NEW DELHI: The most obvious being the likely damage to fragile efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza as Haniyeh was a critical interlocutor in negotiations brokered by Qatar, the US and Egypt.
Introduction
The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, who was widely considered Hamas’s overall political leader in Tehran, took place in the early hours of 31 July. “The residence of Ismail Haniyeh, Head of the political office of Hamas Islamic Resistance, was hit in Tehran,” as per a statement by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Sepah news website.
Within twenty- four hours the IDF announced that Mohammed Deif had been killed an Israeli air strike in the Khan Younis area of the Gaza Strip on 13 July. The military said that it had received additional intelligence to confirm Deif’s death to a complete certainty, taking into account that the defence establishment had been confident for the last two weeks that its air strike had killed him. Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant said the death of Deif is “a significant milestone” in the dismantling of Hamas. However, Hamas is yet to confirm his death.
One of Haniyeh’s bodyguards was also killed along with him, and as per the report; “The cause is under investigation and will be announced soon.” Fars news agency, posted on X that Haniyeh was stationed in the North of Tehran, and a projectile from the air killed him around 2:30 a.m. However, it is now being stated that a bomb had been planted in the Guest House two months ago.
In a separate statement, Hamas said Haniyeh was killed after he attended the inauguration of the new Iranian President, Masoud Pezeshkian. According to Al Jazeera, Hamas has said that Haniyeh was killed in “a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran”.
Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said Hamas will wage “open war to liberate Jerusalem” and the group is “ready to pay various prices” to do so, as per Al Jazeera.
Israel’s Heritage Minister Amihai Elihayu, however, celebrated Haniyeh’s death on X by stating that the killing “makes the world a little better,” he wrote in Hebrew.
Ismail Haniyeh
Haniyeh was born in 1962 in the Shati refugee camp North of Gaza City, to Palestinian parents, who in 1948 had been displaced from their home in Ashkelon now in Israel. He studied at schools run by the main United Nations agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, and went on to study Arabic literature at the Islamic University of Gaza.
A popular leader, he grew up in a refugee camp and represented the vast majority of the people, who are the descendants of the refugee families and displaced in 1948. A prominent member of the movement in the late 1980s, he was imprisoned by Israel for three years in 1989 during the first Palestinian uprising.
In 1992, he was then exiled to a no-man’s-land between Israel and Lebanon, along with a number of Hamas leaders. After a year in exile, he returned to Gaza. His rise to power in Gaza was aided by his mentor, the spiritual leader and a founder of Hamas, Sheik Yassin, for whom he served as personal secretary. The two were targets of an attempted Israeli assassination attempt in 2003; the next year, Mr. Yassin was killed by the Israeli military.
“You don’t have to cry,” Mr. Haniyeh told a crowd gathered outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City at the time. “You have to be steadfast, and you have to be ready for revenge.”
Haniyeh was appointed Palestinian Prime Minister in 2006 by President Mahmoud Abbas after Hamas won the most seats in national elections, but was dismissed a year later after the group ousted Abbas’ Fatah party from the Gaza Strip in a week of deadly violence.
Haniyeh rejected his sacking as “unconstitutional”, stressing that his government “would not abandon its national responsibilities towards the Palestinian people”, and continued to rule in Gaza.
He was elected head of Hamas’s political bureau in 2017 succeeding Khaled Meshaal. In 2018, the US Department of State designated Haniyeh a terrorist.
He had recently spent much of his time in Qatar and Turkey and was the negotiator in the ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas, mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, to end the war in Gaza in exchange for hostages captured in the Hamas-led attack on Israel.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, said the killing was “significant” for the people of Gaza because he was the leader of negotiations that they hoped would lead to a ceasefire. As per the New York Times, he was central to the group’s high-stakes negotiations and diplomacy. He was also an acceptable leader within the Palestinians some of whom looked at him as the future leader post the Gaza War.
“Palestinians across Gaza and the West Bank also viewed Ismail Haniyeh as a moderate leader, who is much more pragmatic compared to other leaders who head the military side of the movement,” he said. His funeral procession in Tehran on Wednesday drew thousands of people and Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, led prayers.
In April, three of Haniyeh’s thirteen sons and four of his grandchildren were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. In June, the Hamas said that Haniyeh’s sister and her family were killed in a strike by the Israeli military on the Haniyeh family home in Gaza.
But Haniyeh noting that he’d already lost dozens of family members in the war had said; “We shall not give in, no matter the sacrifices.”
Mohammed Deif
Mohammed Deif was born in Gaza’s Khan Younis refugee camp in 1965, when the territory was occupied by Egypt. He heads the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of the Hamas movement and was widely seen as the second-ranking Hamas official in Gaza, behind Yahya Sinwar. Israeli authorities imprisoned him in 1989, after which he formed the Al-Qassam Brigades with aim of capturing Israeli soldiers.
After his release, he helped engineer the construction of tunnels in Gaza. Deif remains one of Israel’s most-wanted men. Israel imprisoned him in 2000, but he escaped at the beginning of the second Palestinian uprising, or Intifada. He survived an assassination attempt in 2002, but lost one of his eyes. Israel says he also lost a foot and a hand, and that he has difficulty speaking. Israeli security forces again failed to assassinate Deif during a 2014 assault on the Gaza Strip, but killed his wife and two of his children. During the current conflict, Deif is believed to have directed Hamas’ military operations from within underground tunnels inside Gaza.
For decades he’s been seen as one of Israel’s most wanted men. “Deif was responsible for the terrible massacre of Oct 07 and for many murderous attacks against Israeli civilians,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “He was Israel’s most-wanted person for years. His elimination establishes a very clear principle — whoever harms us, we will retaliate against them.”
The Last Men Standing
The other important Hamas leaders include Yahya Sinwar the leader of the Hamas movement within the Gaza Strip, who was born in 1962.
The founder of the Hamas security service known as Majd, which manages internal security matters, investigates suspected Israeli agents and tracks down Israeli intelligence and security services officers he has been arrested thrice. After his third arrest in 1988, he was sentenced to four life terms in prison.
However, he was among 1,027 Palestinian and Israeli Arab prisoners released by Israel in exchange for an Israeli soldier held captive for over five years by Hamas. Sinwar was appointed head of the group’s political bureau in the Gaza Strip in 2017.
Khaled Meshaal, who was born in the West Bank in 1956, is considered one of the founders of Hamas. The Mossad attempted to assassinate Meshaal in 1997 while he was living in Jordan. Mossad agents entered Jordan with forged Canadian passports and Meshaal was injected with a toxic substance while walking along a street.
Jordanian authorities discovered the assassination attempt, and arrested two Mossad members. Late King Hussein of Jordan asked Israel’s PM for the antidote for the substance Meshaal was injected with. Facing pressure from then US President Bill Clinton, Netanyahu provided the antidote after initially rejecting the request.
Ismail Haniyeh had succeeded Meshaal as head of its political bureau in 2017, and Meshaal became head of the group’s political bureau abroad.
They are now in the Israeli crosshairs and there is a school of thought which advocates that their elimination maybe one of the aims of the Israelis and thereafter Israel will scale down its offensive in Gaza.
Implications
There are worries that Haniyeh’s killing could now lead to a setback in ceasefire negotiations and further escalation of the conflict.
Tensions were already high after Israel said it targeted a senior Hezbollah Commander in a “precision strike” on Beirut on 30 July. As per Sami al-Arian, the Director of the Centre for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University, “This is a huge escalation – what happened yesterday in Lebanon, what’s happening today in Tehran. It’s an escalation by [Israel] and that’s going to have significant ramifications.”
On the other hand, Lord Peter Ricketts, the UK’s former National Security Adviser, has stated that Haniyeh’s assassination is “a very powerful demonstration of Israel’s ability to reach out right across the region”.
He said it gives Israel the “political room to begin now to wind down the operation in Gaza because he can now say he has really delivered a major blow against Haniyeh’s leadership”.
But Ricketts also says it “remains a very dangerous time in the Middle East” as Hamas is now unlikely to want to settle in ceasefire talks.
While details of the attack are yet to fully emerge, its political consequences are also coming into focus. The most obvious being the likely damage to fragile efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza as Haniyeh was a critical interlocutor in negotiations brokered by Qatar, the US and Egypt.
Progress on the talks now seems distant in view the assassination of Haniyeh. This brings out a larger question regarding his targeting by Israel. Beyond the desire to exact revenge on the Hamas leadership, Israel’s aim seems unclear. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry is now accusing the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of having “no intention of achieving peace”.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei whom Haniyeh had met before the swearing in of President Pezeshkian’s swearing said; “With this action, the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime prepared the ground for a harsh punishment for itself, and we consider it our duty to take his revenge,” Khamenei said.
Whereas, the US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said that even with the events of the past 24 hours, Washington hoped that Israel would be able to come to a diplomatic solution and deescalate the situation.
“I don’t think that war is inevitable,” he told reporters in Manila, Philippines. “I maintain that. I think there’s always room and opportunity for diplomacy, and I’d like to see parties pursue those opportunities.”
Conclusion
Though Haniyeh Deif are prominent figures and their elimination undoubtedly will be counted as a major success for Israel, but Sinwar still remains.
The reactions of Hamas will now be awaited as also the succession of Haniyeh it is most likely that a more extremist leader may succeed him. The fact remains that while the killing of senior leaders is a setback for the organisation, Hamas as an ideology will not change and they are unlikely to surrender or make concessions.
Maj Gen Jagatbir Singh, VSM (Retd) served in the Indian Army.