Profile: Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas leader who pushed Zionist entity to brink of extinction

By Press TV Website Staff

Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political bureau of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, was killed in a cowardly attack by the Israeli regime in Tehran in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) in a statement announced the assassination of Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards in an attack that targeted their residence in the Iranian capital.

IRGC said the attack is being investigated and details would be announced later.

Hamas, in its statement, vowed to avenge the cowardly assassination of its leader, who it stated “passed as a result of a treacherous Zionist raid” in the Iranian capital.

“The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas mourns the sons of our great Palestinian people, the Arab and Islamic nation, and all the free people of the world,” read the statement issued on Wednesday.

Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Iran’s newly-elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who took the oath of office in the parliament on Tuesday.

He is the second high-profile Hamas leader to be assassinated by the Israeli regime since Operation Al-Aqsa Storm on October 7, 2023, after Salah al-Arouri’s assassination in southern Beirut on January 2.

Haniyeh was born in the al-Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip in 1962 and studied at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he graduated in Arabic literature in 1987.

After years of political activities against the Israeli occupation, he was appointed as one of the senior leaders of Hamas in 1997, after which he gradually rose through the ranks to become the top leader.

He also headed the office of Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, after the latter was released from an Israeli prison in 1997. The two of them shared a very close relationship.

Haniyeh played an active role in both the First and Second Intifada and served multiple prison terms as well. He also survived many assassination bids, including a suicide bombing in 2003.

Under his leadership, Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and he became the Prime Minister of the State of Palestine, however, the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed him in 2007.

Haniyeh also served as the Hamas leader in the besieged Gaza Strip between 2006 and 2017, after which he was replaced by Yahya Sinwar, a high-ranking Hamas military commander.

On May 6, 2017, Haniyeh was elected as the chairman of the resistance movement’s political office, succeeding Khaled Mashal, after which he relocated to Qatar from Palestine.

After the events of October 7, 20023, Haniyeh used his political office to defend the Palestinian resistance operation against the illegal Israeli occupation and admirably led the popular movement.

“How many times have we warned you that the Palestinian people have been living in refugee camps for 75 years, and you refuse to recognize the rights of our people,” he was quoted as saying after the Palestinian resistance launched the unprecedented military operation.

In one of his speeches, he asserted that the Palestinian people in Gaza had a "willingness to sacrifice all that is precious for the sake of their freedom and dignity: and warned that the regime “will pay a heavy price for their crimes and terrorism” against Palestinians.

On November 1, 2023, Haniyeh denounced the Israeli regime for committing “barbaric massacres against unarmed civilians” after a dastardly attack on the Jabalia refugee camp.

In December, an opinion poll showed that Haniyeh would defeat Mahmoud Abbas by a massive margin for the position of President of the State of Palestine – 78 percent for Haniyeh and 16 percent for Abbas – pointing to the growing popularity of the Hamas resistance leader.

Haniyeh also offered personal sacrifices as the leader of the most popular resistance group in Palestine, with at least 14 members of his immediate family killed in an Israeli airstrike on his family home in Gaza City in October.

In November 2023, his granddaughter and grandson were also killed. In April 2024, in a major tragedy, Haniyeh lost three of his sons and three grandchildren in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip.

In June 2024, ten more members of his close family, including his 80-year-old sister, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza.

On July 31, 2024, Haniyeh was also assassinated by the same enemy, marking the end of an era.

His life and legacy, however, will continue to act as a beacon of inspiration for resistance forces against the US-backed Israeli occupation, which is already on the brink of extinction.

In an interview with the Press TV in April last year, Haniyeh affirmed that Israel is "living in its worst situation" ever, enumerating the reasons for the decline and death of the Zionist entity.

Ten months after Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, the regime is already staring at nothingness after failing to achieve any of its military objectives despite massacring nearly 40,000 Palestinians.

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