Life of defiance: Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas political boss, killed
The founder of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin (R), and Ismael Haniyeh talk to the press in Gaza City on 14 August 2002
Al Jazeera reports on 31 July 2024:
Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh has been assassinated in Tehran at the age of 62 in what the Palestinian group has described as “a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence”.
Haniyeh, who briefly served as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority’s government in 2006, was killed early on Wednesday along with a bodyguard when the house he was staying in was targeted, nearly 10 months into Israel’s war on Gaza. Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, on Tuesday.
The Hamas leader had emerged as a major force in the Palestinian liberation movement and, like his colleagues and generations of Palestinian politicians and activists, had long been in Israel’s crosshairs. While Israel has not formally claimed responsibility for the assassination, an Israeli minister celebrated Haniyeh’s death in a post on X.
Haniyeh was born in the Shati refugee camp on the coast of Gaza City to parents displaced from Asqalan (now known as Ashkelon) when Israel was formed in 1948.
As a young man, Haniyeh was a student activist at the Islamic University in Gaza City, where he studied Arabic literature. While at university in 1983, he joined the Islamic Student Bloc, an organisation widely seen as the forerunner of Hamas.
As a Palestinian uprising broke out in December 1987 against the Israeli occupation, known as the first Intifada, Haniyeh was among the youth taking part in protests. That was also the year Hamas was founded — with Haniyeh among its younger members.
Israel imprisoned Haniyeh at least three times. After serving his longest sentence, a three-year stint, he was deported to Lebanon in 1992 along with hundreds of other members of Hamas, including senior leaders Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi and Mahmoud Zahhar, and members of other Palestinian resistance groups.