The Most Famous

EXTREMISTS from Palestine

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This page contains a list of the greatest Palestinian Extremists. The pantheon dataset contains 283 Extremists, 1 of which were born in Palestine. This makes Palestine the birth place of the 33rd most number of Extremists behind Venezuela, and Uganda.

Top 1

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Palestinian Extremists of all time. This list of famous Palestinian Extremists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography's online popularity.

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1. Mohammed Deif (1965 - 2024)

With an HPI of 66.12, Mohammed Deif is the most famous Palestinian Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 45 different languages on wikipedia.

Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri (Arabic: محمد دياب إبراهيم المصري, romanized: Muḥammad Diyāb Ibrāhīm al-Maṣrī;‎ 12 August 1965 – 13 July 2024), better known as Mohammed Deif (Arabic: محمد الضيف), was a Palestinian militant who served as the sixth commander of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. He succeeded Salah Shehade following the latter's assassination in an Israeli airstrike in July 2002, until his assassination in July 2024. He was succeeded by Mohammed Sinwar, the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar. He was a central figure in the Gaza war and one of the masterminds of the October 7 attacks, alongside Yahya Sinwar. Deif was born in 1965 in the Khan Yunis Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip, to a family that had fled or been expelled during the 1948 Palestine war. He reportedly left school temporarily to support his low-income family, later graduating with a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the Islamic University of Gaza in 1988, where he had established a theater group. Deif joined Hamas in 1987, weeks after it was established during the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation. He later became known as Mohammed Deif, meaning "guest" in Arabic—possibly in reference to the nomadic lifestyle he adopted to avoid being targeted. During the 1990s and early 2000s, he planned several suicide bombing attacks, including the 1996 Jaffa Road bus bombings. He became the head of the al-Qassam Brigades in 2002 and developed the group's capabilities, transforming it from a cluster of amateur cells to organized military units. He masterminded the group's strategy of combining rocket attacks on Israel with tunnel warfare, and was central to planning the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel that initiated the Gaza war. Deif had been on the Israeli military's most wanted list since 1995 for killing Israeli soldiers and civilians. He was detained by the Palestinian Authority at Israel's request in 2000 before escaping months later. He had been targeted in multiple Israeli assassination attempts since 2001, surviving at least seven attempts on his life. His wife, infant son, and 3-year-old daughter were killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2014. The United States and the European Union added Deif to their terrorism lists in 2015 and 2023 respectively. Israel assassinated Deif in an airstrike on al-Mawasi on 13 July 2024. For over five months, Hamas denied reports of his death, eventually confirming it on 30 January 2025. In November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Deif, claiming it was unable to verify his death. The warrant was cancelled in late February 2025.

People

Pantheon has 1 people classified as Palestinian extremists born between 1965 and 1965. Of these 1, none of them are still alive today. The most famous deceased Palestinian extremists include Mohammed Deif. As of April 2024, 1 new Palestinian extremists have been added to Pantheon including Mohammed Deif.

Deceased Palestinian Extremists

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Newly Added Palestinian Extremists (2024)

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