Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya misses son's burial in sign he may be wounded

Senior terror officials Osama Hamdan and Izat al-Rishak appear in Doha in an attempt to show that high-level leaders still hold control.

Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya’s condition remained a mystery on Thursday as he was not seen at his son’s funeral in Doha, Qatar, two days after the Israel Air Force bombed a gathering of Hamas leaders at their home.

The noticeable absence of Hayya, as well as the lack of any pictures or videos of him to date, hasincreased speculation that he is, at least, badly wounded, even if he was not killed when 10 missiles hit the Doha building he was suspected to be in.

In contrast, senior Hamas officials Osama Hamdan and Izzat al-Rishq did appear at the funeral, seemingly an attempt by the terror group to show its high-level leaders are still running the show.

There were numerous other contrary reports about the fate of other officials like Muhammad Ismail Darwish, Mousa Abu Marzook, Zaher Jabarin, and others, though Hamas has not produced any signs of their health either, leaving open the possibility that some of them were either killed or badly wounded.

A majority of reports indicated that former Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal either was not present or had survived the attack, although no sign of life has been produced regarding him either.

It is also possible that Hamas leaders are trying to keep a low profile to avoid further Israeli strikes and may only come forward once they feel safer.

Israeli officials, as of Thursday night, have still not given clear indications of the state of the Hamas leaders in Qatar whom they tried to assassinate on Tuesday, but trends suggested that many of those officials survived.

Optimism over success of strike shifts as reports come out

If in the early hours after the attack, The Jerusalem Post received off-record indications about the strike having killed several Hamas leaders, already by 1 a.m. on Wednesday morning, the indications from Israeli sources had turned to pessimism.

This was significant because, though Hamas had said its leaders had survived within a few hours, the Palestinian terror group has often issued knee-jerk false denials when its leaders, such as Yahya Sinwar or Mohammed Deif, were killed, only to admit this weeks or months later.

By Wednesday night, there was a narrative in Arab media that the top Hamas leaders had left their cellphones in one room, while moving to another room to pray, and had thus survived.

Optimism over success of strike shifts as reports come out

At the same time, more than 24 hours after the attack, none of the Hamas leaders has surfaced in any videos or photos to prove they are in one piece, and only one official, Husam Badran, has issued a public statement.

Statements by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday notably left out any mention of whether the Hamas leaders were killed – an omission which also suggested the IDF may not have killed the officials it was targeting.

One possibility is that many of the Hamas officials were injured, and some could still die from their injuries.

In such a case, Hamas might withhold any announcements until it has a better idea of which officials might be sufficiently fit to retain their roles, as opposed to those who may have survived but have been incapacitated.

It is also possible that because the IAF used precise munitions, and not a larger bomb, the limited force of the blast was not strong enough to kill the targets.

The IAF used a smaller, precise munition to avoid harm to local Qataris, and such strategies have in the past allowed other top Hamas officials to survive even when a missile successfully struck the room they were in.

Most of the speculation surrounds Hayya, who was viewed as the group’s leader outside of Gaza after serving as the mouthpiece and deputy of Hamas’s former chief Yahya Sinwar, who himself was killed by Israel last October.

After two years of Qatar hosting negotiations between Israel and Hamas over hostage exchanges and ceasefires, the government reached the decision that killing the remaining Hamas leaders was more important than leaving that diplomatic channel open.

A statement said that the leaders targeted were responsible for the October 7 massacre of around 1,200 Israelis in the country’s South, as well as managing the terror group’s operations for years beforehand.

The US has been mostly critical of Israel’s attack, as have been European countries and even Arab allies of Israel, which normally dislike Doha.

In Israel, news leaked on Wednesday that the defense establishment was split over the wisdom of the strike, especially while negotiations with Hamas were ongoing.