By : Kh Kashif Mir
Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who was killed in Iran, was the tough-talking face of the Palestinian group’s international diplomacy as war raged back in Gaza, where three of his sons were killed in an Israeli airstrike.
But despite the rhetoric, he was seen by many diplomats as a moderate compared to the more hardline members of the Iran-backed group inside Gaza.
Born in al-Shati, a Gaza refugee camp in 1962, Ismail Haniyeh was elected head of the Hamas political bureau in 2017 to succeed Khaled Meshaal, but was already a well-known figure having become Palestinian prime minister in 2006 following an upset victory by Hamas in that year’s parliamentary election.
But the fragile power-sharing arrangement with the Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas soon ruptured and Hamas took full control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 after violently ousting the president’s loyalists.
Considered a pragmatist, Haniyeh lived in exile and split his time between Turkey and Qatar.
In his youth, the Hamas leader, who is known for having a calm demeanor, was a member of the student branch of the Muslim Brotherhood at the Islamic University of Gaza.
He joined Hamas in 1987 when the militant group was founded amid the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation, which lasted until 1993.
During that time Haniyeh was imprisoned by Israel several times and then expelled to south Lebanon for six months.
Sons killed in airstrike
Three of Haniyeh’s sons – Hazem, Amir and Mohammad – were killed on April 10 when an Israeli air strike struck the car they were driving, Hamas said. Haniyeh also lost four of his grandchildren, three girls and a boy, in the attack, Hamas said.
Haniyeh had denied Israeli assertions that his sons were fighters for the group, and said “the interests of the Palestinian people are placed ahead of everything” when asked if their killing would impact truce talks.
For all the tough language in public, Arab diplomats and officials had viewed him as relatively pragmatic compared with more hardline voices inside Gaza, where the military wing of Hamas planned the Oct. 7 attack.
While telling Israel’s military they would find themselves “drowning in the sands of Gaza”, he and his predecessor as Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, had shuttled around the region for talks over a Qatari-brokered ceasefire deal with Israel that would include exchanging hostages for Palestinians in Israeli jails as well as more aid for Gaza.
Israel regards the entire Hamas leadership as terrorists, and has accused Haniyeh, Meshaal and others of continuing to “pull the strings of the Hamas terror organization”.
But how much Haniyeh knew about the Oct. 7 assault beforehand is not clear. The plan, drawn up by the Hamas military council in Gaza, was such a closely guarded secret that some Hamas officials seemed shocked by its timing and scale.
Yet Haniyeh, a Sunni Muslim, had a major hand building up Hamas’ fighting capacity, partly by nurturing ties with Shia Muslim Iran, which makes no secret of its support for the group.
During the decade in which Haniyeh was Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, Israel accused his leadership team of helping to divert humanitarian aid to the group’s military wing. Hamas denied it.
