Ismail Haniyeh, the moderate and political face of Hamas is the militant face of Sinwar

2024-07-31 10:41:13

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyehwho was killed on Wednesday in Tehran at the age of 61, He became internationally known in 2006 when he became Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority after his party’s stunning victory in the legislative elections.

For a long time, The leader of the Islamic religious group despises military struggle and political struggle. and maintain good relations with the leaders of the various Palestinian movements.

Considered a pragmatist within Hamas and known for his quiet demeanor, Haniyeh lived in voluntary exile between Qatar and Turkey, but traveled to Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president. I was born in 1963 in the Al Shati refugee camp in Gaza.between a family that fled Ashkelon (a few kilometers to the north) during the creation of the State of Israel fifteen years before.

He began his activism in the student branch of the Muslim Brotherhood at the Islamic University of Gaza, from which Hamas was born, and was part of the student body between 1983 and 1984. Three years later he joined the Hamas movement from its beginning, which led to the outbreak of the first intifada that lasted until 1993.. During this time, the Israelis imprisoned Haniyeh and expelled them for six months to the south of Lebanon.

In 2003, Haniyeh and the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, survived an assassination attempt by surviving an Israeli airstrike. Yassin was killed a year later.

A short unity government

Although he did not lead Hamas until 2017, Haniyeh’s figure achieved international relevance in 2006 when he became Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority after the stunning victory of Hamas in that year’s legislative elections.. After assuming a unity government, he decided to work for the creation of a Palestinian State “in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with Jerusalem as the capital,” a position then against the official statement of Hamas, which he did. does not create borders.

But the cooperation between Hamas and the secular Fatah organization of the then Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, did not last long. In 2007, two years after the withdrawal of the Israeli army from Gaza, fratricidal attacks took place between the two movements in this occupied region.

A near-civil war ended with Hamas in power in Gaza and left hard feelings between the two groups that persist today. After that brief experience in government, Haniyeh was appointed head of Hamas’s political office in 2017 succeeding Khaled Mechaal, in exile in Qatar.

In images released by Hamas media shortly after the bloody attack on southern Israel, Haniye spoke excitedly with other party leaders in his Doha office when an Arab television station broadcast a report of Hamas soldiers taking over Israeli military vehicles.

Throughout the nine months of war that has devastated all parts of Gaza, Haniye has repeatedly stressed that the group will not release the hostages they stole on October 7 if the fighting does not stop. The conflict also took a personal toll on the Hamas leader. In July, an Israeli bomb struck his family home, killing ten people, including his sister, and in April three of his children and four of his grandchildren were also killed in an attack.

At the time, Haniyeh said 60 of his relatives had died since the outbreak of war in Gaza.