Ismail Haniyeh: From Birth in a Refugee Camp in Gaza to Death in Tehran

Ismail Haniyeh, known as 'Abu al-Abd', was a Palestinian politician and head of the political bureau of the extremist group Hamas. He was killed in Tehran on Wednesday, August 1. The United States and the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist organization. Haniyeh had traveled to Tehran to attend the inauguration ceremony of Masoud Pezeshkian, the President of Iran, which took place on August 1 in the Islamic Consultative Assembly. Ismail Haniyeh was born 62 years ago in the Palestinian refugee camp of al-Shati in the west of Gaza City. His family originally hails from Ashkelon, located in southern Israel, and they fled to Gaza during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Haniyeh graduated with a degree in Arabic literature from the Islamic University of Gaza in 1987, the same year the Palestinian protests known as the 'First Intifada' against Israel began in Gaza. He joined Hamas during his student years. In the same year of his graduation, Haniyeh was briefly arrested for participating in anti-Israeli protests. With Hamas emerging as a 'leading anti-Israeli movement' in Gaza in 1988, Haniyeh was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison. After his release in 1992, Israel exiled him along with senior Hamas commanders such as Abdul Aziz al-Rantisi and Mahmoud al-Zahar, and 400 other activists to southern Lebanon. They spent over a year in the 'Marj al-Zuhur' camp in southern Lebanon. Media coverage of these figures and Hamas's activities during this period gained unprecedented prominence, and the group became known worldwide. In December 1993, Haniyeh returned to Gaza and was appointed president of the Islamic University. After Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, was released from Israeli prison in 1997 and chose Haniyeh as his assistant, their close relationship strengthened Haniyeh's position within the group, leading to his election as Hamas's representative in the Palestinian Authority. In September 2003, Haniyeh and Ahmed Yassin were lightly injured in an Israeli airstrike on their residence in Gaza City, just seconds after they had exited the building. Six months later, in March 2004, Ahmed Yassin was killed in another Israeli airstrike. In the Palestinian parliamentary elections held in December 2005, Ismail Haniyeh was at the top of the Hamas candidate list. The names of Hamas candidates were published under the title 'Change and Reform List', and ultimately, 76 out of 132 seats in the Palestinian parliament went to Hamas candidates. Following these results, Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, tasked Ismail Haniyeh with forming a government. Several weeks of negotiations to form a coalition government among Fatah, Hamas, and other Palestinian groups failed. Therefore, Haniyeh formed a government with Hamas members and several technocrats. In announcing his government program, he urged the United States and Europe not to carry out their threat to stop funding the Palestinian Authority if Hamas did not recognize Israel. At the same time, Haniyeh considered the 'continuation of the Palestinian struggle for independence' a 'legitimate right' and emphasized that he sought to negotiate with Israel through international mediators. He stated, 'Our government will spare no effort to achieve a just peace in the region, end the occupation, and restore our rights.' However, Hamas's leadership of the Palestinian Authority did not last long beyond 2007; Israel had withdrawn its forces from the Gaza Strip in 2005, leading to internal conflicts among Palestinian groups that resulted in the expulsion of the Palestinian Authority's security forces from Gaza, allowing Hamas to take full control of the strip. The Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip also began at that time. In 2017, Ismail Haniyeh was elected head of Hamas's political bureau, succeeding Khaled Mashal. The United States placed Haniyeh on its 'terrorism' list a year later and imposed sanctions on him. The U.S. State Department accused Ismail Haniyeh of having 'close ties to Hamas's military wing [...] and supporting armed conflict, including against civilians.' The current war in Gaza began in response to Hamas's surprise attack on southern Israel; in the attack on October 7, about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed, and over 250 were taken hostage by Hamas members. After the October 7 attack, images of Ismail Haniyeh alongside several other Hamas leaders in the group's office in Doha, Qatar, were released, showing them following news from a television network and 'prostrating in gratitude' to express their joy over the attack. Ismail Haniyeh married his cousin, Amal Haniyeh. They have 13 children, including eight sons and five daughters. Three of Haniyeh's sons, Hazem, Amir, and Haniyeh, were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza during the ongoing war against Hamas.