Assassinated by Israel in Tehran, Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh was the face of the Palestinian resistance group’s worldwide diplomacy as warfare raged again in Gaza, killing three of his sons and lots of of his members of the family.
Despite his robust rhetoric, Haniyeh was seen by many diplomats as a reasonable in comparison with the extra hardline members of the Iran-backed group inside Gaza.
Appointed to the Hamas high job in 2017, Haniyeh moved between Türkiye and Qatar’s capital Doha, escaping the journey curbs of the blockaded Gaza Strip and enabling him to behave as a negotiator in cease-fire talks or to speak to Hamas’ ally Iran.
“All the agreements of normalization that you (Arab states) signed with (Israel) will not end this conflict,” Haniyeh declared on Qatar-based Al Jazeera tv shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion which prompted the dying of 1,200 individuals in Israel.
Israel’s genocidal warfare, in response, has killed almost 40,000 individuals in Gaza, largely ladies and youngsters, and bombed a lot of the enclave into rubble, in line with well being authorities within the territory.
Sons killed by Israel
Three of Haniyeh’s sons – Hazem, Amir and Mohammad – have been killed on April 10 when an Israeli airstrike struck the automotive they have been driving, Hamas mentioned. Haniyeh additionally misplaced 4 of his grandchildren, three women and a boy, within the assault, Hamas mentioned.
Haniyeh had denied Israeli assertions that his sons have been fighters for the group and mentioned “the interests of the Palestinian people are placed ahead of everything” when requested if their killing would affect truce talks.
“All our people and all the families of Gaza residents have paid a heavy price with the blood of their children and I am one of them,” he mentioned, including that at the least 60 members of his household have been killed within the warfare.
Yet for all of the robust language in public, Arab diplomats and officers had considered him as pragmatic in contrast with extra hardline voices inside Gaza, the place the Oct. 7 incursion was deliberate.
While telling Israel’s army they might discover themselves “drowning in the sands of Gaza,” he and his predecessor as Hamas chief, Khaled Meshaal, had shuttled across the area for talks over a Qatari-brokered cease-fire take care of Israel that would come with exchanging hostages for Palestinians in Israeli jails in addition to extra support for Gaza.
Israel, nonetheless, labels your entire Hamas management as terrorists and accused Haniyeh, Meshaal and others of continuous to “pull the strings of Hamas.”
But how a lot Haniyeh knew in regards to the Oct. 7 assault beforehand will not be clear. The plan, drawn up by the Hamas army council in Gaza, was such a intently guarded secret that some Hamas officers appeared shocked by its timing and scale.
Shuttle diplomacy
When he left Gaza in 2017, Haniyeh was succeeded by Yahya Sinwar, a hardliner who spent greater than twenty years in Israeli prisons and whom Haniyeh had welcomed again to Gaza in 2011 after a prisoner alternate.
“Haniyeh is leading the political battle for Hamas with Arab governments,” Adeeb Ziadeh, a specialist in Palestinian affairs at Qatar University, mentioned earlier than his dying, including that he had shut ties with extra hardline figures within the group and the army wing. “He is the political and diplomatic front of Hamas,” Ziadeh mentioned.
Haniyeh and Meshaal had met officers in Egypt, which has additionally had a mediation position within the cease-fire talks. Haniyeh traveled in early November to Tehran to fulfill Iran’s supreme chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian state media reported.
As a younger man, Haniyeh was a scholar activist on the Islamic University in Gaza City. He joined Hamas when it was created within the First Palestinian intifada (rebellion) in 1987. He was arrested and briefly deported.
Haniyeh turned a protege of Hamas’ founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, who like Haniyeh’s household, was a refugee from the village of Al Jura close to Ashkelon.
In 1994, he advised Reuters that Yassin was a mannequin for younger Palestinians, saying: “We learned from him, love of Islam and sacrifice for this Islam and not to kneel down to these tyrants and despots.”
By 2003, he was a trusted Yassin aide, photographed in Yassin’s Gaza house holding a telephone to the just about fully paralyzed Hamas founder’s ear in order that he might participate in a dialog. Yassin was assassinated by Israel in 2004.
Haniyeh was an early advocate of Hamas getting into politics. In 1994, he mentioned that forming a political get together “would enable Hamas to deal with emerging developments.”
Initially overruled by the Hamas management, it was later authorized and Haniyeh turned Palestinian prime minister after the group received Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, a yr after Israel’s army withdrew from Gaza.
The group took management of Gaza in 2007.
In 2012, when requested by Reuters reporters if Hamas had deserted the armed wrestle, Haniyeh replied “of course not” and mentioned resistance would proceed “in all forms – popular resistance, political, diplomatic and military resistance.”
Source: www.dailysabah.com