Hamas's ‘last man standing' faces fight to keep control of Gaza

Telegraph

5 hours ago

Among Israel's spies, he is known as 'the ghost'.
He closely supervised some of the worst massacres of the Oct 7 Hamas attack, and in the months since has played a key role in holding the terror group together in the face of the IDF's assault.
Now, as the presumed new Hamas commander in Gaza, Izz al-Din al-Haddad holds the fate of the hostages and, to a large extent, the entire Strip in his blood-stained hands.
'He was always recognised by our people as one of the more capable commanders,' said Maj Gen Yaakov Amidror, Israel's former national security advisor.
'He is cautious. They're all cautious, but he's had some luck as well. He never made the mistake that allowed us to kill him.'
Maj Gen Amidror speaks ruefully – Israel is believed to have tried to assassinate al-Haddad six times since 2008.
Eighteen months into the longest war in the Jewish state's history, he is now believed to be the last man standing of the five brigade commanders on the eve of Oct 7.
As such, when the IDF finally killed Mohammed Sinwar by flattening the tunnel in which he was hiding in the grounds of a hospital last month, al-Haddid, believed to be 55, assumed command.
It follows the assassination of top-level figures Mohammed Deif in July 2024 and Yahya Sinwar, Hamas's supreme Gaza commander and the architect of Oct 7, in Oct that year.
Al-Haddid takes over an almost unrecognisable force from the structured terror army that crossed the border to such devastating effect in Oct 2023.
Hamas now resembles more of a guerrilla movement, with small, independent units – a handful of gunmen each – popping up in the rubble with light weapons and explosives.
But, as this month has proved, the group is still more than capable of killing IDF troops, ensuring the war grinds on as Israel expands its new seize-hold-and-demolish strategy, with tragic effects for civilians.
And, of course, Hamas still holds dozens of hostages, 20 of whom are thought to be alive.
Last weekend, the group rejected an Israel-endorsed proposal generated by Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, that would have freed 10 over a 60-day ceasefire – but, crucially, with no guarantee of a full Israeli withdrawal and an end to the war.
For some in Israel's intelligence community, this had al-Haddad's hardline fingerprints all over it.
According to analysts, his decades living in the shadows, plus the loss of two sons to Israeli fire in the last 18 months, places him in the front rank of Islamist fanaticism.
But, with Israel committed to seizing 75 per cent of the strip in under two months, the veteran terrorist may soon be forced to revisit his choice.
'The most crucial decision he has to make is whether he goes for a ceasefire that will give him the time to reorganise his forces,' said Maj Gen Amidror, now at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. 'He would have to pay by releasing some hostages.
'If not, the IDF will – slowly, slowly – come into these areas; Hamas will lose ground and people.
'It's down to his judgement.'
IDF advances in Khan Younis
The IDF made a major push in the southern city of Khan Younis this week, discovering, they said, an arsenal of rocket parts.
Intense activity is also underway in Gaza City and its suburbs, such as Jabalia, traditionally a Hamas stronghold hiding an extensive tunnel network.
An added challenge for the new commander will be how to keep control of a desperate civilian population, for whom hunger is now proving a more potent force than fear, with aid cut off for nearly three months.
During the two months of the last ceasefire, al-Haddad was handed the task of rebuilding Hamas's civilian and military infrastructure.
Israel contends that, with the traditional NGO-led aid system cut off, bar a 'trickle of UN trucks', that job is now harder, as Hamas cannot steal the food and use it to control the population.
Government spokesmen argue that social media bears this out.
They point to increasingly blood-curdling warnings against 'looting' on Hamas-linked accounts, plus videos of so-called 'field executions' – in reality, civilians being summarily gunned down in the street, or, in one recent case, tortured to death on camera.
Even during times of less violence, it is difficult to get accurate data on civilian attitudes to Hamas within the Strip.
But a series of protests in recent weeks has led some analysts to believe that ordinary Gazans' fear of Hamas was waning, with at least one ringleader brutally murdered in the aftermath.
Despite its seeming omnipotence in Gaza since 2007, Hamas has never been the only armed group in the Strip.
So-called 'clans' – some with links to other terror groups like Isis, some more or less organised crime groups, some just armed families, and some all three – are also gaining power as the situation destabilises.
On Thursday, Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Israel was arming at least one of them, a militia under the command of an Arab bedouin called Yasser Abu Shabab, despite his group's alleged links to drug dealing and arms smuggling.
Such groups are already playing a role in seizing aid. If, thanks indirectly to Israeli support, they become better at it than Hamas, they could hasten the terror group's demise – although how that would improve the immediate situation for the population is unclear.
Maj Gen Amidror warned against premature celebration.
'What we see with these [torture] videos is all the effort not to lose their grip,' he said. 'But I don't think they have lost their grip yet.'
Reports suggest a new unit of around 5,000 gunmen called the 'executive force', a name salvaged from a similar outfit 20 years ago, has been unleashed to try to keep control.
A regional security official summed up al-Haddad's position to the Hebrew press last week.
'He is one of the last and only leaders to have remained on the ground in Gaza, which means that the pressure he is under is tremendous,' he said. 'If no deal is reached, he doesn't want to go down in history as the last leader to oversee Gaza while it was falling apart under Israeli control. On the other hand, he needs to show that he is a leader.'
Within Hamas, al-Haddad certainly has the stature to lead.
He joined the group as a young man, more or less at its inception in 1987. From there he rose to become a platoon commander; eventually a battalion commander. By 2023, he was in command of the Gaza Brigade, based in and around Gaza City in the north of the Strip.
As such, he was one of a small number of senior figures who knew the plans for Operation Al-Aqsa Flood (Hamas's codename for the Oct 7 attack) in advance.
On the evening of Oct 6, he gathered his senior commanders.
The orders he then handed out resulted in some of the most high-profile atrocities of the incursion, such as the attack on the IDF's Nahal Oz base, where more than 60 soldiers and 15 civilians were killed after it was overrun.
Now, this famously cautious man who, unlike some of his terror comrades, avoided media appearance, has his face on leaflets being dropped by the IDF and Shin Bet into Gaza with crosshairs superimposed around it.
Referencing the Sinwar brothers, Deif and Ismail Haniyeh, the group's overall leader until he was assassinated in Tehran last year, the leaflets' Hebrew and Arabic captions assured the population that al-Haddad would soon be 'reunited' with his friends.
No one can foretell what military effect that would have, but it would – in one sense – close a chapter on Israel's darkest ever day.