Who is Iyad al-Hassani, the operations officer of the “Quds Brigades”, who was assassinated by the occupation?
The Israeli occupation assassinated, this evening, Friday, Iyad al-Hassani, the central operations official in the “Al-Quds Brigades,” the military arm of the “Islamic Jihad” movement, after targeting a table with his assistant while they were in a residential apartment in the Al-Nasr neighborhood, west of Gaza City.
The assassination of al-Hassani is the sixth that has been carried out for a leading figure in the military arm of the “Islamic Jihad” movement since the beginning of the current escalation last Tuesday, after the assassinations of Jihad al-Ghanam, Khalil al-Bahtini, Tariq Ezz al-Din, Ali Ghali and Ahmed Abu Daqqa.
With the assassination of Al-Hassani, the Israeli occupation has carried out the largest assassination operations against leaders of the first echelon of the “Quds Brigades”, in parallel with the continued escalation in the Strip and the firing of rockets from the Strip towards the occupied cities and lands in 1948.
Al-Hassani is considered one of the first generation to join the “Islamic Jihad” movement in the Gaza Strip, and he was one of the founders of the movement’s military arm in 1988, and it was known at that time as the “Islamic Mujahid Forces (section)”, and it is the first military apparatus of the “Islamic Jihad”.
Al-Hassani is considered one of the architects of the double Beit Lid operation, which was carried out by the “Jihad” movement on January 22, 1995, which resulted in the killing of 22 Israeli soldiers and the wounding of more than 60 others. On the martyrdom operation, Ramez Obeid, on March 4, 1996, in response to the assassination of the first Secretary-General of the movement, Fathi al-Shikaqi, through an operation on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, which killed 13 Israelis and wounded 120 others.
--For years, al-Hassani has been responsible for central operations in the military arm of the “Jihad” movement, and he is considered one of the oldest figures within the “Brigade’s” military council, in addition to being one of the deputy head of the movement’s military department, Akram al-Ajouri, who is in Syria.
In addition to his responsibility for central operations, Al-Hasani held several files and tasks during the previous years, specifically after the Al-Aqsa Intifada that broke out in 2000, including manufacturing and supervising some operations that targeted Israeli targets before the Israeli withdrawal, in addition to his military role during the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
The Israeli occupation claimed that al-Hassani was the successor to Khalil al-Bahtini, commander of the northern region in Islamic Jihad, after his assassination at dawn last Tuesday.
Since 2019, the Israeli occupation has intensified assassinations against leaders of the Military Council affiliated with the “Islamic Jihad” movement, as the assassination of Baha Abu al-Ata, the former commander of the northern region in the military arm of the movement, was followed by two assassinations of Tayseer al-Ja’bari, who succeeded Abu al-Atta. In August 2022, in addition to Khaled Mansour, the commander of the southern region, who was assassinated during the same round.
The Israeli occupation accuses the field commanders of the “Al-Quds Brigades” of being responsible for carrying out the rocket firing operations against the occupied cities and lands in 1948, especially during times of calm, in addition to the field responsibility for some of the operations that take place in the occupied West Bank.
