Israel’s defense minister has confirmed the assassination of the Hamas leader in Tehran, revealing the scale of Israel’s operations against the leaders of the Palestinian militant group.
Israel assassinated top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran last summer. The information was confirmed by Defense Minister Israel Katz.
This is the first time that Israel has acknowledged having killed Mr. Haniyeh, who died in an explosion in Tehran in July.
In a speech on Monday, Mr. Katz acknowledged that Israel had killed other Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, helped topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and destroyed Iranian anti-aircraft systems. Today, Israel wants to eliminate the Houthi rebels from Yemen, according to the defense minister.
“We will strike the strategic infrastructures of the Houthis and cut off the heads of the leaderss,” he said.
“Just as we did for Haniyeh, (Yahya) Sinwar and (Hassan) Nasrallah in Tehran, Gaza and Lebanon, we will do it in Hodeida and Sanaa,” he added, referring to Hamas and Hezbollah leaders killed in previous Israeli attacks.
Who was Ismail Haniyeh?
Ismail Haniyeh, 62, was the head of Hamas’s political wing and one of the organization’s main representatives for decades.
In July, observers said Mr. Haniyeh’s death dealt a significant blow to Hamas at a time when tensions were escalating in the Middle East over the devastating war in Gaza and raised questions about the future of negotiations between the militant group and Israel.
In recent years, Mr. Haniyeh led the group’s political office from exile in Qatar, but his career dates back several decades.
Born on January 29, 1963 in the al-Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, Mr. Haniyeh began his political career by becoming close to Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and joining the paramilitary group for the first Intifada, at the end of the 1980s.
Nicknamed Abu al-Abd, he was named a member of the secret “collective leadership” team in 2004, after Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi – the two previous leaders of Hamas – were killed by Israel.
Following the October 7 attack on Israeli territory, in which Hamas fighters killed at least 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostage, Haniyeh became a key figure in negotiations aimed at to end the war that followed in the Gaza Strip.
However, Israeli officials have repeatedly held him responsible for the failure of peace talks and criticized him for refusing to release the hostages still alive in the Gaza Strip.
Despite his leadership position, Haniyeh has faced his share of criticism within Hamas on several occasions since the start of the war.
There are reports of disagreements between him and Sinwar, the Hamas military leader in Gaza killed by Israel in October, over both the approach to ceasefire negotiations and military strategy.
Last April, Israeli police arrested one of Haniyeh’s sisters on suspicion of having ties to members of the movement. Shortly after, three of his sons and four of his grandchildren were killed by Israeli airstrikes.
Additional sources • AP