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[Text/Observer.com columnist Major General Eugene]

“My father’s blood is no more precious than the blood of the youngest child of Palestine.”

—Abdullah Salam Haniyeh

At around 2 a.m. Beijing time on July 31, 2024, a heart from Palestine stopped beating in Tehran - Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the Political Bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), was attacked and killed.

Like many participants, supporters and sympathizers of the Palestinian resistance movement, I once didn’t know what words to use to describe this incident. Was it anger? Sadness? Or regret? Perhaps only “mixed feelings” can best describe people’s mentality at this time.

Some say he is a warrior, others say he is a master of strategy. But from an outsider's perspective, Ismail Haniyeh's life is more like a microcosm of the lives of most Palestinians.

According to available historical records, Haniya's family settled in Palestine hundreds of years ago and lived in Ashkelon. By the 1930s, the family owned several houses and more than a dozen acres of land and lived a relatively affluent life.

But in 1948, everything changed. The Israeli army began to expel and sweep all the local Arabs. Along came an armed pioneer group of more than 2,000 people, who killed or drove away the owners of the houses and took all the wealth for themselves. The Haniya family lost all their property and became refugees with no food or clothes.

In the following decades, the Haniya family has survived tenaciously. They drilled wells, reclaimed fields, and raised livestock in the Gaza desert. Of course, the fruits of their labor were also being eroded all the time.

On January 29, 1963, a newlywed couple from the Haniyeh family gave birth to a child in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. The child, born in the cold winter, was given high hopes by the patriarch and named Ismail Haniyeh.

Like other children born in Gaza, Haniya spent his childhood under the guns of Egypt and Israel. The results of several Middle East wars have made many Palestinians lose their will to resist. They choose to find a way out through learning, go far away, and leave this sad place where they were born and raised. However, the Israeli occupation forces' rampant behavior has always stirred the fragile hearts of the Palestinian people, forcing more Palestinians to be like mantises.

Except for Haniyeh’s long-dead relatives, no one knows whether his will has ever wavered. The only thing we know is that Haniyeh was not an “anti-Israel” person at first. He even worked in a factory run by Israelis. In 1985, Haniyeh entered the Department of Arabic Literature at the Islamic University of Gaza established by the United Nations and served as the student union president of the school. In 1987, Haniyeh graduated and left the ivory tower that could not isolate the smoke and wailing outside Gaza City.

Some people say that he wrote great poems when he was a student, but just like the previous question, no one can tell us the stories that the 24-year-old student wrote. All we know is that in 1988, during a march and riot against the Israeli occupation, Haniyeh was considered the leader of the resistance and was arrested by the Israeli army, and from then on began his four-year life in a black prison.

In Israeli military prisons, torture and humiliation are daily. Most prisoners will not even live to be released. Most of them will gradually die of hunger, disease or be secretly executed during their long prison life. Even if they die, their bodies will be removed from various organs and sold to laboratories, turning into a small amount of money in the hands of the warden. In fact, to this day, there are still three-digit Palestinians who were captured by Israel in the 1980s who are still "missing."

Perhaps because he was considered to be of high value by the guards, or perhaps because Haniyeh's disguise was successful enough, the future leader of Hamas was not abused much in the Israeli prison. He even successfully learned Hebrew and read a large number of Israeli books and magazines, becoming a rare "Israel expert" among Palestinians.

While in prison, the Israeli authorities made what they considered to be a very wrong decision: they detained Haniyeh in the same cell block as senior Hamas leaders Abdul-Aziz-Rantisi and Mahmoud Zahar. Some sources believe that Haniyeh had been in contact with the Hamas movement before the 1988 riots, while others believe that he established contact with Hamas at this time. But in any case, in 1992, when Israel released more than 400 Palestinian prisoners under international pressure, Haniyeh had become an important partner of the two leaders. They stayed in Lebanon for a year, had close exchanges with local resistance organizations, and returned to Gaza the following year. He was then jointly elected as the honorary president of the Islamic University by alumni and teachers.

In 1997, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, was released and returned to Palestine after a long absence. With the recommendation of his students, Haniyeh, as a fresh blood in the team and who was very familiar with Israel's political structure and cultural system, quickly won the appreciation of Yassin and was later appointed by Yassin as the director of his office. This also made Haniyeh Yassin's "closed disciple".

In the following years, Yassin was sometimes under house arrest by Arafat and sometimes hunted by Israel. During this period, Haniyeh either accompanied him or maintained close contact with him, helping his mentor out of trouble. This also made Haniyeh's influence in Palestine rise steadily.

It should be pointed out that Haniyeh is not a commander and has never received military and command training. His main tasks have always been focused on non-military aspects, such as education reform, cultural development, infrastructure construction, economic construction, team operation, etc., which is a typical civilian role.

In addition, Haniyeh has always been a pacifist. He has always believed that the various Palestinian parties should be united and that the establishment of a Palestinian state should be completed through the voice of the international community, and some of the occupied land should be recovered through negotiations and redemption. Although most of the early military leaders of Hamas disdained him, they had to admit that his administrative ability was unmatched in the entire Palestine.

In March 2004, Haniyeh's mentor, Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, chose to die at home after learning of the Israeli airstrike; in November, Fatah leader Arafat died suddenly in his official residence. A power vacuum emerged at the top level of Palestine, and Israel immediately stepped up friction and land encroachment in the occupied territories.

Under external pressure, Hamas, Fatah and other major Palestinian factions decided to reconcile and form a coalition government through voting in 2006. In this round of elections, Hamas won the majority of seats in the parliament, and Haniyeh was elected Prime Minister of Palestine with a high vote in January 2006, starting the road to governing Palestine and at one point starting the construction of the Gaza coastal tourist area and the West Bank water system.

But Abbas, the Palestinian President, began to frequently hinder Haniyeh for his own power and the $50 million in aid promised by the United States. During this period, he encountered assassination attempts twice, but escaped by luck. In December 2006, Haniyeh arrived at the Rafah Port with the 30 million raised in donations and was about to return to Palestine. He was even intercepted and shot by both the Palestinian Presidential Guard and the Israeli Border Guard. Israel's then Defense Minister Anil Peretz said that Haniyeh could choose to keep the $30 million in Egypt or give it to Israel. When he approached the border again, the soldiers who intercepted him directly shot and killed his bodyguards and seriously injured his eldest son.

On February 15, 2007, in order to end the conflict between Hamas and Fatah and establish an effective coalition government, Haniyeh officially resigned as prime minister. However, the unity government he expected did not appear. In June 2007, the Gaza Campaign broke out. Abbas quickly announced the dissolution of the coalition government and began his more than ten-year "presidential decree rule" era in the West Bank. The Gaza Strip also repeatedly saw between being occupied by Israel and being recovered by Hamas, until it was finally surrounded by the Israeli and Egyptian armies and became "the largest and most densely populated concentration camp in human history."

During this period, due to the extremely tight economic and survival resources in Gaza, Haniyeh was mainly responsible for foreign affairs, raising food, education resources and relief funds for the people of Gaza, and also trying to establish effective external weapons delivery and maintenance channels for Hamas. However, during the unprecedentedly powerful period of the Western world between 2007 and 2010, most of these actions ended in failure. At the same time, Israel continued to encroach on Palestinian territory, bribed other Palestinian factions, and assassinated Hamas senior officials, and the burden on Haniyeh's shoulders became heavier and heavier.

In 2011, with the outbreak of the Arab Spring, the Egyptian Mubarak government was overthrown, and the Muslim Brotherhood, backed by the Arab League, made its debut. At the time, the Muslim Brotherhood was working with Jordan, France and Israel to try to overthrow the Syrian government. In order to consume the Palestinian armed forces, the Muslim Brotherhood promised to relax control over the Rafah port in southern Gaza and provide economic assistance, and asked Hamas to provide soldiers to help them interfere in the war in Syria. However, the reason behind the Muslim Brotherhood's request was mainly because the Syrian government had accepted a large number of refugees from the northern Palestinian region occupied by Israel for many years and had set up a large number of refugee camps. The participation of Palestinians in the war is easier to conceal and destroy the legitimacy of the Palestinian armed forces.

In order to solve the dual economic difficulties caused by the subprime mortgage crisis and the siege, and at the same time to strengthen itself, obtain a stable rear and exercise military strength, Hamas agreed to this "deal". We also don't know what Haniyeh's position was in this meeting, but he must have been one of the main messengers for the negotiations between the two sides.

In the end, this "business" was a complete failure. The Muslim Brotherhood collapsed in 2013 before it had even received a few donations. Palestine's precious military forces suffered serious losses in Syria. If it were not for Bashar's merciful reconciliation, these Palestinian armed personnel might not have been able to return to Palestine alive, let alone train elite forces that would sweep away the Israeli siege forces in the "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation in the future.

This unsuccessful "business" also taught Hamas a lesson. They began to completely separate military and diplomacy, and assigned special people to be in charge. The power of its military struggle mission in Gaza and the entire Palestine was completely handed over to Yahya Sinwar, the head of the internal security and intelligence department. Diplomacy, trade and foreign negotiations were handed over to Ismail Haniyeh. This political structure was formed in the summer of 2017. Since there was no war at that time, Ismail Haniyeh was voted by all parties to serve as the director of the Hamas Political Bureau - that is, the supreme leader. His office is mainly in Qatar, but he also often works in Egypt and other Arab countries.

After 2017, Haniyeh's first achievement was to secure more medical assistance and support, reducing the medical pressure brought by the huge population in Gaza. Secondly, through multilateral negotiations, he ensured that Gaza and Hamas could continue to receive funds for self-construction in the precarious chaos of the Middle East. The most critical point was that he successfully met with Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the "Quds Brigade" and the father of the "Arc of Resistance".

"Palestine of this era is the border between justice and falsehood, justice and oppression, the oppressed and the oppressors. Palestine is a sacred volcano that will only extinguish after the occupiers are expelled." In his first conversation with Haniyeh, Soleimani seemed to start with this sentence. Although Hamas played an ignominious role in the Syrian war, Soleimani seemed to fully understand the difficulties of this organization thousands of miles away from him, and expressed his willingness to do his best to help.

After that, instructors from the Quds Force and Hezbollah began to enter Gaza. The two sides, who had fought each other on the battlefield, began to review the entire Syrian war, summarizing the lessons learned from each strategy and tactics, and sharing each other's gains. After that, the weapons production line and high-tech equipment arrived. Palestine officially became a member of the "Arc of Resistance". With the help of Iran, the "Joint Operations Room" was officially established, and different Palestinian factions gained the ability to conduct joint operations. And this is almost all the stories that were made public before the conflict broke out on October 7, 2023.

Since the conflict broke out, Haniyeh has been mediating with all parties to try to end the war and has held multiple rounds of direct and indirect negotiations between Qatar and representatives of Egypt, Israel and the United States. Earlier this year, he met with Qatari Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and other world leaders such as Wang Kejian to work for peace in Gaza.

In April 2024, Israel launched an airstrike on the community where Haniyeh's family lived, killing Haniyeh's three sons and four grandsons. It should be noted that none of them were members of the "Hamas" organization. This action was a complete massacre of civilians and a deliberate sabotage of the peace talks. But even so, Haniyeh, who is stationed in Qatar, insisted that their deaths would not affect the ongoing ceasefire and hostage negotiations. He always adhered to the objective and pragmatic purpose of seeking independence and a future for the Palestinians until he was assassinated on July 31, 2014.

Objectively speaking, the actual benefits of assassinating Haniyeh are not great. It can be summarized in three points: First, Haniyeh was recognized by all parties as a moderate and pro-Israel faction, and this attribute remained until his death. Second, Haniyeh's job was to broker peace talks, and other external affairs had been transferred to others as early as the end of last year, so assassinating him had no meaning other than to disrupt the peace talks. Third, Haniyeh was killed by the negotiating party in a third country as a negotiator, which violated the most basic diplomatic principles, rules of engagement and national moral bottom line.

Having said all this, let us talk about Mr. Ismail Haniyeh’s affairs after his death.

In the long struggle, Palestinians have long been accustomed to dispersing their precious strength through atomization, just as Haniyeh's descendants are still alive. Hamas leaders and potential leaders have been assassinated countless times, but these deaths have not stopped the development and growth of this organization. Their foundation is the millions of prisoners in cages who are deliberately covered up by the Western world and are witnesses to the evil of mankind in this era.

Ismail Haniyeh is just a man who managed to survive (for most Palestinians, it is not easy to just survive to adulthood), and successfully survived one struggle after another, and finally stood at the pinnacle of the Palestinians, representing the achievements of countless people who failed to climb to this position, and finally fell on the road of fighting for the rights of the Palestinian people, just like the water vapor evaporated from the rivers condensed into rain and dew, and then merged into the rivers again after moistening the dry farmland. Although rivers may encounter blockages and diversions, they will eventually flow into the ocean.

From the river to the sea! Palestine will be liberated!

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