Including in the night between 30 and 31 July 2024the head of the Political Bureau of the Palestinian movement Hamas, Ismail Haniyehwas killed in a raid carried out by Israel in Tehran, in Iranwhere the previous day he had attended the inauguration ceremony of Masoud Pezeshkian, the new president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since the beginning of the current Gaza War Israeli political and military leaders had publicly declared their intention to eliminate the leaders of Hamas, including Haniyeh himself, responsible for having planned and given the green light to the attack of October 7, 2023. The event provoked strong reactionsfor the moment only of a verbal nature, by the Iranian leadership, which through the mouth of Ayatollah Khamenei has defined the event as an “act of terrorism” which “will receive an answer”.
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How did the Hamas leader die?
Details surrounding Haniyeh’s death are still scant. He was in Tehran, the capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to attend the inauguration ceremony of the new president Masoud Pezeshkian and in this context he was repeatedly framed by the TV cameras present at the event. At 2.00 am, Iranian time, the room of the residence in which Haniyeh was staying during his Persian trip was hit by a long-range device (perhaps a missile or a drone) which caused the death of him and one of his bodyguards. He apparently remained unharmed Ziyad al-NakalahSecretary General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihadalso present in the building.
Haniyeh’s death marks the second case of targeted killing of a senior Palestinian official living abroad since the beginning of the year, after that of Saleh al-Arouriwhich occurred in Beirut on January 2, and falls just a few hours after the attack carried out by the Israeli Air Force also in Beirut where he was killed Fuad Shukrone of Hezbollah’s military leaders.
The possible consequences of killing Ismail Haniyeh
The killing of the Hamas leader has provoked numerous reactions at international levelparticularly in the Islamic world. Words of condemnation were pronounced by Abu Mazenpresident of the Palestinian National Authority and leader of the Fatah party, Hamas’s main political rival. Particularly violent was the Reaction of Iranian leaders. During Haniyeh’s funeral in Tehran, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei called the event a “act of terrorism” and promised a reaction. Harsh words of condemnation also came from the President of Türkiye, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
It now remains to be seen whether the Iranian threats will be followed by a retaliation. Iranians can respond with a range of possibilities that go from terrorist actions through their allies in the Middle East (Iraqi and Syrian militias, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza) up to a missile attack as normal as the one we witnessed on the night between April 13th and 14th of this year.
Who was Haniyeh and what was his political career?
Born between 1962 and 1963 (sources differ) in the Al-Shati refugee camp, in Gaza Stripat the time under Egyptian occupation, Ismail Abdulsalam Ahmed Haniyeh belonged to a Palestinian family of Sunni Muslim religion originally from the coastal city of Ashkelon, from which they were expelled during the Israeli War of Independence of 1947-49.
Educated in United Nations-run compulsory schools, Haniyeh earned a degree in Arabic literature from the Islamic University of Gaza in 1987 and went on to participate in the First Intifada protests and come incarcerated several times by the Israeli occupation authorities. During this turbulent period, the young Haniyeh came into contact with the activists who at the time formed the first leadership nucleus of Hamasand was soon inserted into its political structure. His rise within the movement was aided both by the personal relationship he managed to establish with Sheikh Yassin and by the targeted assassinations perpetrated by the Israelis against the original leadership.
In the 2006 Palestinian elections, Haniyeh managed to get elected to the post of Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), but his ambition and the subsequent open war that broke out between Hamas and Fatah (the moderate Palestinian party led by Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen) for control of the Gaza Strip caused this fragile experiment in Palestinian democracy to collapse. In 2016, Haniyeh was elected to the seat of Head of the Political Office of Hamas (a position he actually assumed the following year), succeeding Khaled Mashal. Since then he has led the political wing of the movement from his exile first in Turkey and then in Qatar.
What was Haniyeh’s political platform?
Like all Hamas leaders, Haniyeh had never renounced the pillars of the movement’s political charter, among which is the explicit declaration of seeking the destruction of the State of Israel, considered by the Hamas leadership as an illegitimate entity with which negotiations can be started aimed at obtaining at most a “truce”but never a peace treaty indeed, it prevents the Palestinian people from regaining sovereignty over all the territory belonging to the former British Mandatory Palestine.
In this context, he has repeatedly expressed his full support for the terrorist initiatives carried out by the military wing of Hamas, particularly on the occasion of theattack launched against Israel on October 7, 2023 which has plunged the Middle East into the ongoing war. On the domestic political front, although he was not strictly considered an “extremist” and although he had said in principle that he was in favor of religious coexistence, he had reaffirmed the principle according to which Palestinians belonging to both the Sunni Muslim majority and the Christian minority should all live in one Islamic confessional state.
