The Middle East: Inside Hamas

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We waited on the beach to meet a killer. The man we had come to see carried out murder operations for Hamas, the militant organization bent on reclaiming all of historic Palestine from Israel. We parked our car in a designated spot so his watchers could check that we hadn't been tailed. As the sun dipped into the sea lapping the Gaza Strip on a steamy night last June, the killer was cooling off with a swim. For a wanted man, he seemed rather audacious, relaxing unarmed on the crowded seashore. But though he appeared at ease, he took meticulous precautions against Israeli agents. Two bodyguards drifted over to surround him while he toweled off and dressed, and then they climbed into the backseat of our car beside him. We were told to switch on the air-conditioner so the windows would turn opaque with steam as he explained why he had chosen to live an assassin's life. "It's not a hobby to kill, you know," said Mohammed, which, of course, was not his real name. "When we attack, the voice of the Palestinians is heard. We are sending a message to say, 'We are here.' If we stop, no one will care about us."

The killer had an attractive, open face and an engaging manner. But he was unwavering in his convictions and certain that his cause would prevail in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He offered no apologies for all the deaths Hamas has caused in more than a decade of armed struggle or for the collapse of every attempt to negotiate a peace. Hamas, he said, had "evened the balance of terror," and he would keep killing Israelis "until God decides."

His end came quickly. Two months after I met Mohammed, the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv printed a deck of cards showing 34 Hamas leaders targeted for assassination. Mohammed, his face a blank silhouette, was the jack of spades, No. 9 on the list. Two days later, an Israeli Apache helicopter gunship located Mohammed's walkie-talkie as he sat in a car about 100 yards from where I had met him. "It was his one hobby, to swim," Mohammed's brother later told me. "His fate was to die by the sea." The helicopter launched at least three Hellfire missiles as the four men in the car tried to flee. Afterward, there was little of Mohammed to bury besides his head. His real name, I learned, was Ahmed Ishtawi, a top commander in Hamas' clandestine military wing, dead at age 24.