As if he sensed his dying approaching, Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh’s last words to Persian supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Ali Khamenei before his death in Tehran were a Biblical poetry reflecting on lifestyle, death, immortality, and resilience.
Just before an Israeli attack claimed his life, the words were exchanged. Haniyeh’s death is the next Hamas leader’s death by Israel in the past 20 years, best known for its position and dedication to the Palestinian cause.
‘ If a innovator leaves, another may come’
“It is Allah who gives life and causes death. And Allah is all-aware of all actions … ‘ If a innovator leaves, another may come’,” Haniyeh said in Arabic during his speech to Khamenei. A few hours later, he was killed in a suspected Israeli strike on his guest house.
Haniyeh addressed Khamenei on television, which highlighted the Islamist principles that underpinned his existence and view to the Palestinians ‘ fight with Israel. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the later Hamas chairman, who fought for terrorism against Israel in the 1980s, gave him inspiration. Hamas has grown into a fearsome military force after Israel imprisoned and eventually assassinated Yassin in 2004.
Haniyeh, who was buried in Qatar on Friday, acknowledged Yassin’s training that Palestinians was only regain their held land through” the cleansed arms of its males and their battle” in an interview with Reuters in Gaza in 1994.
” No Muslim may perish in his sleep while’ Palestine ‘ remains occupied”, he quoted Yassin as saying.
Haniyeh and another Hamas leaders, who are Hamas followers, continue to support their cause in the face of deteriorating international diplomacy. They represent fighters who have been able to escape Israeli occupation.
He claimed that he had learned from Sheikh Yassin,” the passion of Islam and the sacrifice for this Islam, and not to bow over before tyrants and dictators.”
In the midst of the continuing fight in Gaza, Haniyeh emerged as the team’s stern-spoken ambassador on global politics. Cruelly, three of his children- Hazem, Amir, and Mohammad- and four of his children were killed in an Israeli attack in April. The Gaza combat left a trail of at least 60 different members of his extended family without injuries.
After their deaths, he said,” My children’s blood is not more important than the babies of the Arab people’s blood.”
” Through the heart of the victims and the problems of the injured, we create desire, we create the future, we create independence and freedom for our people”, he stated. We tell the profession that this blood merely will strengthen our convictions and steadfastness in our nation.
Conflict wo n’t be resolved by normalization, according to the statement.
Haniyeh traveled between Qatar’s investment Doha and Turkey as the organization’s leader in 2017. He was able to travel freely in the blockaded Gaza Strip, which also made it easier for him to engage in dialogue and ceasefire talks with Hamas ‘ alliance Iran.
” All the agreements of normalisation that you]Arab states ] signed with]Israel ] will not end this conflict”, Haniyeh declared shortly after Hamas fighters launched the October 7 attack that resulted in the deaths of 1, 200 people in Israel and the capture of 250 hostages.
Israel’s military operation has so far killed about 40 000 persons in Gaza and destroyed a large portion of the area.
Imprisonment permits for war acts
In May, the International Criminal Court attorney’s office requested arrest warrants for three Hamas officials, including Haniyeh, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for alleged war crimes. These complaints have been refuted by both Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
Haniyeh is the second Hamas leader to have been killed by Israel in the last 20 years. In 2004 by conducting plane airstrikes, Israel had earlier assassinated Sheikh Yassin and his son Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi within a fortnight of each other.
A botched execution effort was ordered by Netanyahu in 1997, and Khaled Meshaal, who is expected to succeed Haniyeh as president, was able to survive.
Hamas is an ideology, according to Adeeb Ziadeh, a specialist in Palestinian affairs at Qatar University, and the killing of Haniyeh wo n’t sabotage the organization or compel it to give up.
” Every time Hamas lost one leader, another leader came, sometimes even stronger in his performance and fulfilling Hamas principles”, Ziadeh said.
One of the instigators of the attack on October 7 was killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza last quarter, according to Israel’s announcement on Thursday. Saleh Al-Arouri, one of the owners of Hamas ‘ military aircraft, was likewise killed in an Israeli drone attack on Beirut’s southern cities in January 2024.
Military potential
Although Hamas leaders have often suggested a long-term peace in change for a viable Palestinian condition on all Israeli-occupied territories during the 1967 battle, the founding charter of Hamas stipulated that Israel be destroyed. Israel, but, considers this a hoax.
Hamas has been investing in its defense capacity for the past ten years by firing countless rockets at Israel, engaging in numerous conflicts with the Israeli army, and maintaining its current position. In Israel, suicide bombing were also carried out in the 1990s and 2000s.
In 2012, when asked by Reuters if Hamas had abandoned the military fight, Haniyeh replied,” of program not”, and asserted that resistance would endure “in all forms- common resistance, social, diplomatic and military resistance”.
Some Arab ambassadors and leaders compared Haniyeh’s tough rhetoric to those of more conservative Hamas members inside Gaza, where the organization’s defense aircraft planned the October 7 strike under the command of Yahya Sinwar.
” Drowning in Gaza’s dunes”
He addressed Israel’s defense, warning them that they would soon find themselves “drowning in the sand of Gaza,” but Haniyeh and his father Khaled Meshaal were also in discussions about a Qatari-brokered peace agreement that included holding Palestinian prisoners hostage in Israel.
Hamas ‘ military capability was bolstered by Haniyeh, a Sunni Muslim, by fostering relationships with Shi’ite Muslim Iran, which has publicly supported the organization with both military and financial aid.
Sinwar, a hardliner who spent more than 20 years in Israeli jails, took Haniyeh’s place as Hamas head in the area when he left Gaza in 2017.
