As if realizing his death was near, Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, delivered his last words to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Ali Khamenei before he was assassinated in Tehran. At the meeting, he quoted verses from the Quran about the journey of life, death, immortality, and strength when facing trials.
“It is God who gives life and death. And God knows all actions … 'If one leader leaves, another will emerge',” Haniyeh said in Arabic. A few hours later he was killed in an attack on his guesthouse that was allegedly carried out by Israel.
The statement was broadcast on television as Haniyeh spoke to Khamenei. It reflects the strong Islamist beliefs that shape Haniyeh's outlook on life and approach to the Palestinian conflict with Israel. That view was inspired by the late founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who in the 1980s called for Jihad against Israel.
Israel imprisoned and killed Yassin in 2004, but Hamas grew into a powerful military force.
In an interview with Reuters in Gaza in 1994, Haniyeh, who was buried in Qatar on Friday (Aug. 2), said Yassin had taught them that Palestinians could only reclaim their Israeli-occupied homeland through “a holy struggle represented by the weapons and determination of its people.”
No Muslim should die in his bed while “Palestine” remains occupied, he quoted Yassin as saying.
For Palestinian supporters, Haniyeh and the entire Hamas leadership are figures of freedom fighters from Israeli occupation, who kept their struggle alive when international diplomacy failed.
He said he learned from Sheikh Yassin about “the love of Islam and the sacrifice for this Islam and not kneeling before tyrants and tyrants.”
Haniyeh has emerged as a central figure in the Palestinian group’s international diplomatic efforts amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza. In April, an Israeli airstrike killed three of his sons—Hazem, Amir and Mohammad—and four of his grandchildren. At least 60 other members of his family were killed in the Gaza war.
“The blood of my children is not more valuable than the blood of the children of the Palestinian people… All the Palestinian martyrs are my children,” he said after their deaths.
“Through the blood of the martyrs and the pain of the wounded, we create hope, we create a future, we create independence and freedom for our people,” he said. “We tell the occupation that this blood will only make us stronger in our principles and our attachment to our land.”
'Normalization Will Not End Conflict'
Haniyeh was appointed a top Hamas official in 2017. Since then, he has frequently moved between Turkey and Doha, the Qatari capital, to avoid travel restrictions in the blockaded Gaza Strip, as well as acting as a negotiator in ceasefire talks and communicating with Hamas allies such as Iran.
“All the normalization agreements you (Arab countries) signed with (Israel) will not end this conflict,” Haniyeh said shortly after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. The incident killed 1,200 people, and Hamas is said to have taken 250 hostages.
Israel's response to the incident was a military offensive that killed some 40,000 people inside Gaza, and reduced much of the enclave to rubble.
In May, the International Criminal Court prosecutor's office requested arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders, including Haniyeh, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They were arrested on suspicion of war crimes. Israeli and Palestinian leaders have dismissed the allegations.
Haniyeh is the third Hamas leader killed by Israel in the last two decades. Previously, Israel killed Sheikh Yassin and his successor Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi within a month in a helicopter airstrike in 2004.
Khaled Meshaal, who was expected to succeed Haniyeh as leader, escaped in 1997 an assassination attempt ordered by Netanyahu, but failed.
Adeeb Ziadeh, a specialist in Palestinian affairs at Qatar University, said Hamas is an ideology and Haniyeh's killing will not finish the group or make it surrender.
“Every time Hamas loses one leader, another one comes, sometimes even stronger in his performance and fulfilling Hamas' principles,” Ziadeh said.
Israel said Thursday that Mohammed Deif, one of the masterminds of the Oct. 7 attacks, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza last month. Saleh Al-Arouri, a co-founder of Hamas's military wing, was also killed in an Israeli drone strike on Beirut's southern outskirts in January 2024.
Military Power
Hamas's 1988 founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel, although Hamas leaders have occasionally offered a long-term ceasefire with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state in all the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. Israel, however, views this as a ruse.
In the decades since, Hamas has fired thousands of rockets into Israel and fought several wars with the Israeli army while continuing to build up its ranks and military strength. Hamas also sent suicide bombers into Israel in the 1990s and 2000s.
In 2012, when asked by Reuters if Hamas had stopped the armed struggle, Haniyeh replied “of course not.” He asserted that the resistance will continue “in all forms, both people's resistance, political, diplomatic, and military resistance”. (ah/ft)
