Gaza – Ma’an – Hamas mourned in a statement issued early Wednesday morning “the head of its political bureau, the martyr leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in a treacherous raid on his residence in Tehran, after participating in the inauguration ceremony of the new Iranian president.”

Ismail Haniyeh was born in the Shati refugee camp, in the Gaza Strip, on May 23, 1963, where his parents had taken refuge from the city of Ashkelon after the Nakba in 1948.

He graduated in 1987 from the Islamic University with a BA in Arabic Literature, then obtained a PhD from the Islamic University in 2009.

His political activity

Ismail Haniyeh began his activity within the “Islamic Bloc”, which represented the student arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, in the Gaza Strip, from which the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, emerged.

He served as a member of the Student Council of the Islamic University of Gaza between 1983 and 1984, and then assumed the position of President of the Student Council the following year.

He was
arrested by the Israeli occupation authorities in 1989 for 3 years, and then exiled to Marj al-Zuhur on the Lebanese-Palestinian border with a group of Hamas leaders.

He returned to Gaza after spending a year in exile, and was appointed dean of the Islamic University there. In 1997, he was appointed head of the office of the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, after his release.

He was elected as the head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, following the assassination of Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi in 2004.

In December 2005, he headed the ‘Change and Reform’ list, which won the majority in the second Palestinian legislative elections in 2006.

On February 16, 2006, the movement nominated him to assume the position of Prime Minister of Palestine, and he was appointed on the 20th of that month.

In May 2017, he was elected as head of the Hamas Political Bureau, succeeding Khaled Meshaal.

Attempts to assassinate him

Ismail Haniyeh was subjected to several assassination attempts, the last of which was in 2003, when
the Israeli Air Force carried out a raid targeting a group of resistance leaders, following a martyrdom operation by the Al-Qassam Brigades.

Al-Aqsa Flood

Immediately after Hamas launched Operation ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ on October 7, Haniyeh appeared in a video broadcast by the media, jubilant with the movement’s leaders in his office in Doha, while he was watching a report on an Arab channel about fighters from the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, seizing Israeli military vehicles, before leading a prayer ‘to thank God for this victory,’ as he put it.

On April 10, six members of the family of the head of Hamas’s political bureau were killed, including three of his sons and a number of his grandchildren, in an Israeli bombardment that targeted a car carrying them in the Shati refugee camp while they were walking to congratulate the camp’s residents on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr.

Ten members of his family, including his sister, were also killed in an Israeli bombardment that targeted t
heir home in the Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza, on June 24.

Haniyeh commented on the incident, saying, “Nearly 60 members of my family were martyred, like all the sons of the Palestinian people, and there is no difference between them,” adding, “The occupation believes that by targeting the sons of the leaders, it will break the resolve of our people.”

His most important positions

After being informed of the martyrdom of his sons and grandchildren, he declared: ‘The blood of my martyred sons and grandchildren is not more precious than the blood of the sons of the Palestinian people. I thank God for this honor that He has bestowed upon me through the martyrdom of my three sons and some of my grandchildren.’

In a speech he gave in 2014 in response to the ongoing siege on the Gaza Strip, he said: ‘We are a people who, if your decision is to impose a siege, then our decision is to win. If the decision is to bring Gaza and the people to their knees, then our decision is that we kneel only before God. All
decision-makers inside and outside Palestine must pick up the message of this people. We are a people who love death as our enemies love life. We love martyrdom for what our leaders died for as others love chairs. Take all the chairs and keep the homeland for us.’

Source: Maan News Agency