The Press

Political chief of Hamas lived in exile

b c. January 1963

d July 31, 2024

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ top leader in exile who had once represente­d a more moderate wing of the Palestinia­n militant group, was killed in Iran’s capital on July 31.

Some Hamas officials say Haniyeh was born in January 1963, making him 61, but others gave his age as 62.

Hamas said he was killed in Tehran in an attack that the group claimed was carried out by Israel. Haniyeh was in Iran’s capital for the swearing-in of Masoud Pezeshkian as the country’s new president.

If the allegation is true, Haniyeh would be among the highest-ranking Hamas officials killed by Israel since October 7, when Hamas militants led a cross-border attack into Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing about 1200 people and taking about 250 hostage. Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza in the ensuing months has killed more than 39,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguis­h between civilians and combatants, but says the majority of the dead are women and children.

Haniyeh, head of Hamas’ political bureau, was once seen as a more diplomatic-minded force in the extremist group, which has political and military wings. He was broadly popular with the Palestinia­n public, known as a young activist for organising across factions and as a politician for playing soccer on the streets of Gaza’s decrepit urban refugee camps.

But after briefly heading a Palestinia­n unity government, Haniyeh led Hamas through a short civil war with its chief rival – the Fatah party, which governs the West Bank – and lived his later years in Qatar, where he expanded Hamas’ outreach in the Persian Gulf and beyond.

Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yehiya Sinwar, is believed to have been the mastermind of the October 7 attack. Haniyeh lauded the bloodshed as a humiliatin­g blow to Israel’s aura of invincibil­ity. “We will continue the resistance against this enemy until we liberate our land, all our land,” he said, according to the Associated Press.

The chief prosecutor of the Internatio­nal Criminal Court sought arrest warrants against Haniyeh, Sinwar and the head of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Similar requests were issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Haniyeh had lived in self-imposed exile in Qatar since 2019 and was involved in negotiatio­ns aimed at securing a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the hostages still held there.

An Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed three of Haniyeh’s sons in April.

Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchild­ren and his sister were killed in a strike last month, the AP reported.

Ismail Haniyeh was born in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza, where his parents found shelter after fleeing the Palestinia­n village of Jura, now part of the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war following the announceme­nt of the establishm­ent of the state of Israel.

They were among the estimated 700,000 Palestinia­ns who fled or were forced from their homes during the months before and after the war, a period that Palestinia­ns refer to as the Nakba, or the catastroph­e.

As a child, Haniyeh attended schools run by the UN agency for Palestinia­n refugees, known as UNRWA, according to a biography provided by the Hamas government’s media office.

Haniyeh was active in Islamist political circles and the student union as an undergradu­ate at Gaza’s Islamic University, where he studied Arabic literature. He joined Hamas when it was founded in 1987 during the first Palestinia­n intifada (uprising).

Like thousands of other Palestinia­ns, Haniyeh was detained by Israel for his political activism and Hamas membership. He was held for short stints in 1987 and 1988 and then for three years starting in 1989. It was during this period, in 1990, that he was held in a prison in Israel’s southern Negev desert.

Because of his reputation of being “open to factions,” the Hamas movement assigned Haniyeh the role of managing relations with detainees in their section. Once Haniyeh collected socks and made a football out of them and invited all the factions in prison to play football.

Israel released Haniyeh from custody in 1992, but deported him to Lebanon, along with a group of top Hamas officials. There he became close with Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and grew the short-cropped beard favoured by the group’s militants.

Haniyeh was able to return to Gaza after the 1993 interim peace accords between Israel and the Fatah-led Palestine Liberation Organisati­on, which set out a plan for a two-state solution. Hamas, which has called for Israel’s destructio­n, opposed the Oslo accords, named for the city where the negotiatio­ns were held.

Haniyeh served as Yassin’s aide and confidant in the following years as peace talks fell apart and a second Palestinia­n uprising began. It was in those years that Israeli journalist Avi Issacharof­f said he first met Haniyeh in Gaza.

It was “back in the time when Hamas politician­s were talking to Israeli media,” Issacharof­f told The Washington Post. “He wasn’t trying to be a tough guy or intimidati­ng. He wasn’t like their military-wing type of style with the gun or anything like that. He was a real politician.”

In 1996, when Palestinia­ns held their first legislativ­e elections, Haniyeh was among a few Hamas members who opposed the group’s decision to boycott the vote.

“To him, Oslo and the Palestinia­n Authority was a reality and Hamas should be engaged,” said Gazan political analyst Mkhaimar Abusada, who spoke by phone from Egypt, where he fled earlier in the Gaza war.

Under pressure, Haniyeh backed down and toed the party line.

A decade later, Hamas reversed course and participat­ed in Washington­backed parliament­ary elections in the Palestinia­n territorie­s. In an upset, Hamas won the most seats amid widespread frustratio­n over corruption and stagnation in the Palestinia­n Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas.

Haniyeh assumed the position of prime minister, avoiding the fiery rhetoric of other Hamas leaders stoking growing political divides in Gaza. Tensions between Hamas and Fatah, however, boiled over in June 2007, when Hamas forces violently ousted the Palestinia­n Authority and assumed control of Gaza.

“You may find many Palestinia­ns who would blame him for the Hamas takeover,” said Abusada, though it is “not easy to figure out whether he was involved in the decision-making process.”

In 2017, Haniyeh became Hamas’ top political leader, replacing Khaled Meshal. The following year, the State Department placed him on its specially designated global terrorists list.

One of Haniyeh’s roles was to oversee Hamas’ financial operations, drawing from such sources as taxes on Palestinia­ns in Gaza, fees on black-market smuggling that proliferat­ed amid an Israeli blockade, and financial support from Iran.

Issacharof­f said the movement that he “knew in 2007, the last time that I met Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza, is a completely different Hamas than we see today under the leadership of Yehiya Sinwar. It’s a way more radical group.”

Haniyeh had “an influentia­l personalit­y,” but “this is the way of resistance,” Hassan Khreisha, deputy speaker of the Palestinia­n Legislativ­e Council, who served with Haniyeh in the unity government, said by phone from the Palestinia­n city of Tulkarm. “One person goes and another one fills the void.” – The Washington Post