Haniyeh was the pragmatic leader of Hamas

Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who was assassinated in what the group said was a “Zionist raid” in Iran, was the tough-talking face of the Palestinian group’s international diplomacy as war raged back in Gaza, where three of his sons were killed in an Israeli air strike.

But despite the rhetoric, he was seen by many diplomats as a moderate compared to the more hardline members of the group in Gaza.

Appointed to the Hamas top job in 2017, Haniyeh moved between Turkiye and Qatar’s capital Doha, enabling him to act as a negotiator in ceasefire talks.

Three of Haniyeh’s sons – Hazem, Amir and Mohammad – were killed on 10 April when an Israeli air strike struck the car they were driving, Hamas said. Haniyeh also lost four of his grandchildren, three girls and a boy, in the attack, Hamas said.

Haniyeh had denied Israeli assertions that his sons were fighters for the group, and said “the interests of the Palestinian people are placed ahead of everything” when asked if their killing would impact truce talks.

His sister was also arrested in April, with Israel Police and the Shin Bet saying she had been held on suspicion of contacting Hamas leaders and inciting “terror attacks” in Israel where she lived.

Arab diplomats and officials had viewed him as relatively pragmatic compared with more hardline voices inside Gaza.

While telling Israel’s military they would find themselves “drowning in the sands of Gaza”, he and his predecessor as Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, had shuttled around the region for talks over a Qatari-brokered ceasefire deal with Israel that would include exchanging hostages for Palestinians held in Israeli jails – most without charge or trial – as well as more aid for Gaza.

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When he left Gaza in 2017, Haniyeh was succeeded by Yahya Sinwar who had spent more than two decades in Israeli prisons and whom Haniyeh had welcomed back to Gaza in 2011 after a prisoner exchange.

“Haniyeh is leading the political battle for Hamas with Arab governments,” Adeeb Ziadeh, a specialist in Palestinian affairs at Qatar University, said before his death.

“He is the political and diplomatic front of Hamas,” Ziadeh said.

Haniyeh and Meshaal had met officials in Egypt, which has also had a mediation role in the ceasefire talks. Haniyeh travelled in early November to Tehran to meet Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian state media reported.

As a young man, Haniyeh was a student activist at the Islamic University in Gaza City. He joined Hamas when it was created in the First Palestinian Intifada in 1987. He was arrested and briefly deported.

Haniyeh became a protégé of Hamas’ founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, who like Haniyeh’s family, was a refugee from the village of Al Jura near Ashkelon. In 1994, he told Reuters that Yassin was a model for young Palestinians, saying: “We learned from him love of Islam and sacrifice for this Islam and not to kneel down to these tyrants and despots.” Yassin was assassinated by Israel in 2004.

Haniyeh was an early advocate of Hamas entering politics. In 1994, he said that forming a political party “would enable Hamas to deal with emerging developments”.

Initially overruled by the Hamas leadership, it was later approved and Haniyeh became Palestinian prime minister after the group won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 a year after Israel’s “disengagement” from Gaza.

The group took over governance of Gaza in 2007, leading to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas – who stems from the rival Fatah faction – to sack Haniyeh from the post of prime minister.

In 2012, when asked if Hamas had abandoned the armed struggle, Haniyeh replied “of course not” and said resistance would continue “in all forms – popular resistance, political, diplomatic and military resistance.”

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