If the Pimpernel was damned and elusive, he had nothing on Mohammed al-Masri, the head of Hamas’s military wing. The nickname – ‘Deif’ in Arabic – was gained by decades of moving from house to house nightly to avoid assassination. Despite reportedly losing an eye and a leg in attacks, he continued to evade the missiles as if charmed. The 58-year-old shadow is – or was – by far the longest-surviving senior leader of Hamas.

On 10.29 a.m. on Saturday, the skies above al-Mawasi, a safe zone west of Khan Younis, opened with the eighth assassination attempt, a significant barrage of JDAMs and at least one GBU ‘bunker buster’, just in case Deif slipped into a tunnel. For the Israelis, this was an opportunity that could not be squandered. Deif’s longtime comrade, Yahya Sinwar, had cheated death at least once during this war due to an abundance of caution regarding the size of munition; with the conflict dragging on, no such chances could be taken again.

It is still too early to tell – the ordnance deployed would probably have vaporised Deif’s body and left a sizeable crater – but this might have been the attack that finally put an end to the bloody life of Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri. Hamas has denied that he was killed, but it cannot be trusted; the group may be seeking propaganda gains or be treading water in a state of disbelief. Israel has not yet confirmed the kill, but the intelligence supporting that conclusion gets stronger by the day.

The significance of Deif’s demise, if that is what has occurred, could not be overstated. To his followers, the head of the Ezzedeen al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, was a talismanic folk legend. Intifadists chant about being his ‘children’ or his ‘men’, or holler slogans like, ‘with souls and blood, we redeem you, Deif’. For 30 years, while Sinwar – also now believed to be hiding around Khan Younis – spent times of quiet openly delivering speeches and visiting mosques, Deif remained a ghost, mystique clouding around him.

For years, the number of photographs of the man could be counted on a single hand. In one, he was masked. In another, released on 7 October to accompany a rare audio message from the militant, he was seen in silhouette. A third was taken many decades ago. To these were added, in recent months, a selection of others, unearthed by Israeli intelligence among millions of computer files seized in Gaza. One of these showed Deif and his close comrade, Rafa Salama, the commander of the Khan Younis Brigade, in the garden of the villa in which the two men were targeted on Saturday.

Of all the embodiments of evil in the ranks of jihadism, Deif stands at the forefront. Born around 1965 to a humble........

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