Ismail Haniyeh, one of Hamas’s top leaders who in recent years led the Palestinian militant group’s political operations while in exile in Qatar and Turkey, was killed in Tehran on Tuesday.
Mr. Haniyeh was in Iran with other senior members of Iran’s “axis of resistance” — which includes Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
As Hamas’s political leader, he was central to the group’s high-stakes negotiations and diplomacy, including the stalled cease-fire deal negotiations with Israel. He was believed to be 62.
Mr. Haniyeh was born in 1962 in the Shati refugee camp north of Gaza City, to Palestinian parents who in 1948 had been displaced from their home in what is now Israel, in Ashkelon. He studied at schools run by the main United Nations agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, and went on to study Arabic literature at the Islamic University of Gaza.
He was arrested by the Israeli military and served several sentences in Israeli jails in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Hamas leader’s ascent to power in Gaza was aided by his mentor, the spiritual leader and a founder of Hamas, Sheik Yassin. Mr. Haniyeh served as Mr. Yassin’s personal secretary. The two were targets of an attempted Israeli assassination attempt in 2003; the next year, Mr. Yassin was killed by the Israeli military.
“You don’t have to cry,” Mr. Haniyeh told a crowd gathered outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City at the time. “You have to be steadfast, and you have to be ready for revenge.”
Leader of Hamas in Gaza
Mr. Haniyeh was named the leader of Hamas in Gaza in 2006. That year, he briefly served as prime minister of a Palestinian unity government, which was dissolved after months of tension that included armed conflict between Palestinian factions. The failure of this government was blamed in part on Hamas refusing to fulfill international conditions for recognition, including renouncing violence, recognizing Israel’s right to exist and accepting signed agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Israel soon imposed sanctions and restrictions on the Gaza Strip, as did Egypt. When rockets launched from Gaza fell into Israel in 2008, Israel strengthened its blockade on Gaza. Hamas remained in control in the region, fired thousands of rockets into Israel, survived multiple wars against the Israeli military and continuously built up its military force.
In 2017, Mr. Haniyeh was named the senior leader of Hamas at a time when it was trying to soften its public image as it jockeyed for influence among Palestinians and internationally.
Mr. Haniyeh led Hamas from Qatar and Turkey in recent years. He was among the negotiators in ongoing talks between Israel and Hamas, mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, to end the war in Gaza in exchange for hostages captured in the Hamas-led attack on Israel.
The International Criminal Court arrest warrant
In May, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court said he would seek an arrest warrant for Mr. Haniyeh. The prosecutor accused him and other Hamas leaders of war crimes and crimes against humanity in relation to the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, including “extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention.”
In June, Hamas said that Mr. Haniyeh’s sister and her family were killed in a strike by the Israeli military on the Haniyeh family home in Gaza, an assertion the military did not confirm. In April, three of Mr. Haniyeh’s 13 sons were killed by Israeli forces in another military operation in Gaza.
He was defiant in the face of the loss, a common them in Mr. Haniyeh’s life. “We shall not give in, no matter the sacrifices,” Mr. Haniyeh said at the time, noting that he’d already lost dozens of family members in the war.
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