How will strike on Deif affect Hamas in Judea and Samaria?

Deif’s elimination, if confirmed, represents a ‘significant loss of the knowledge base and a symbol of this organization.’

By Yaakov Lappin, JNS

Israel’s July 13 strike on Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif in Gaza, while of great practical and symbolic significance, is not likely to affect the terror group’s operations in Judea and Samaria, Israeli observers have told JNS.

“It is an event with significant cognitive impact, which definitely affects Hamas members wherever they are, but Hamas is more than the sum of its parts,” said professor Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies and the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy in Jerusalem.

“Hamas is a well-established, organized and determined jihadist entity that has previously endured severe losses among its key leaders and knowledge hubs,” added Michael, who also served as head of the Palestinian desk at Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry.

Historical examples of such losses include Yahya Ayyash, Hamas’s former chief bombmaker and Deif’s mentor, Hamas founders Ahmad Yassin and Abed Aziz al-Rantisi and the terror group’s former number 3 in Gaza, Marwan Issa, who was killed in March, Michael noted.

They also include Hamas’s former senior leader and chief of staff, Saleh al-Arouri, who was responsible for developing the Hamas terror infrastructure in Judea and Samaria and was killed in an airstrike in Beirut in January.

Hamas has continued its efforts to strengthen its presence in Judea and Samaria throughout all of these losses, he said.

Col. (res.) Moshe Elad, one of the founders of security coordination between the Israel Defense Forces and the Palestinian Authority, told JNS that in his assessment, Deif’s elimination “will not have an immediate impact; on the contrary, there will be demonstrations of support throughout the West Bank, and expressions of solidarity.”

However, this “will fade after some time,” and in the longer term “public support for Hamas will depend on two things—money and leadership,” he said.

“If less money arrives and Israel pursues and eliminates their leaders as promised, I believe support will significantly decrease, but not stop completely.”

Deif’s elimination, if confirmed, does, according to Michael, represent a “significant loss of the knowledge base and a symbol of this organization.”

In this sense, it “can be compared to the elimination of [Iranian Quds Force Commander] Qassem Soleimani and [former Hezbollah chief of staff] Imad Mughniyeh,” he added.

“To this day, the vacuums they left have not been successfully filled. But that has not stopped the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from continuing to build a ring of fire around Israel, or Hezbollah from growing in strength and building up its power to harm Israel,” he noted.

According to Michael, what disrupts and harms Hamas’s efforts in Judea and Samaria more than anything else—efforts he said are fueled by significant Iranian and Hezbollah assistance—is the continuous Israeli intelligence and military effort—the constant “mowing of the grass” there.

The IDF also helps the P.A. maintain its power in Judea and Samaria, Elad told JNS.

“Hamas controls a large part of the West Bank because the IDF is not everywhere. Abu Mazen [P.A. chairman Mahmoud Abbas] and Fatah [which rules the P.A.] are strong mainly in Ramallah and Bethlehem, but as you move to the outskirts, they weaken and are not in control,” he said.

“As long as Israel continues to be in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria, mainly because of settlements and main [traffic] routes, it also indirectly protects the P.A., which is deployed in parts of the West Bank, and in my opinion, the situation will not change,” he added.

“A Hamas takeover such as in Gaza will not happen in the West Bank as long as the IDF is there because it endangers the IDF and the entire State of Israel,” he said.

In the context of power dynamics between Hamas and Fatah in Judea and Samaria, Hamas remains the most powerful and heavily armed organization in the region, according to Michael.

“However, in the northern parts of the West Bank, there is a pattern of cooperation between the organizations, and sponsorship by organizations, with an emphasis on Hamas, for terrorists who are not identified with the organization or part of it,” he said. This cooperation includes financial aid and arming individual terrorists, thereby expanding the scope of terrorism in the region.

Asked to explain the massive support for Hamas among the Palestinian population, especially following the mass murder attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 and the widespread destruction in Gaza caused by Hamas’s war, Michael highlighted a “sick psychological infrastructure, rotten to the core.”

This infrastructure, he said, “has been systematically built and nurtured by the P.A. and its leaders in local society—through education, media, payment of terrorists and their families, glorification of terrorism and terrorists and systematic, ongoing indoctrination against Israel and Jews by cultivating the ethos of victim-refugees and armed resistance.”

HamasJudea and SamariaMuhammad DiefTerrorism