Israeli airstrike kills Hamas leader’s former bodyguard, special forces operative

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed today that two recent airstrikes in the Gaza Strip successfully eliminated two Hamas militants who had taken part in the October 7 assault on the Leumit military base. The targets included a bodyguard of former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and a fighter belonging to the “Nukba” special‑forces unit. Both men had entered the Leumit base in northern Israel during the raid, causing Israeli casualties, and were subsequently classified as high‑value targets.

The October 7 attack was the largest and most coordinated operation undertaken by Hamas since it seized control of Gaza in 2007. Approximately 200 militants simultaneously struck multiple locations in southern Israel, including the Leumit base’s barracks, civilian gathering points and border outposts. After intense fighting, the Israeli military reported that more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed. Hamas claimed that thousands of its members were injured or killed. The episode quickly escalated into a full‑scale war, with both sides continuing to exchange fire for weeks, deepening the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Hamas, formally the Islamic Resistance Movement, was founded in 1987 by Palestinian Islamic scholar Ahmed Yassin. Its origins trace back to a 1973 charitable organization linked to the Muslim Brotherhood called Mujama al‑Islamiyya. The movement’s political wing blends Palestinian nationalism with Islamic doctrine, while its military wing, known as the Izz ad‑Din al‑Qassam Brigades, conducts armed resistance. Hamas won a majority of seats in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council election and, after a 2007 internal conflict with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), took control of the Gaza Strip. Although Israel initially tolerated Hamas as a counterweight to secular factions, the group’s escalating suicide bombings and rocket attacks led to a sharp deterioration in relations and a protracted military standoff.

In July 2026, Hamas announced, under the mediation of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Peace Committee,” that it would resign from Gaza’s civil administration and pledged to cooperate with a so‑called “Gaza Peace Plan” to disarm. The substantive content and implementation timeline of the plan remain unclear, and under international and Israeli oversight Hamas’s military structure and underground networks retain considerable operational capability. Recent precision strikes against senior militants indicate that the conflict continues to be driven by intelligence and special‑operations contests, and the risk of escalation has not receded.

For Taiwan, the ongoing Hamas‑Israel conflict underscores the need to strengthen intelligence sharing and asymmetric warfare capabilities when confronting regional security challenges. Turbulence in the Middle East can affect global energy supplies and raw‑material prices, and may also influence Taiwan’s diplomatic equilibrium on the international stage, particularly in security cooperation with the United States and other allies. Moreover, Hamas’s organizational model and its “networked” armed structure offer lessons for defending against and countering non‑state armed groups, providing valuable reference points for Taiwan’s future defense planning and crisis response.