Who Was Ismail Haniyeh

Hamas leadership and Iran state media has said political chief of the Gaza based Palestinian group Ismail Haniyeh has been assassinated in an attack in Iran. Al Jazeera quoted a Hamas statement that Haniyeh was killed in ‘raid on his residence’ in Tehran. He has lived in Qatar for the past several years.

Also Read | Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Hints At Improving Ties With West

Ismail Haniyeh helmed as the chairman of the Political Bureau of Hamas and has been recognised as the overall leader of the group.

A significant part of the Hamas’s radical movement in the late 1980s, Israel imprisoned Haniyeh for three years in 1989.  After release, along with a number of Hamas leaders, he was then exiled to a no-man’s land in southern Lebanon.

A year later, he returned to Gaza. In 1997, Haniyeh appointed as head of the office of Hamas’s spiritual leader, Shiekh Yassin.

In 2006, when national elections were held, Hamas secured victory and Haniyeh appointed as the ‘Prime Minister of the State of Palestine’ by President Mahmoud Abbas. But, as conflicts between Abbas’ Fatah party and Hamas emerged, former dissolved the Hamas government a year later.

Haniyeh did not accept this move, and dismissing it as “unconstitutional”, he continue to rule from Gaza, ascertaining that his government “would not abandon its national responsibilities towards the Palestinian people”, BBC reports.

Also Read | Islamist Preacher Anjem Choudary, Leader Of Al-Muhajiroun Group Gets Life Imprisonment

In 2017, Haniyeh stepped down as the Hamas leader in Gaza and in the same year he was elected as the Chairman of Hamas’s political bureau.

In 2018, the US Department of State termed Haniyeh a terrorist.

Earlier on April 10, three sons of Haniyeh – Hazem, Amir and Mohammad were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza; two of his grandchildren were also killed in the attack, Hamas media said.