Israeli forces killed the Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander who infiltrated Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023, and helped drag a teenage boy into captivity in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces announced Sunday. Zaki Youssef Mahmoud Abu Mustafa, a Nukhba commander in PIJ's Khan Yunis Brigade, was struck in a joint IDF and Shin Bet operation in the southern Gaza Strip, nearly three years after the assault that shattered the kibbutz and killed or captured dozens of its residents.
The IDF said a photograph recovered by its forces documents Abu Mustafa inside Israeli territory during the abduction of Yagil Yaakov, the teenager who spent 52 harrowing days in Gaza captivity before his release in November 2023.
Abu Mustafa's killing was not an isolated operation. The IDF announced that it also killed a Hamas Nukhba operative, Mohammed Osama Abd al-Aziz Saba al-Eish, in an additional strike in the Gaza Strip. Two more Hamas operatives, Ahmad Munir Khalil Zaza and Hussein Safadi, were killed in separate strikes on Saturday. Together, the four targeted killings signal that Israel is methodically hunting the men who carried out or enabled the Oct. 7 attack and who continue to threaten its forces on the ground.
The IDF's statement made clear that Abu Mustafa was not targeted solely for his role in the Oct. 7 assault. In the months since the ceasefire, the military said, he had been actively rebuilding PIJ's fighting capacity inside Gaza, a direct violation of the ceasefire agreement.
The IDF stated:
"In recent months, Abu Mustafa played a significant role in rebuilding the terrorist organization's military capabilities in the Gaza Strip, in violation of the ceasefire agreement."
The military went further, describing Abu Mustafa's exploitation of a medical facility for military purposes. The IDF said he "advanced numerous terrorist attacks against IDF troops and attempted to conduct training for terrorists at Nasser Hospital, while exploiting the hospital to advance terrorist activity."
That detail deserves its own weight. Using hospitals as cover for military operations has been a persistent allegation against armed groups in Gaza, and the IDF's claim that Abu Mustafa conducted training at Nasser Hospital fits a pattern that documented Hamas conduct on and after Oct. 7 has made difficult to dismiss.
The IDF added that Abu Mustafa "posed an immediate threat to troops in the area," framing the strike as both a response to his Oct. 7 crimes and a forward-looking security measure.
Yagil Yaakov was a teenager when Abu Mustafa and other attackers stormed Kibbutz Nir Oz on that Saturday morning in October 2023. He was seized and taken into Gaza, where he remained for 52 days before his release in November 2023. His father, Yair Yaakov, was killed on Oct. 7. The IDF later recovered Yair Yaakov's body from Gaza.
In December 2024, Yagil Yaakov returned to Kibbutz Nir Oz to take part in a ceremony, a gesture of resilience at the site of the community's worst day.
The timeline is worth sitting with. A boy is ripped from his home. His father is killed. He spends nearly two months in captivity. He comes back to the place where it all happened. And the man who helped take him is still alive, still operating, still training others to do it again, until Israeli forces caught up with him.
Abu Mustafa was not the only target. The IDF said it killed Mohammed Osama Abd al-Aziz Saba al-Eish, described as a Hamas Nukhba operative involved in training and recruiting fighters, in a separate strike in the Gaza Strip. The timing and exact location of that strike were not specified beyond "the Gaza Strip."
On Saturday, the IDF killed Ahmad Munir Khalil Zaza, an engineering officer in Hamas's West Jabalia Battalion. The military said Zaza was involved in weapons production and the construction of explosive devices, and that he had recently attempted to plant explosives near Israeli forces. That is not the profile of a man observing a ceasefire.
In yet another Saturday strike, Israeli forces killed Hussein Safadi, described as the commander of Hamas's sniper array in Gaza City. The IDF said Safadi had directed attacks on Israeli troops and was recently involved in training snipers, again, despite the ceasefire. Israel's ongoing campaign to eliminate senior Hamas military figures has made clear that no ceasefire on paper will shield commanders who keep fighting in practice.
The IDF confirmed Monday that Israeli forces "remain deployed in Gaza under the Southern Command and will continue to act against immediate threats."
A thread runs through every one of these strikes: the IDF's insistence that the men it killed were violating the terms of the ceasefire agreement. Abu Mustafa was rebuilding PIJ military capabilities. Zaza was planting explosives near Israeli troops. Safadi was training snipers. Al-Eish was recruiting and training new fighters.
None of that is the behavior of organizations standing down. It is the behavior of organizations using a pause to rearm. The IDF's public framing, naming names, citing specific violations, linking operatives to Oct. 7, amounts to a case that the ceasefire is being observed by only one side.
That argument has implications well beyond Gaza. The broader question of how the United States and its allies respond when ceasefires are violated by Iranian-backed proxies remains unresolved. Every time Hamas or PIJ commanders are caught rearming, training, and plotting attacks during a supposed truce, the case for diplomatic restraint gets harder to make.
The IDF's decision to publicize these strikes in detail, with full names, unit designations, and specific allegations, is itself a statement. It tells the international community: these were not random airstrikes. These were targeted operations against named individuals engaged in active hostilities.
Israel has faced relentless pressure to show restraint. But restraint against men who exploit hospitals for military training, plant bombs near soldiers during a ceasefire, and rebuild the same networks that carried out Oct. 7 is not restraint. It is negligence.
The pattern of Israeli strikes targeting Hamas and PIJ military commanders has been consistent for months. Senior operatives who planned, executed, or enabled the Oct. 7 assault are being found and killed, one by one. Abu Mustafa's elimination fits squarely in that pattern, a Nukhba commander photographed inside Israeli territory during the kidnapping of a child, then caught rebuilding his organization's war machine during a ceasefire he was supposed to honor.
The IDF's official announcement on X was blunt, identifying Abu Mustafa as the "Islamic Jihad Nukhba commander of the Khan Yunis Brigade who infiltrated Kibbutz Nir Oz during the October 7 Massacre & took part in the abduction of Yagil Yaakov."
Open questions remain. The IDF has not disclosed the specific method of the strike or the precise location within the southern Gaza Strip. The content of the photograph placing Abu Mustafa inside Israeli territory has not been publicly released in detail. And the broader status of the ceasefire agreement, given the volume of violations the IDF is now alleging, remains unclear.
But what is clear is the outcome. A man who helped kidnap a teenager and kill his father, who then spent months rebuilding his organization's capacity to do it again, is dead.
Some things don't require a complicated moral framework. When a ceasefire is treated as a reloading break, the other side has every right to act. Israel did.
