Ismail Haniya

Hamas political leader Ismail Haniya, who was assassinated today (31/7) in Iran, attracted the international spotlight in 2006 when he became prime minister of the Palestinian Authority after his movement’s surprise election victory.

He has long advocated reconciling the armed struggle with the political struggle in his organization and is said to have cultivated good relations with the leaders of several other Palestinian movements.

The 62-year-old lived in self-imposed exile in Qatar and Turkey.

Son of refugees

Son of a refugee family from the city called Ashkelon in Arabic (Ashkelon in Hebrew), a few kilometers north of Gaza Strip, began his political activity in the Muslim Brotherhood student organization at the Islamic University of Gaza, where Hamas was born. He was a member of the Islamic University students’ union in 1983 and 1984.

Joining Hamas

Three years later, he joined Hamas at its founding as the first Intifada broke out, the Palestinian uprising that would last until 1993. During this period, Ismail Haniya was repeatedly imprisoned by Israeli authorities and displaced for six months in southern Lebanon.

When it attracted international attention

He attracted international attention in 2006 when he became prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, following the Islamist movement’s surprise victory in parliamentary elections.

After taking over as head of a unity government, he pledged to work towards the establishment of a Palestinian state “in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with Jerusalem as its capital”, choosing to go against the grain, as Hamas in its official discourse at the time did not recognize those borders .

The Hamas-Fatah conflict

But it was during his days that, in 2007, the mini-civil war between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority broke out. The Palestinian Islamist movement seized power in the Gaza Strip after deadly hostilities. The conflict continues to fuel the conflict between Hamas and Fatah today.

His cohabitation with Fatah, the president’s faction Mahmoud Abbas, it was short. Hamas expelled it from the enclave by force in 2007, two years after Israel announced it was unilaterally withdrawing from the small area it had occupied for decades.

In the political office of Hamas

Ismail Haniya was elected head of Hamas’ politburo in 2017, succeeding Khaled Meshaal, also in exile in Qatar.

In footage released by Hamas media shortly after the movement’s military wing attacked southern Israel on October 7, Ismail Haniya was seen happily chatting with other faction officials in his office in Doha as he watched a report on Arab TV network that showed militants taking over Israeli army jeeps.

More than nine months after the outbreak of the war that has turned the Gaza Strip into ruins, Ismail Haniya has repeatedly insisted that the Israeli hostages will not be released until a final ceasefire is declared.

His children and grandchildren dead in Gaza

Hamas leader Ismail Haniya lost three of his sons and four grandchildren in an airstrike in Gaza.

The moment of the announcement can be seen on video, during Haniya’s visit to injured Palestinians in a hospital in Qatar. He nods and with complete composure says: “God rest their souls, they became martyrs.”

The killings threaten to undermine internationally brokered ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas. Haniya accused Israel of acting in a “spirit of revenge and murder” and said Hamas, after the blow to his family, would not bow to pressure.

“The enemy believes that by targeting the families of the leaders, it will induce them to give up the demands of our people. Anyone who thinks that targeting my sons will push Hamas to change its position is delusional,” he told Al Jazeera.

This is the moment Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh received news that his sons were killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza.

The Israel Defence Forces confirmed it killed Haniyeh’s three sons – claiming they were terrorists. pic.twitter.com/6snh5yTrrp

— Sky News (@SkyNews) April 11, 2024

Sources: APE-MPE, AFP, ertnews.gr