PROFILE: Ahmed al-Jaabari top Hamas military leader

Ahmed al-Jaabari (born 1960, died November 14, 2012) was the second-in-command of the military wing of Hamas.          

He has been credited as the leader in the takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas.                

Jaabari was a high-ranking official within Hamas's political leadership and was also the founder of the Nur Association which aims to help "martyrs and prisoners".              

Jabaari was born to a family in the Shuja’iyya district of Gaza City.            

He graduated from Gaza's Islamic University with a degree in history.                            

In 1982, Jaabari was arrested and imprisoned by Israeli authorities while he was a member of the secular Palestinian militant organization Fatah. He left Fatah and joined Hamas after meeting with some of the latter's founders who were also incarcerated at the time.                           

In 2002, after an Israeli airstrike wounded the leader of Hamas's principal armed wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Jaabari became the operational head of the militant wing at the height of the Second Intifada (the armed Palestinian uprising against Israel from 2000–2007.)                 

In 2004, Jaabari's eldest son Mohammed, his brother and three of his cousins were killed in an Israeli air strike against Jaabari's home in an apparent assassination attempt against him.             

It is widely believed that Jaabari played the leading role in Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in June 2007. During Israel's offensive Operation Cast Lead against the Gaza Strip in December 2008, Jabari's home was allegedly destroyed in an airstrike, but the circumstances surrounding the incident were unclear.                                    

In September 2010, Jaabari threatened to increase attacks against Israel to derail the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. "With the power of faith, weapons and missiles, tunnels and commandos we will achieve victory for Palestine and we'll end the occupation in Gaza too," he said.          

He allowed himself to be caught on camera on October 18, 2011 as he delivered Shalit to Egypt as part of a key prisoner exchange deal with the Jewish state.