After eliminating two successive heads of Hamas’s military wing in roughly two weeks, the Israel Defense Forces has turned its attention to the commanders, specialists, financiers, and cell leaders responsible for attempting to rearm and rebuild the group and other Gaza terrorist organizations.
On May 29, the IDF and Shin Bet killed Imad Hassan Hussein Aslim, the deputy commander of Hamas’s Gaza City Brigade and commander of the Zeitoun Battalion, who the IDF said led his battalion’s October 7 infiltration into Israeli territory and had recently advanced dozens of attacks against Israeli forces in Gaza. The next day, the IDF eliminated Jamal Abu Aoun, whom it identified as a Hamas squad commander also working as a doctor at Yafa Hospital in Deir al Balah.
The Israeli campaign has since widened from Hamas’s battlefield chain of command to the broader terror infrastructure sustaining attacks during the ceasefire. Ahmed Abu Mogheib, described by the IDF as leading a rocket-firing squad in the Gaza Popular Resistance Committees terror group, had also reportedly been involved in smuggling efforts prior to his elimination on June 2. In addition, the IDF eliminated Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists who led engineering divisions and financial networks the next weekend. These strikes follow an uptick in Israeli military action against Hamas’s rearmament network. The Israeli military renewed these efforts after the terrorist group rejected the disarmament plan that the Board of Peace, the UN-led authorized organization overseeing Gaza’s ceasefire and reconstruction, presented to it two months ago.
Hamas’s disarmament, a key condition of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan for the territory, hit another diplomatic snag in recent days. Despite mediators in Egypt hosting talks between Hamas officials residing in Doha and expatriate leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Gazan groups have seemingly not changed their position on disarmament.
Samuel Ben-Ur is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Tags: Gaza, Gaza Popular Resistance Committees, Hamas, Israel, Israel Hamas Ceasefire Violations, PIJ
