two, Deif’s country was further ravaged by the Israeli occupation, as it occupied the Gaza Strip during the 1967 war and subsequently subjected all the refugees that had fled its brutality to direct military rule, detaining, arresting, and even executing anyone they thought was ever so slightly “suspicious”, as per their definition of suspicion, which would mold the young Resistance-leader-to-be as he grew up surrounded by extrajudicial arrests and killings at the hands of an occupying force that knew no bounds.
This is evident in the fact that mere meters away lived some of the most notable Palestinian figures, including Hamas leader Yahya al-Sinwar and the former chief of Fatah in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan, whom Deif grew up being friends with.
Deif grew up pursuing his education and helping his father, who was an upholsterer in an impoverished, newly-established refugee camp that was under military rule, which didn’t quite offer many fruitful career paths. However, that did not stop Deif from dreaming big and pursuing a degree in science at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he studied physics, chemistry, and biology.
He also trod a path that no one expected to lead him to be the leader of one of the world’s most renowned Resistance factions, as he headed the University’s entertainment committee and performed in numerous comedies.
Early political career and imprisonment
At the time, he was not affiliated with any political organization, but it was only a matter of time before he joined the Fatah Resistance movement, one of the only two Resistance factions in Palestine at the time. Though it is unclear when exactly he joined Fatah, he was likely influenced by his childhood friend, Mohammad Dahlan, to join the organization at a time when it still engaged in armed Resistance against the Israeli occupation on a wider scale.
He stayed as part of Fatah for numerous years, but little is known about his activity at the time up until he wound up joining Hamas during the first Intifada, which began in 1987 and saw paramount violence practiced by the Israeli occupation against Palestinians.
Israeli occupation forces arrested Deif in 1989, shortly after he joined Hamas. He was detained without trial on the charge that he was cooperating with Hamas’ military wing, which saw him spend 16 months in prison. He eventually earned his freedom after he refused to cooperate with the Israeli occupation forces or admit to any of the charges filed against him.
Deif was later arrested by the Palestinian Authority in May 2000, but he managed to garner his liberty once again with the start of the Second Intifada, which was a pivotal point in the development of Hamas’ capabilities, wherein the Resistance group carried out a string of operations that cost the Israeli occupation hundreds of casualties.
Little did the Israeli occupation know that his time in prison in the 90s would lead to the creation of what would later become the al-Qassam Brigades.
Putting al-Qassam on the map
Deif agreed with martyrs Zakaria Chourbaji and Salah Shehade to form a group independent of Hamas to capture Israeli soldiers in order to trade them with Palestinian detainees and force concessions out of the Israeli occupation.
His release following his 1989 detention coincided with the emergence of the al-Qassam Brigades – named after Sheikh Ezzeddine al-Qassam, one of the most notable leaders of the Arab struggle for independence against the British and French mandatory rule in the Levant – as a prominent force in the Palestinian struggle for liberation after it made headlines over the slew of operations it carried out against Israeli occupation forces.
In light of the prominence garnered by the Resistance faction, Deif, along with several al-Qassam commanders, traveled to the occupied West Bank, where he stayed for several years and supervised the founding of the al-Qassam’s West Bank branch before emerging as the leader of the al-Qassam Brigades in 2002.
As a leader, Deif masterminded numerous successful operations against Israeli occupation forces, including the capture of Israeli soldier Nachshon Wachsman, whose killing disturbed the ongoing Oslo Accord talks between the Israeli occupation and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The talks were heavily opposed by the Palestinian people and Resistance as “peace” talks with an occupying force could not be seen as a legitimate option for liberation and would only lead to further subjugation.
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