Ismail Haniyeh

Ismail Haniyeh (familiarly addressed as Abu al-Abed) was born in either 1962 or 1963 in al-Shatiʾ refugee camp (Beach camp) in the Gaza Strip into a family that had been forcibly displaced during the Nakba from the village of al-Jura on the outskirts of Asqalan to the Gaza Strip. His father was named Abdel Salam Haniyeh and he had a brother named Abdel Khaleq. He was married to his paternal cousin, Amaal Haniyeh. He was the father of eight sons (Abdel Salam, Humam, Wisam, Muaaz, Ayed, Hazem, Amir, and Mohammad) and five daughters (Sanaa, Buthayna, Khawla, Latifa, and Sara).

Haniyeh completed his primary and middle school education in schools run by UNRWA in al-Shatiʿ camp. Following the death of his father while he was still young, his paternal uncle supported him financially, enabling him to continue his education. He received his high school certificate from al-Azhar Religious Academy in Gaza City. He then enrolled in the Islamic University where he studied Arabic literature and graduated with a bachelor’s degree.

During his university years, Haniyeh was an active member of the Islamist Bloc, affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. He headed the governing council of the student union for two years (1985-86), during which the Islamists and the Fatah Youth movement were sharply divided.

Haniyeh joined the Islamic Resistance Movement (Harkat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, or Hamas for short) when the group was founded in late 1987. He was arrested for the first time by Israeli occupation authorities shortly after the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada and spent eighteen days in prison. He was arrested for the second time in 1988 and imprisoned for six months. In 1989, Israeli authorities arrested him again on charges of belonging to Hamas, and he served three years in prison. Then, on 17 December 1992, he was deported to the region of Marj al-Zuhur in southern Lebanon along with 415 other activists from the leadership of both Hamas and the Islamic Jihad movement. After spending a year in this involuntary exile, Haniyeh returned to the Gaza Strip. There, he served as director of administrative affairs at the Islamic University of Gaza and then as director of academic affairs, and he became later a member of the university’s board of trustees.

Haniyeh was appointed as personal secretary to Hamas leader Shaykh Ahmad Yassin and ran his office after Israeli authorities released the Hamas founder in October 1997. His tight-knit relationship with Shaykh Yassin strengthened his position within the movement and made him a prominent leader.

The first attempt to assassinate Haniyeh was made on 6 September 2003, when an Israeli air raid targeted some of the Hamas leadership, including Shaykh Yassin; the latter was assassinated along with some of his bodyguards on 22 March 2004.

After Hamas decided in 2005 to contest the Palestinian Legislative Council elections, Haniyeh led the movement’s Change and Reform electoral slate. This list won the elections, which were held on 25 January 2006, securing 76 out of 132 seats.

On 22 February 2006, President Mahmoud Abbas issued a presidential decree by which he tasked Ismail Haniyeh with forming a new Palestinian government. The membership of this government was limited to members of Hamas and those close to it, because other Palestinian factions were subjected to intense internal, regional, and international pressure not to cooperate with Hamas. Haniyeh put forward a program for his government, one that did not deviate much from the charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization. It included a number of the same fundamental principles: “to defend themselves in confronting the occupation and removing the settlements and the apartheid wall and to continue their struggle toward the establishment of the independent Palestinian state with full sovereignty with Jerusalem as its capital”; the right of refugees to return and receive compensation “as an individual and collective right”; dealing with signed agreements with “a high degree of responsibility”; and a commitment to the March 2005 agreement reached between the Palestinian factions in Cairo regarding reform of the PLO, combating corruption, and cooperating with the international community to end the occupation.

On 27 June 2006, Hamas signed the National Conciliation Document, which included provisions for the formation of a national unity government. However, this government never saw the light of day due to the ongoing disputes between Fatah and Hamas, which escalated into armed clashes. On 20 October, Haniyeh’s convoy came under fire in Gaza City, but he escaped the assassination attempt. He faced another assassination attempt on 15 December 2006, during which one of his bodyguards was killed.

On 8 February 2007, Fatah and Hamas signed a reconciliation agreement in Mecca, known as the Mecca Accord, which again included provisions for the formation of a national unity government. On 17 March, this government was actually formed and headed by Haniyeh, with the participation this time of representatives from both movements as well as from other Palestinian factions.

However, this national unity government lasted for only about three months. Continued clashes between supporters of Hamas and Fatah in the Gaza Strip led to Fatah representatives withdrawing from the government. On 14 June 2007, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, prompting President Abbas to issue a decree dismissing Haniyeh’s government and forming an emergency government led by Salam Fayyad, whose authority was effectively limited to the West Bank.

On 25 July 2009, during the graduation ceremony of the twenty-eighth cohort of the Islamic University, the university administration awarded Haniyeh an honorary doctorate and conferred upon him a Medal of Honor of the First Class in recognition of his efforts in the service of the Palestinian cause.

Haniyeh was well known for his dedication to achieving national unity among Palestinians and in his position as one of the senior Hamas leaders. He was part of the intensive efforts over many years to achieve reconciliation between the Fatah and Hamas movements. On 23 April 2014, the two movements concluded a reconciliation agreement that was signed at Haniyeh’s home in al-Shatiʾ refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, with the participation of representatives from both movements and from other Palestinian factions, which was known as the Shatiʾ Agreement. On 2 June, a new national unity government was formed, headed by the academic Rami Hamdallah, which included independent ministers and technocrats; this was to be followed six months later by holding legislative and presidential elections. Haniyeh congratulated the Palestinian people on the formation of this new government: “Today, I voluntarily hand over the leadership as prime minister of this government, so as to ensure the lasting success of our national unity and of the resistance in all its forms in the period to come.”

Haniyeh remained convinced that reconciliation was possible in the Palestinian political arena and that this required two elements to be available, as he stated in an interview with al-Alam TV. The first was “the freeing of official Palestinian decision-making from external pressures, and that no one should be allowed to interfere in Palestinian affairs.” The second was “for there to be the will and the resolve within the Palestinian Authority, and for it to have faith in political partnership with Hamas and all the other Palestinian factions.”

On 28 July 2014, during the war being waged by Israel on the Gaza Strip, Israeli aircraft bombed Haniyeh’s house in al-Shatiʾ camp, destroying it.

On 6 May 2017, Hamas’s Shura Council elected Haniyeh as head of its political bureau, succeeding Khalid Mishal, which compelled him to relocate to Qatar. Five days earlier, Hamas had adopted a Document of General Principles and Policies, which represented a significant evolution of its charter that was passed in 1988. It stated: Hamas “is a Palestinian Islamic national liberation and resistance movement. Its goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project. Its frame of reference is Islam, which determines its principles, objectives and means.” It declared that “its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion” and that it wages “a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine.” While it insists that “there shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity,” it considers “the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.”

On 31 January 2018, under the Trump administration, the US Department of State took the decision to add Haniyeh's name to the Specially Designated Global Terrorists list. Hamas described the decision as “ridiculous” and added: “It is as if, as Palestinians, we should seek to obtain a certificate of good behavior from America.”

On 1 August 2021, the Hamas Shura Council re-elected Haniyeh as head of its political bureau for a second term.

Haniyeh’s status as senior political leader of Hamas garnered for him significant global recognition following the movement’s attack on the settlements of the Gaza Envelope on 7 October 2023. From his headquarters in Doha, Qatar, he commented on the attack: “We are on the verge of a rendezvous with a great victory; enough is enough, and we must conclude the series of uprisings and revolts with the battle for liberation.” After the Israeli army launched its war on Gaza and called on residents to evacuate the northern areas of the strip and flee south, Haniyeh declared: “Israel's attack on Gaza rises to the level of war crimes” and called for pressure to be applied on Israeli authorities “to immediately stop these crimes and respect the commitments required by international humanitarian law.” He insisted” “There will be no exodus from Gaza, for the people of Gaza are firmly rooted in their land; they will not leave Gaza, and they will not migrate no matter what you do.”

During the war, Haniyeh led indirect negotiations with Israel that were being facilitated by Egyptian and Qatari mediators to reach a deal to release the Israelis who were held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons and a ceasefire in the Strip. He was shuttling back and forth between Qatar, Istanbul, and Beirut, the capitals in which he had built close political ties.

During its war on Gaza, Israel’s war cabinet placed him and several Hamas other leaders on a list of targets for assassination, and the Israeli occupation forces targeted members of Haniyeh’s family. On 10 November 2023, the Israeli air force launched strikes at a school sheltering displaced people, among whom Haniyeh’s granddaughter was present. Then, on 16 November, they bombed his house in al-Shatiʾ camp. The Israeli military shared a video of the airstrike on its social media platforms, claiming that the house “was being used, among other things, as a meeting place for senior Hamas officials.” Just a few days later, Israeli warplanes bombed the home of Haniyeh’s eldest grandson, killing him.

On 10 April 2024, three of Haniyeh’s sons (Hazem, Amir, and Mohammed) and three of his grandchildren were driving to visit relatives for Eid al-Fitr when an Israeli drone fired a missile that hit their car. Haniyeh appeared in a video recording while he was receiving a call from Gaza informing him of the assassination of his sons and grandchildren. The video showed him remaining composed as he said, “May God ease their way, may God ease their way.” He then gave a statement to the press, saying that “the blood of [his] martyred sons and grandchildren is not more precious than the blood of the children of the Palestinian people” and that he “gives thanks to God for this honor that has been bestowed upon him by the martyrdom of [his] three sons and some of [his] grandchildren.” He added: “all the children of the Palestinian people and the families of the residents of the Gaza Strip have paid a stupendous price with the blood of their sons” and he was “just one of them,” noting that “the enemy is delusional if he thinks that by killing my sons we will change our position regarding the efforts for a truce agreement or a ceasefire, and he will not succeed in his goals.”

On 20 May 2024, Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, declared his intention to seek the issuing of arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as for Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar, and Mohammad Deif, all on charges of committing “war crimes and crimes against humanity.” In response, Hamas leader Ismail Abu Zuhri commented to Reuters: “This amounts to equating the victim with the executioner.”

At dawn on 31 July 2024, Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran in what Hamas described as “a dastardly Zionist strike on his place of residence in Tehran.” Haniyeh was on a visit to the Iranian capital to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian. The authorities in Iran declared three days of national mourning, and a massive funeral ceremony was held in Tehran on 1 August. It was attended by hundreds of thousands of Iranians, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei led the funeral prayers. A general strike was also observed in the West Bank. Haniyeh’s body was transported the next day from Tehran to Doha, where he was given a state funeral. Representatives of all the Palestinian factions attended and walked in the funeral procession.

Ismail Haniyeh was a Hamas leader who rose to prominence through student activism in the movement before entering the world of politics. He was well known for his sense of calm, his moderate and open-minded positions, his constant emphasis on Palestinian national unity, and his strong relations with the leaders of the various Palestinian factions. He was proud to continue to live in a Palestinian refugee camp, as he stated after he became prime minister: “As prime minister, I am honored to live in al-Shatiʾ refugee camp.”

Sources

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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/31/life-of-defiance-ismail-haniyeh-hamas-political-boss-killed

France 24. “Ismaïl Haniyeh: des Frères musulmans à la direction politique du Hamas.” France 24, 31 July 2024.

https://www.france24.com/fr/moyen-orient/20240731-isma%C3%AFl-haniyeh-des-fr%C3%A8res-musulmans-%C3%A0-la-direction-politique-du-hamas

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