The IDF on Saturday confirmed it killed Izz al-Din al-Haddad, the commander of Hamas in Gaza and the highest ranking military figure the terror group had left in the Strip, in a precise airstrike conducted the night before in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City. According to The Times of Israel, Haddad was the last of the senior commanders who personally planned and authorized the October 7, 2023 massacre still operating inside Gaza, and his elimination closes a chapter on the leadership cadre that conceived the worst single day atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust.
For Israelis who have waited more than two and a half years to see every architect of that day held to account, the strike is a substantive milestone. Haddad, known inside the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades as “the Ghost of al-Qassam” for the operational secrecy that allowed him to survive multiple Israeli targeting attempts, had been the subject of a 750,000 dollar United States bounty and had assumed overall command of Hamas in Gaza in June 2025 following the IDF’s elimination of Mohammed Sinwar. With Haddad now removed from the battlefield, the senior planning circle that sat in Yahya Sinwar’s office on October 6, 2023 and signed off on Operation Al-Aqsa Flood is, for the first time, entirely gone.
How the Strike Was Carried Out
Israeli officials described the operation as a precise, intelligence led targeted strike that combined the work of Military Intelligence (Aman), the Shin Bet domestic security service, and the Israeli Air Force. The aircraft hit a residential building in Rimal that intelligence had identified as Haddad’s location, and a separate strike was directed at a vehicle on a nearby street that was assessed to be part of his security and movement detail. The operation was reportedly run in close coordination with the Hostages and Missing Families Command Headquarters, because Haddad had historically taken pains to shadow himself with Israeli hostages as human shields, and any strike on him required careful work to confirm the absence of captives.
According to CBS News, Haddad was killed alongside his wife and one of his daughters, and a senior Hamas official as well as a member of the group’s armed wing confirmed his death. Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem publicly acknowledged the killing on Saturday, an unusual concession from an organization that has spent years stage managing rumors of its commanders’ survival in order to project resilience. The speed and clarity of Hamas’s confirmation reflects the difficulty of denying the death of a figure who had run the entire Gaza wing of the organization.
Gaza health officials, who report to the Hamas controlled health ministry, said at least seven people including three children were killed and more than 50 wounded in the strike. Israel has not provided a damage assessment, but Israeli officials emphasized the operation was conducted to the most stringent feasible standards of distinction, given that the target was deliberately embedded inside a civilian neighborhood. That tension, between Israel’s obligation to protect civilians under the laws of armed conflict and Hamas’s deliberate strategy of placing its command nodes inside residential blocks, is precisely the dynamic the Jewish state has been forced to manage from the war’s first day.
Who Was Izz al-Din al-Haddad
Haddad was born in Gaza in 1970 and came up through Palestinian militant politics, briefly aligned with Fatah in the late 1980s before, according to multiple biographical profiles compiled in the wake of his death, turning to Islamist ideology during one of his Israeli prison stints and joining Hamas upon release. He rose steadily through the al-Qassam Brigades, building a reputation as a relentlessly disciplined operations officer who preferred written orders and personal vetting of subordinates over the showy public profile that some of his peers cultivated. That same operational discipline is what produced his Ghost nickname, and it is what allowed him to survive Israeli targeting attempts that ended the careers of several of his peers.
By the eve of October 7, Haddad was the senior al-Qassam commander responsible for northern Gaza, and according to an Asharq Al-Awsat profile he convened his battalion commanders on October 6, 2023 to distribute written instructions for the assault. The orders, as later reconstructed by Israeli investigators and journalists, emphasized two priorities that would become defining horrors of the attack itself: the live broadcast of atrocities for psychological warfare value, and the abduction of Israeli soldiers and civilians for transfer back into Gaza as bargaining chips. The hostage taking that has anchored every diplomatic, military, and humanitarian calculation in this war for two and a half years was, in other words, by design.
Haddad’s elevation to overall Hamas Gaza commander came in stages. After Israel eliminated Yahya Sinwar in October 2024, his brother Mohammed Sinwar inherited the role. When the IDF killed Mohammed Sinwar in May 2025, Haddad, by then one of the very few senior figures left in the field, became the de facto and then the formally acknowledged head of the organization inside the Strip. The role made him the single most sought after target on the Israeli order of battle, and the United States added him to its most wanted list with the multi hundred thousand dollar bounty that publicly signaled American agreement with Israeli targeting priorities.
Why This Matters for the Day After
The strategic significance of Haddad’s killing extends beyond his individual responsibility for October 7. He was the operational continuity node, the person who held in his head the relationships, tunnel maps, weapons caches, hostage locations, and chain of custody decisions that no replacement can simply inherit on day one. Israeli officials have argued for months that decapitation of Hamas’s military leadership produces compounding effects, because each successive replacement is less experienced, less trusted by the rank and file, and less able to coordinate complex operations across the Strip’s fragmented battle space. The killing of the last October 7 architect, and the last commander whose authority was rooted in the prewar Hamas hierarchy rather than in field promotion since 2023, is exactly the kind of leadership collapse that the IDF’s campaign has been engineering.
For the families of the hostages still held in Gaza, the moment is bittersweet. Haddad personally signed off on the original abduction strategy, and his death removes one of the senior figures who had veto power over any humanitarian release. At the same time, his elimination disrupts the very networks that hold and conceal hostages, and several Israeli officials have publicly expressed hope that the resulting confusion inside Hamas could accelerate the freeing of remaining captives if it is paired with sustained diplomatic and military pressure. The structural lessons of past hostage crises, including the long shadow of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange, inform how Israeli planners think about converting battlefield leverage into hostage outcomes.
The killing also has bearing on the legal and historical reckoning the Israeli state is now constructing. The Knesset’s recent move to establish a dedicated October 7 tribunal, modeled on the Eichmann trial framework, was designed in part to ensure that surviving Hamas commanders captured alive could be prosecuted on Israeli soil for the full scope of their crimes. With Haddad and the rest of the senior planning circle now dead, the tribunal’s mandate will increasingly focus on the middle ranking commanders, the foreign sponsors, and the international networks that funded and enabled the October 7 attack. The historical record, however, is now substantially complete, and Israel can begin the task of writing it.
Hamas Without Its Operational Memory
Hamas as an organization will, of course, attempt to continue. The political bureau remains, although primarily outside Gaza, and the al-Qassam Brigades have a deep enough bench of mid level commanders that someone will be named to succeed Haddad in a matter of days or weeks. But the qualitative gap between Haddad and any plausible successor is wide. The most likely candidates have spent the past two years either in hiding, on the run, or scrambling to manage smaller geographic sectors of the Strip, and none has Haddad’s combination of seniority, prewar authority, and direct relationships with the political bureau outside Gaza. Israel has, in effect, forced Hamas to operate on the third or fourth string of its leadership depth chart.
The political question Hamas’s external leadership now faces is whether to use this moment to seek a face saving exit, or to try to project continuity by elevating an unproven figure and pretending the loss is manageable. Israeli officials, who have argued consistently that meaningful negotiation is only possible from a position of overwhelming Israeli military advantage, are likely to read Haddad’s removal as exactly the kind of leverage shift that should be converted into hostage releases and a path toward Hamas’s complete disarmament in Gaza. The broader debate inside Gaza itself, captured in pieces such as Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib’s argument that the territory needs to be liberated from Hamas rule, now has one less obstacle in the form of the senior commander most personally invested in perpetuating the war.
What Comes Next
In the immediate term, Israel will keep targeting the surviving al-Qassam leadership in Gaza and pursuing intelligence on hostage locations that may have been opened up by the disruption inside Hamas’s command. The IDF will also continue working with the Shin Bet and Aman on the long catalog of mid level commanders, financiers, and external operatives whose names appeared on the planning documents Haddad himself signed in October 2023. The list is long, the intelligence base is deeper than it was at the war’s outset, and the precedent set by Haddad’s killing is that no Hamas commander, no matter how careful his personal operational security, is beyond Israel’s reach.
For Israel’s allies, including the United States, the strike is a reminder that the Israeli campaign in Gaza, for all of the international political pressure it has absorbed, is producing concrete strategic results against the precise individuals who planned and executed the worst antisemitic massacre of the 21st century. The bounty the United States placed on Haddad’s head signaled American agreement with Israeli priorities, and his elimination delivers on that judgment. For the Israeli public, exhausted by years of war and the unresolved trauma of the hostages, the strike is a tangible reminder that the state’s solemn promise after October 7, that every architect of the massacre would face justice, is being kept.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Izz al-Din al-Haddad?
Izz al-Din al-Haddad was the senior military commander of Hamas in Gaza and the head of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Known as “the Ghost of al-Qassam” for his operational secrecy, he was the last of the senior commanders who personally planned the October 7, 2023 massacre still operating inside Gaza. He assumed overall command of Hamas in the Strip in June 2025 after Mohammed Sinwar was killed.
How did Israel kill al-Haddad?
The IDF carried out a precise airstrike on a residential building in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City on the night of May 15, with a separate strike on a nearby vehicle assessed to be part of his security detail. The operation was the product of long term intelligence work by Aman, the Shin Bet, and the Israeli Air Force.
Why is this strike significant?
Haddad was the last surviving member of the senior Hamas leadership circle that personally planned and authorized the October 7 attack. His elimination closes that chapter and removes the most experienced operational commander Hamas had left in Gaza, weakening the organization’s ability to manage hostages, coordinate forces, and project political continuity.
What happens to Hamas now?
Hamas will name a successor, but the qualitative gap between Haddad and any available replacement is wide. The al-Qassam Brigades have been pushed onto the third or fourth string of their leadership depth chart, and the political bureau outside Gaza now faces increased pressure to consider a negotiated end to the war that delivers hostage releases and meaningful disarmament.
Does this affect the hostages still held in Gaza?
The immediate effect is mixed. Haddad personally signed off on the original abduction strategy and had veto power over humanitarian releases, so his removal eliminates one obstacle. The disruption to his network may also produce intelligence about hostage locations. Israeli officials have publicly expressed hope that the moment can be converted into concrete movement on remaining captives if combined with sustained military and diplomatic pressure.
Will there still be October 7 trials?
Yes. The Knesset’s planned October 7 tribunal, modeled on the Eichmann trial framework, is designed to prosecute surviving and captured Hamas commanders for the full scope of the massacre. With the senior planners now dead, the tribunal’s focus will shift toward mid level commanders, foreign sponsors, and international networks that funded and enabled the attack.
