Zaher Jabarin, who, under Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's patronage, turned Istanbul into his playground, and directed from there numerous attacks against Israel; the man who recruited to Hamas the arch-murderer Yahya Ayyash ("The Engineer") and formulated Hamas' first manifesto in Judea and Samaria – was eliminated (apparently) in the assassination operation against senior Hamas officials in Doha.
Jabarin, assuming we can indeed already write about him in the past tense, is the man who was responsible more than others for building the terror organization's economic power: annual revenues at an estimated sum of approximately 750 million dollars, which enabled Hamas to strengthen militarily, build an enormous rocket and underground system, pay salaries to tens of thousands of terrorists and execute the October 7 massacre.
#Hamas sources say their leaders #KhalilAlhayya and #ZaherJabarin were assassinated in #Israeli attack on #Doha. pic.twitter.com/TmqhloCXF6
— Doha News (@dohanews) September 9, 2025
Jabarin was also one of those responsible for a division in Hamas called the "Construction Bureau." The bureau was located, and perhaps still resides, in the military wing's office in Istanbul (together with the "West Bank Headquarters," which Jabarin was responsible for, together with Saleh al-Arouri, for many years). In the Construction Bureau, Hamas' military capabilities were developed in the rocket, naval, and aerial domains, and it had a Lebanese branch in the Dahieh neighborhood in Beirut.
He was born in the town of Silfit in Samaria, and Hamas mythology tells that when he was a child of about 10, he asked his mother for money to buy weapons. In 1993, the court sentenced him to life imprisonment and another 35 years imprisonment due to his involvement in a series of severe attacks: kidnapping and murder of Border Police officer Nissim Toledano (1992), shooting attacks in Kafr Burqin (where two soldiers were killed) and in French Hill in Jerusalem, and the attempted attack in Ramat Efal using a car bomb.
The turning point that brought Jabarin from prison to the terror organization's leadership came in 2011, when he was released along with many more of his colleagues (Yahya Sinwar and others), as part of the Shalit deal, and was deported to Turkey. His most significant meeting in his new country of residence was, as mentioned, with Saleh al-Arouri, one of the architects of the Shalit deal from the Hamas side, and who was responsible for the West Bank sector on behalf of the organization, and also operated from Turkey. Jabarin was his deputy, and his terrorist career soared. When Israel eliminated al-Arouri in Lebanon at the beginning of the war, Jabarin inherited many of his positions.
Among the attacks and attempted attacks directed by Hamas-Turkey, during the period when the al-Arouri-Jabarin duo headed the organization's West Bank sector, were attacks that were foiled at the Malha Mall in Jerusalem, at Jerusalem's Central Station, in Beer Sheva, and at the Tel Hashomer base, as well as Hamas activity on the Temple Mount. Another activity that Jabarin was connected to was an attempted coup against the Palestinian Authority directed by Hamas command in Turkey. (The Shin Bet arrested 93 people in this affair).
Jabarin's people and his terrorist gang also directed from Turkey the kidnapping and murder of the three teenagers from Gush Etzion in 2014; attempted attacks on the light rail in Jerusalem, and the murder of the Henkin couple in October 2015 at the Beit Furik junction, as well as assassination plans against Nir Barkat, when he served as Jerusalem mayor, against former MK Yehuda Glick, and against former Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh.
