Yahya "The Engineer" Ayash
The clock strikes 9 on a Friday morning in January 1996, and a mobile phone rings in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. The one who answers the phone is Yahya Ayash, and lifting the phone to his ear will be the last thing he does.
The phone was rigged and had been sold through Israeli agents, reported The New York Times in connection with his death.
Yahya Ayash was Hamas' chief bomb maker until his death and had long been on Israel's black list. He went by the nickname "The Engineer" and developed suicide bombers to be used in Israel. His death became the starting point for a series of bus bombings in Israel.
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Khalid Mashal
Two agents from the Israeli intelligence service Mossad travel to Jordan's capital Amman with fake Canadian passports in September 1997. Their mission: to kill the then Hamas leader Khalid Mashal.
When the agents get close enough to their target, they manage to inject poison into his body through his ear. The poison spreads through his blood, and when Mashal is taken to the hospital, his condition only gets worse. The only thing that could save his life is an antidote that the agents had brought with them to Amman, in case they themselves came into contact with the poison, revealed former Mossad agent Mishka Ben-David in 2016 to BBC.
After Jordan's King Hussein decides to arrest the agents and threatens to break a recently signed peace agreement with Israel, Israel hands over the antidote. The one who gave permission for the antidote to be given was the same person who gave permission for the murder attempt to be carried out: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mashal is still highly placed within Hamas and, together with the movement's highest leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, is one of the few remaining in the top tier.
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Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
The spiritual leader of Hamas, also one of the movement's founders, leaves a mosque in Gaza City on a Monday in March 2004. He has been wheelchair-bound since childhood due to an accident and receives help to move forward when an Israeli robot hits him.
Israel's military confirms that Yassin has been killed and says in a statement that he was "responsible for many murderous terrorist attacks".
Yassin's death prompts Palestinians to take to the streets, set things on fire, and chant for revenge.
