JERUSALEM—A leading member of Hamas’ military establishment in the Gaza Strip was executed Sunday in Gaza for allegedly informing Israel about the location of the military leader of Hamas, Mohammed Deif, during the war with Israel in the summer of 2014.
In announcing the execution of Mahmoud Eshtewi, Hamas said only that he was guilty of "offenses of conduct and ethics," which is assumed to mean collaboration with Israel. In a short Twitter message, Hamas said the execution was carried out after Eshtewi confessed. The verdict was handed down by "the military and religious judiciary," an entity hitherto unknown to Israeli observers.
Eshtewi was himself a well-known Hamas commander and a member of a family that has been part of Hamas’ military organization since its inception. His execution marked the first time that the military wing of Hamas has publicly announced a death verdict against one of its own members.
Mohammed Deif, considered the brain behind Hamas’ military structure and operations, has headed Israel’s Most Wanted list for some 20 years. During this period, he was the target of Israeli assassination attempts at least four times. He survived them all but suffered crippling wounds.
In the 1990s, he was involved in planning the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli soldiers. A master bomb maker, he was responsible for bus bombing attacks that took the lives of some 50 Israelis and in numerous other bombings as well. An attempt to assassinate him in 2001 failed, but the following year he was severely injured when an Apache helicopter fired two missiles at his car in Gaza. After a lengthy period of recuperation he returned as Hamas’ military leader. In 2003 he participated in a meeting of the senior Hamas leadership on the bottom floor of a house in Gaza. A bomb struck the roof but the bottom floor escaped damage and the leaders survived.
The last assassination attempt came during the war with Israel in Gaza in the summer of 2014. Israeli intelligence learned of the house in which he was sheltering. Rockets fired by aircraft demolished the building. Deif’s wife and infant son and three-year-old daughter were killed along with three others. Hamas subsequently said that Deif himself had survived. The Jerusalem Post reported last year that Israeli officials had come to believe that Deif is still alive. They declined to speculate whether he had been injured in the last attack.
The attack in 2014 seemed to be based on information from a source in Gaza. Deif’s whereabouts were presumably a closely guarded secret and Hamas investigators spent months searching for a likely source. Eshtewi was detained in January 2015.
Meanwhile, a survey published this week by a West Bank polling agency reported a decline in the percentage of Palestinians who would like to see the present low-grade violence on the West Bank escalate into a full-scale intifada, or uprising. The poll, published by a prestigious Palestinian research institute, Awrad, found that 42 percent of the West Bank population favored escalation, compared to 63 percent just three months ago. The poll also showed that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would win 36 percent of the vote if presidential elections were held compared to 22 percent for the likely Hamas candidate, Ismail Haniyeh. Forty-one percent were undecided.