Rewards worth thousands of dollars in exchange for their extradition, Who are the Hamas leaders whom Israel is pursuing?

In addition to its military aggression, Israel is waging a psychological war against the resistance. Among the tactics of this war is the Israeli army’s distribution of leaflets offering rewards worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for reporting on Hamas leaders and handing them over, after failing to assassinate them several times.

"Hamas has lost its forces and is unable to fry an egg," This is how leaflets distributed by the Israeli army addressed the people of Gaza, as part of a psychological warfare campaign led by the occupation against the Gaza Strip, coinciding with its aggression. Militarywhich, to date 71, has caused the death of more than 18,800 martyrs and 51,000 wounded since October 7, according to the government media office in Gaza.

Leaflets, pictures of which were circulated by Palestinian activists on social media, offered financial rewards for reporting on the leaders of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). These rewards were set at “400 thousand dollars for information about Yahya Al-Sinwar, 300 thousand dollars for Muhammad Al-Sinwar, 200 thousand dollars for Rafi’ Salama, and 100 thousand dollars for Muhammad Al-Deif.”

andHamas responded, mocking the occupation publications. The leader of the movement, Izzat Al-Rishq, said in a brief statement via Telegram, accompanying it with a photo of the post: “There is no time to fry eggs. Our resistance members are busy grilling the Merkava,” referring to the number of military vehicles and tanks that the resistance succeeded in destroying.

On the other hand, the question remains about who are these leaders whom Israel is making every effort to find out information about their whereabouts, and about the amount of pain, frustration and losses they inflicted on the occupation, especially since the names of them are not known to all the Palestinians themselves.

Yahya Al-Sanwar

Yahya Al-Sinwar is considered the most important figure in Hamas in Gaza, as he heads the movement’s political wing in the Gaza Strip, which makes him at the top of the list of resistance leaders wanted by the occupation, as he threatened Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said: “We will continue, we will pursue him until we find him,” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu often refers to him as “a dead man walking.”

Yahya Al-Sinwar was born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Gaza in 1962, and his joining the resistance dates back to his youth, which led him to Israeli detention in 1982, when he was placed under administrative detention for four months on charges of engaging in “subversive activities.” In 1988, the occupation sentenced him to life imprisonment four times.

Sinwar spent about 24 years in Israeli prisons, before he was freed in the prisoner exchange (Wafa al-Ahrar) in 2011. Andwas consideredfinancial. The British Times said that Sinwar succeeded in deceiving the occupation in order to release him, and the newspaper said that “the wrong reading of his character constituted a prelude to Israel’s biggest intelligence failure.”

After his release from prison, Sinwar became the political mastermind of Hamas' work, as he benefited from learning the Hebrew language in prison and being acquainted with Israeli reports and studies in order to lead the resistance's work politically and militarily. In 2017, he was elected head of the movement’s political bureau in the Gaza Strip.

Muhammad Al-Sanwar

Israel has placed a $300,000 reward for reporting the death of Muhammad al-Sinwar, the younger brother of Yahya al-Sinwar, and the commander and member of staff of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).

Like his brother Yahya, Muhammad al-Sinwar was one of the founding members of the Hamas movement. He rose to several roles in the organization, and was one of the first founders of the al-Qassam Brigades, until he assumed the position of commander of the Khan Yunis Brigade in 2005, and became the third most important commander in the brigades, after its general commander, Muhammad. The guest and his deputy, Marwan Issa.

During the recent aggression, the Khan Yunis Brigade played a major role in confronting the Israeli army’s invasion of the camp. On Friday, Israel announced the killing of a soldier and the wounding of four members of the Golani Brigade, the elite forces of the occupation army, during clashes in Khan Yunis.

Muhammad Al-Sinwar lives a life surrounded by a lot of secrecy, and the people of Gaza do not know his features because he moves incognito and within a narrow scope for fear of being exposed to an Israeli assassination. Over the past two decades, he has survived 6 attempts to liquidate him.

According to the British newspaper The Telegraph, Israeli intelligence believes that Muhammad Sinwar is the one behind the Al-Aqsa flood attack, as The occupation accused him of being the mastermind of many guerrilla operations, most notably the bombing tunnel operations between 2000 and 2005, and the Shattered Illusion operation in which the soldier Gilad Shalit was captured in 2006.

Safety lifter

There have been many questions about Rafi Salama's name, and the reason for his presence on Israel's wanted list, because he is unknown to many Palestinians. According to circulated information, Salama holds a leadership position in the Khan Yunis Brigade.

AndAccording Palestinian journalist Ali Abu Rizq, Rafi Salama was working in a “prestigious” job. At Al-Hourani Preparatory School in Khan Yunis camp, before he resigned to devote himself to the resistance.

Salama comes from a family of martyrs. His mother is the martyr Rahima Abu Shamala, who died while protecting her son from an attack carried out by the occupation army on their home. His uncle, the martyr and writer Jawad Abu Shamala, was a member of the political bureau of the Hamas movement and close to Yahya Al-Sanwar.

Rafi Salama was subjected to a number of assassination attempts, but he survived all of them, including the year 2021, and the Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said at the time “Prominent leaders escaped being targeted within a few moments, including Salama, Al-Sanwar, and others.”

Journalist Ali Abu Rizq wrote, “Rafi was an exceptional role model for his students in the middle school, and I remember the situation of one of my schoolmates who had memorized the Book of God. Rafi saw him in a state of sarcasm and sarcasm, so the man rebuked him that the people of the Qur’an were of high status and this action did not befit them.”

Muhammad Al-Deif

On last October 11, it announced Israeli forces bombed the house of Muhammad Al-Deif’s father in Khan Yunis, killing his brother Abdel Fattah Al-Deif, his son Medhat Abdel Fattah Al-Deif, his grandson Baraa Medhat, and his wife. One of his other sons, according towhat was reportede by the Palestinian News Agency.

The Israeli forces committed this massacre against the Al-Deif family, due to their son Muhammad playing a leadership role in the resistance. Muhammad Al-Deif holds the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement.

Muhammad Al-Deif was born in Khan Yunis camp in 1965. Like many Palestinian leaders who joined national liberation movements during their university studies, Al-Deif’s relationship with Hamas began at the Islamic University of Gaza.

Influenced by leaders such as Yahya Ayyash and Adnan al-Ghoul, who were senior military strategists in Hamas before their assassination by Israel, Al-Deif became part of the Al-Qassam Brigades, which was established shortly after the Oslo Accords. He learned the skill of making bombs from Yahya Ayyash, the famous bomb maker known as “The Engineer.”

Muhammad Al-Deif is sometimes known as “the cat with nine lives,” due to his ability to survive countless assassination attempts and overcome the Israeli army in many confrontations. Al-Deif survived at least seven Israeli assassination attempts, in which his wife and two children were killed, including his infant son.

Israel pursued him for decades, and he was almost killed in an air strike 20 years ago, and it was said that it left him in a wheelchair after he lost an arm, a leg, and one of his eyes, but his strategic acumen and ability to carry out bold, high-impact operations strengthened his status as an outstanding military leader, making him a major target for the intelligence and israeli army.

Deif's disappearance from the limelight is considered the reason for his success, according to a former senior Hamas leader who spoke to the Washington Post in 2014. As reported by Sky News Palestinian leader Imad Falouji said: “He stays away from the limelight and lives hidden among the population.” He moves with different passports and identities.

Its damage extends to generations to come,How does flooding Hamas tunnels turn into a horrific disaster for Gaza?

It was reported that the Israeli occupation army began the process of flooding Hamas and resistance tunnels, while environmental specialists warned against this action, because of the harm it might cause to the people of Gaza, extending to future generations.

As the ground invasion of Gaza continues, tunnels play an important military role for the Palestinian resistance in confronting the advancing occupation armies, and enabling it to have the element of surprise according to the guerrilla warfare style it adopts. This made the destruction of these tunnels one of the main goals of the Israeli army in its war.

Media reports reported that Israel had already begun to destroy these tunnels, by pumping large amounts of seawater into them. This will cause a serious environmental disaster that could hit the sector and its damage could extend for many decades.

Flooding Gaza's tunnels

The American newspaper The Wall Street Journal published, on Tuesday, a report announcing that Israel has already begun flooding Palestinian resistance tunnels in Gaza. It quoted American officials familiar with the operations of the Israeli army, saying that this measure comes with the aim of destroying the infrastructure used by the resistance in its work.

The Israeli Defense Minister's spokesman refused to comment on the matter to Wall Street reporters, arguing that the tunnel flooding operations were secret.

Before this, on December 4th, the same American newspaper revealed that the Israeli occupation army had assembled a huge system of Pumps, in order to flood the network of Palestinian resistance tunnels, with the aim of destroying these structures and expelling the resistance fighters holed up in them.

The Wall Street Journal added that, in mid-November, the Israeli army had finished assembling five large water pumps, approximately a mile north of the Beach camp in the northern Gaza Strip. According to her, each of these pumps has the capacity to withdraw thousands of cubic meters of seawater per hour, which leads to flooding the tunnels within weeks.

At the beginning of last November, it was the first time that the Israeli leadership informed its counterparts from the United States of the option of flooding the tunnels. American officials at the time denied knowledge of the extent of Israel's progress in implementing this option, and they also denied knowledge of whether it had taken a final decision to implement it.

Serious environmental disaster

In 2016, in a speech he delivered during an event to mourn its martyrs, the head of the Hamas political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, said that Gaza " It created resistance tunnels twice as many as those of Vietnam, which are taught in military schools, which military personnel read about, and through which strategists plan.”

Based on this statement, and knowing thatVietnam’s tunnelsexceeded 170 miles, or about 273.5 kilometers, therefore the Gaza tunnel network exceeds 547 kilometers in length. . Which means that there is an entire city built under the land of the Strip, with a depth of up to 30 meters.

The flooding of these tunnels threatens an environmental catastrophe for the people of the Gaza Strip, which may extend for many decades after the event. Andaccordingthe environmental expert and director of the Palestinian Hydrologists Group, Mr. Abdul Rahman Al-Tamimi, flooding the resistance tunnels “will make the Gaza Strip an unlivable area for up to 100 years.”

Regarding the possibility of this operation taking place, Al-Tamimi explained that “the matter is not easy, rather complicated, but at the same time it is not impossible,” and that “Israel needs 40 days to flood the tunnels, whose length, according to what is known, reaches 450 kilometers.” .

The director of the Palestinian hydrologists warned that “if Israel succeeds in its plan, this will lead to multiple environmental disasters, the first of which is the contamination of the already polluted groundwater, and the accumulation of salt will greatly kill the soil and cause it to dissolve, which will lead to collapses in the soil, which means the demolition of thousands of homes.” Palestinian Authority in the densely populated sector.

Al-Tamimi added: “If water and soil become polluted, humans will become trapped in all forms of pollution, including drinking water and agricultural products that lead to environmental effects on health.”

While these warnings were not limited to Palestinian experts only, even occupation experts warned of the disaster itself. AndaccordingProfessor Elon Adar, from the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, “flooding the tunnels will cause more environmental damage to the aquifer.” In Gaza".

He added, in statements to the Jerusalem Times, that “as a citizen, and despite the disaster we experienced on October 7, I still believe that in the long term - and we must think about the future - it would be politically and morally incorrect for "We have a thirsty neighbor."

"They want to make Gaza unlivable!"

Since launching its aggression against Gaza, the Israeli occupation has been committing horrific crimes against the people of the Gaza Strip, in addition to several environmental crimes, starting with the use of internationally banned weapons such as white phosphorus, the remains of which pollute the soil and water resources. To prevent the removal of bodies from under the rubble and bury them properly, whichthreatens the spread of epidemicsand diseases.

The accumulation of rubble and the inability of the Gaza Strip authorities to remove it from residential areas may cause serious health problems for residents, including asbestos poisoning, which causes pulmonary fibrosis.

In addition, as they invaded the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces bulldozed a number of agricultural lands and polluted them with fuel for military vehicles and unexploded ordnance.

While all these environmental crimes have one goal, which is to make the Gaza Strip an unlivable area. This is confirmed by Palestinian Dr. Mona Dajani, speaking to TRT Arabi, saying: “There is a clear Israeli goal through all these ferocious attacks, which is to turn the Gaza Strip into an unlivable place.”

The expert in environmental affairs adds, “The Israeli army’s targeting of hospitals, and their targeting of water tanks and solar cells that were providing alternative energy away from the electricity source in Israel, and their mere cutting off of fuel, water, and electricity to the Strip, shows that the goal is to empty Gaza of its population and turn it into An unlivable place.”

Dajani points out that this plan is not born today, but rather, “Israel, over the long years of the siege it imposed on Gaza, turned the Strip into an environmental place that is uninhabitable, as there are many environmental problems that can quickly worsen; For example, transmitted diseases due to scarcity or poor quality of water, and poor wastewater treatment due to the lack of continuous electricity."

Therefore, the Palestinian doctor concludes, “The time span of this environmental damage continues; Whenever there is an aggression against Gaza, the sector remains under an applied siege. We cannot talk about a limited time frame for this damage.”