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[Global Times Special Correspondent Liu Haoran, Global Times Special Correspondent in Egypt Huang Peizhao] On July 31, Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the Political Bureau of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), was assassinated in Tehran, Iran. Hamas expressed strong condemnation of Israel in a statement. As Israel's old enemy, some core figures in the Hamas leadership have been attacked or assassinated.

Haniya, data map, source: foreign media

From refugee to prime minister

According to the New York Times, Haniyeh was born in the 1960s into a refugee family in Ashkelon, a few kilometers north of the Gaza Strip. In his early years, Haniyeh studied at a public welfare school run by the United Nations, and later passed the entrance examination to the Islamic University of Gaza through personal efforts, and later obtained a bachelor's degree in Arabic literature.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that Haniyeh was full of enthusiasm when he just graduated from school. He joined Hamas and actively participated in various anti-Israel protests. He was arrested and detained by Israel many times from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. The longest "sentence" lasted for 3 years. After being released from prison in 1992, Haniyeh, several Hamas leaders and many Palestinian protesters were expelled to Lebanon by Israel. It was not until the end of 1993 that he was able to return to Gaza and return to his alma mater to take up a leadership position.

In 1997, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, was released from Israel, and Haniyeh was later appointed as his chief of staff. The British newspaper The Guardian said that the two were nominally superiors and subordinates, but in reality Haniyeh was Yassin's "disciple". During the Second Palestinian Intifada, Haniyeh's position within Hamas rose rapidly, and he became a powerful figure that could not be underestimated. Media analysis believed that on the one hand, it was because Yassin was paving the way for him, and on the other hand, it was because the leadership of Hamas at that time was massacred by the IDF. In 2006, Haniyeh was already the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Turkey's Daily Sabah newspaper said Haniyeh had a keen political sense and was one of the early advocates for Hamas to enter politics. Under his promotion, Hamas's election platform "Change and Reform" was widely adopted and won a landslide victory in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections. Haniyeh was appointed Palestinian Prime Minister, but his term lasted only nearly a year.

The “moderates” in Hamas

In 2017, Haniyeh was elected as the chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau and his office was moved from Gaza to Qatar. In the eyes of international public opinion, although Haniyeh has made many "harsh" remarks against Israel, such as claiming that "the Israeli army will be swallowed by the yellow sand of Gaza", many diplomats believe that compared with other more hardline Hamas members, he is a "moderate" and more pragmatic.

The BBC reported that Haniyeh had expressed an open attitude towards "dialogue with Israel" as early as 2006. During his leadership of Hamas, Haniyeh frequently traveled to various Middle Eastern countries, committed to establishing a sound diplomatic network, and was regarded as the "leading figure" of Hamas' politics and diplomacy. According to the Guardian, Haniyeh also made great contributions to Hamas' military strength. In an interview with Al Jazeera in 2022, he said that Hamas received as much as $70 million in military aid from Iran alone.

Haniyeh also mediated many important negotiations. After the latest round of conflict between Palestine and Israel broke out, Haniyeh played a key role in a series of international negotiations, contributing a lot to important matters such as the release of hostages and seeking international aid. The Guardian said his assassination was a "major blow" to the negotiations that had lasted for several months, and the hope of a ceasefire in Gaza was slim.

Key figures were assassinated

Because it is regarded as a "terrorist organization" by Israel and other countries, many Hamas leaders have been "targeted for elimination" over the past decades. As early as 2003, Haniyeh was "beheaded" by the Israeli army, but escaped in an airstrike. After Hamas launched an attack on Israel in October last year, Haniyeh said that all normalization agreements signed between Arab countries and Israel could not end the conflict. Israel has also stepped up its actions against the leadership of Hamas. Haniyeh lost his three sons and other family members in April this year. Hamas spiritual leader Yassin died in an Israeli airstrike in 2004. Not long after, another founder of Hamas, Abdul-Aziz Rantisi, who was known as the "Palestinian Lion", was attacked and killed. The successive departures of the two leaders led to a brief "power vacuum" in Hamas, which dealt a heavy blow to the organization's ability to act.

According to the BBC, before Yassin and Rantisi, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu had sent Mossad agents to Jordan to assassinate former Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Khaled Meshaal as early as 1997. Hamas Gaza Strip leader and former Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar was also targeted by Israeli air strikes. Although his life was not in danger, he lost two sons one after another. As the "most wanted criminal" of the Israeli army, the leader of Hamas's "Qassam Brigades", Mohammed Dave, has been assassinated many times, but he survived by chance, so he was named "the cat with nine lives".