GAZA — Israel dealt a heavy blow to mediators leading efforts to reach a truce agreement by assassinating Ali Hassan Ghali, a senior commander in the al-Quds Brigades, the military arm of Islamic Jihad, by bombing an apartment he was inside in Hamad Town in the southern Gaza Strip at dawn on Thursday.

Ghali's assassination took place amid talk of faltering efforts led by regional and international parties to reach a truce agreement that ends the aggression that Israel began at dawn last Monday, by carrying out a complex and simultaneous assassination that killed 3 prominent leaders of the Military Council of the Jerusalem Brigades as well.

Ghali's assassination represents a heavy loss for Islamic Jihad's military wing, as commander of the rocket unit responsible for directing rocket fire from Gaza towards settlements and deep inside Israel.

The assassination came a few hours after a large rocket barrage was fired from Gaza, following information about Israel's rejection of Islamic Jihad's conditions for the completion of the truce agreement. Israel accuses Ghali of being responsible for the decision to launch the rockets.

According to media sources, the chief of staff and the head of the Shin Bet security service directly supervised Ghali's assassination, and the Israeli security establishment expects a broad response from Islamic Jihad to his assassination.

Martyr Ali Ghali (right) with his predecessor in command of the missile unit martyr Khaled Mansour (Al Jazeera)

Who is the martyr Ali Ghali?

With the assassination of the martyr Ghali, Israel continues the liquidation of senior leaders in the Military Council of the Jerusalem Brigades, which began on Monday with the assassination of the secretary of the brigades, the martyr Jihad al-Ghannam, a member of the council, commander of the northern region, Khalil al-Bahtini, and the deported prisoner Tariq Ezz al-Din, one of the pillars of the military action of the companies and responsible for the West Bank file in it.

According to a biography obtained by Al Jazeera Net from the military media of the Islamic Jihad:

  • The martyr Ali Hassan Ghali, nicknamed Abu Muhammad, was born in the city of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip in 1975.
  • He belonged to the Islamic Jihad movement in the early nineties of the last century, and joined the ranks of military action in the Al-Quds Brigades and was one of the first to join the groups of martyrs.
  • He co-founded the rocket unit in the Al-Quds Brigades and has served as its deputy official since 2010.
  • He supervised the training of members of the missile unit in whitewashing and firing operations.
  • He has personally participated in rocket fire from Gaza towards settlements and deep inside Israel since 2002, and supervised the launching of the Fajr-5 rockets in 2012.
  • He took over the responsibility of the Sawkhiya force from the martyr Khaled Mansour, who was assassinated by the occupation forces in August last year, through an aerial bombardment of a house where he was in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
  • The martyr Ali Ghali became a member of the Military Council of the Jerusalem Brigades in 2019.
  • He survived several Israeli assassination attempts, most notably during the Battle of Sword of Jerusalem in May 2021, when he was severely wounded.

Ghali is known for his "commitment to work, achievement and unlimited giving, and was characterized by complete secrecy, lack of visibility and work in the shadows."

A source in the military media of the Jerusalem Brigades, told Al Jazeera Net, that two were accompanied by the martyr Ghali also rose martyrs in the assassination, which he described as "treacherous and cowardly", namely his brother Mahmoud Ghali, and his nephew Mahmoud Abdel-Gawad Mansour.

Ghali has a brother named Mohammed, who has been detained in Israeli prisons since 2002 and is serving a 25-year prison sentence for participating in commando operations.

The martyr Ali Ghali was known to have sold his wife's jewelry at the beginning of the second intifada (Al-Aqsa) to buy weapons and engage in the resistance, and is considered – according to the military media of the Islamic Jihad movement – one of the creative minds in the technical field, and was adept at manufacturing ground and portable rocket launchers.


Calm or a full-scale war?

The assassination coincided with an Egyptian call for the Islamic Jihad leadership to hold talks in Cairo on developments in Gaza and efforts to reach a truce agreement.

The spokesman for the movement, Tariq Salmi, for Al Jazeera Net: The member of the political bureau of the movement, Dr. Mohammed al-Hindi is in Cairo at the invitation of Egypt to discuss developments, has carried with him the conditions of the movement to calm down, most notably stop the policy of Israeli assassinations.

Selmi stressed that Israel has no choice but to submit to the conditions of resistance. Although he acknowledged the heavy loss of the assassination of Ghali and his predecessors from the leadership of the military council of the Saraya, he said that the assassinations of leaders will not change the "equation of resistance" and will increase the determination of the martyrs' successors to move forward on the path of martyrdom and freedom.

In his response to the position of the Al-Quds Brigades after Ghali's assassination, Salmi was satisfied with the word "We will respond", as the fourth senior official in the Military Council of the Brigades to be assassinated.

According to political analyst and expert in strategic affairs, Dr. Hassan Abdo, the success of the mediators' efforts to reach a truce agreement depends on responding to Islamic Jihad's conditions. He told Al Jazeera Net, "These conditions are national and not organizational, and jihad will not accept less than that after the treacherous assassinations committed by the occupation during the past two days."

The political analyst close to the Islamic Jihad believes that the assassination of Ghali will not go unanswered by the Al-Quds Brigades, "which now has the initiative and the field, and determines the population bloc of the occupation that will enter the shelters."