The Jerusalem Post reports the Israel Defense Forces’ announcement that it has killed Hamas’s second-in-command, the longtime ally of the terrorist organization’s leader.
Rawhi Mushtaha was the head of what passes for Hamas’s civil government in Gaza. He was the right-hand man of Hamas’s emir, Yahya Sinwar — the two of them did time together in an Israeli prison for terrorist activities. The IDF says that he and Sinwar “established Hamas’s General Security Mechanism” and that Mushtaha was “the most senior figure in the Hamas political bureau in the Gaza Strip.”
Sinwar has been squirreled away for months in Hamas’s labyrinth of underground tunnels, where many of the remaining hostages are believed to be held. He is not known to have communicated with anyone for weeks, and there is speculation that he was killed some time ago. But that is not confirmed, and it is worth remembering that Sinwar has gone dark for extensive periods of time in the past.