Hamas has described the killing of its political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, as a grave escalation that will not go unanswered. His assassination in Iran overnight will be perceived as a serious blow to efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, as talks mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt stagger forward after months of negotiations.
The group called Haniyeh’s death in what it described as a raid on his Tehran residence “treacherous”. The Qassam brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, said it was “a critical and dangerous event that takes the battle to new dimensions, and will have major repercussions on the entire region”.
Haniyeh had long served as the head of Hamas’ politburo, and was seen as a moderate figure within the movement, one whose role had become vital in sustained diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire.
Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, despaired at the killing, fearing it would further endanger already fragile ceasefire negotiations. “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” he asked.
Haniyeh, 62, was elected as the head of the political wing in 2017, before leaving Gaza for exile in Qatar two years later. From exile he became the face of the Palestinian group’s international diplomacy, shuttling between Turkey, Iran and Qatar, joining a group of Hamas leaders sheltering in Doha and unable to return to Gaza. Even so, Haniyeh was seen as a key line of communication with hardline figures such as Yahya Sinwar in the blockaded territory.
Diplomats, officials and observers viewed him as relatively pragmatic compared with other more militant voices that have risen to the fore in Gaza.
“He was not just a diplomat but a moderate, someone willing to consider that reconciliation and diplomacy with Israel was the right route to take,” said Tahani Mustafa of the International Crisis Group.
“The more you assassinate or get rid of moderates, the more that hardliners come to the fore, or you convert moderates into hardliners … To think that something like this is going to bring Hamas to its knees, or forcibly moderate the movement, that is a serious miscalculation.”
The Qassam brigades praised Haniyeh’s “clear contributions” in a statement marking his death, saying he had played a role in “strengthening the resistance, unifying the efforts of the sons of the nation”.
Haniyeh’s allies and even former rivals condemned the assassination on Wednesday, amid fears that his death during a visit to Tehran could provoke a broader response.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, called the killing “a cowardly act and a serious escalation”, and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who often met Haniyeh in Ankara, called it a “despicable act”.
The Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, a veteran negotiator, shared a picture of himself alongside Haniyeh, the two men holding their hands to their hearts while speaking in front of an image of the Dome of the Rock.
“He devoted his life to the Palestinian cause and to bringing peace and tranquility to Palestine,” he said. “We are witness to the efforts he has made recently to achieve a ceasefire. Even when his family members were massacred by Israel, he never lost his belief in peace.”
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Haniyeh was born in 1963 in Gaza’s Shati refugee camp, becoming active in politics while studying Arabic literature at university in the strip. He joined Hamas when it was created in the first Palestinian intifada in 1987, and was imprisoned on a number of occasions by Israel.
First exiled to Beirut in 1992, he returned to Gaza a year later and leapt up the Hamas ranks in 1997 after being appointed to run the office of the group’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
By 2003 he had become a trusted aide, photographed in Yassin’s Gaza home holding a phone to the quadriplegic’s ear so he could take part in a conversation.
Both were wounded in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City that year, with Yassin vowing that “the assassination policy will not finish Hamas” in the aftermath. Israel assassinated Yassin in a helicopter strike a year later.
Haniyeh was an early advocate of the group’s political agenda, and in 2006 he became Palestinian prime minister after Hamas won the most seats in Palestinian parliamentary elections. He survived a second attempt on his life that year when he was targeted with gunfire at the Rafah crossing with his entourage. Hamas blamed the former Fatah leader in Gaza Mohammad Dahlan for the attempt, but he responded by saying “assassinating Haniyeh is an honour I cannot claim”.
The attempt on his life did little to dent Haniyeh’s leadership, but Abbas dismissed him as prime minister in 2007 after Israel withdrew from Gaza and Hamas took control. Despite his experience, he became seen as an advocate of reconciliation with Fatah, including attending the recent signing of a unity deal in China.
Haniyeh also knew how to rile up a crowd, beaming as he greeted supporters with chants of “resistance” after a ceasefire marked the end of the 2012 Israeli assault on Gaza. A second, far longer, Israeli assault on the territory in 2014 targeted his home.
He ruled Gaza until 2017, when he was elected head of Hamas’ political bureau during an internal power struggle. When he left Gaza two years later, he was succeeded by the hardliner Sinwar.
From a more permanent exile, Haniyeh’s role developed into building bridges with the group’s overseas backers, in particular rekindling relations with Iran that had fractured after the uprising in Syria, resulting in Tehran bolstering Hamas’ supply of larger and more sophisticated weapons.
The US state department designated Haniyeh a terrorist in 2018, saying he had been a “proponent of armed struggle, including against civilians”. The international criminal court said it wished to seek a warrant for his arrest earlier this year, accusing him of involvement in planning the 7 October attacks on towns and kibbutzim in southern Israel during which 1,200 Israelis were killed and about 250 taken hostage.
In the aftermath of the attack, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared that “every Hamas leader is a dead man.”
That threat claimed young members of Haniyeh’s family who remained in Gaza earlier this year. He was captured on video in April as he received the news that three of his sons – Hazem, Amir and Mohammad – had been killed along with four of his grandchildren when an Israeli airstrike targeted the car they were travelling in. Haniyeh, his beard and hair by then entirely white, looked briefly towards the heavens before closing his eyes as he nodded solemnly, his hands clasped tightly together in front of his torso.
He said at the time that the attack would not change the group’s demands for a permanent ceasefire and the return of displaced Palestinians to their homes.
“All our people and all the families of Gaza have paid a heavy price in blood, and I am one of them,” Haniyeh said.
