The choice of Abu Obeida as the military spokesman of the Qassam Brigades began as an improvised battlefield decision. During the 2004 ‘Days of Rage’ confrontation in northern Gaza, Abu Anas (b. circa 1976), a Hamas leader who founded Qassam’s military-media apparatus in 2000 and directed it until 2012, concluded that the Brigades needed a dedicated military voice to read its communiqués publicly. Three young men came to mind. One was Hussein Fayyad, later commander of Qassam’s Beit Hanoun Battalion. Another was Abu Obeida, then eighteen and the youngest of the three. The third remains unnamed. Abu Anas recalled that Abu Obeida distinguished himself through ‘his voice, his graceful language, and his command of grammar.’ He was mild-mannered, a memorizer of the Qur’an who intended to study Shari‘a despite receiving grades high enough to pursue medicine or engineering. At the time, Abu Obeida was stationed on the northern front, resisting the ongoing incursion. Abu Anas summoned him from the battlefield, and the young fighter arrived still wearing his military uniform. Abu Anas handed him a Qassam communiqué: ‘This is a statement from the Qassam Brigades. You will read it at the press conference in three hours at al-Nour Mosque.’ Asked whether he had any questions, Abu Obeida replied, ‘Not at all. The statement is clear.’ Abu Anas instructed him to read it and avoid journalists’ questions, unless he could answer directly from the communiqué. Three hours later, masked in black and wearing a green headband, Abu Obeida appeared before dozens of journalists. He read Qassam’s account of the fighting and answered several questions. Afterwards, Abu Anas convened an evaluation committee comprising Nizar Rayan (1959–2009), a senior Hamas leader and Islamic University scholar; Suhail al-Hindi (b. 1964), a veteran Hamas organizer who later served on its Political Bureau; and Fathi Hammad (b. 1961), a Hamas leader who later served as Gaza’s interior minister. Their verdict was succinct: ‘He doesn’t need evaluating. The kid is good.’ There remained one problem: Qassam’s senior military leadership had not authorized the appointment. When the Military Council convened after the battle to evaluate the confrontation, its members were surprised to learn that Qassam now had a spokesman in northern Gaza. Ahmed Jabari, Abu Muhammad (1960–2012), then deputy to Qassam commander Mohammed Deif and later the principal architect of the 2011 Wafa al-Ahrar prisoner exchange, and Marwan Issa, Abu al-Bara’ (1965–2024), a senior Qassam commander who later became the Brigades’ deputy commander, confronted Abu Anas: ‘How did you decide to appoint a spokesman for Qassam without consulting us?’ Abu Anas answered: ‘We were at war, and there was no way to communicate with you to consult you, so I improvised and made the decision in light of the circumstances imposed by the battlefield.’ Jabari then proposed a terminological compromise: ‘Fine, call him a “speaker,” not the “spokesman for Qassam.”’ Abu Anas replied that the matter was already settled: ‘Too late. He has already appeared in the media under that title. But you can call him the “speaker” in your internal meetings.’