Palestinians stage general strike to protest Haniyeh's assassination

The Palestinian national and Islamic forces announced a general strike today and called for “anger demonstrations” in response to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Political Bureau of the Palestinian group, Hamas.

In a statement, the Palestinian forces condemned the assassination, calling it an act of “terrorism by the Zionist state” and part of its ongoing war of “extermination and destruction”.

“The assassination of the great national leader Ismail Haniyeh is part of the Zionist state’s terrorism and its war of extermination, destruction and killing, amidst the international community’s failure to stop the war and hold the occupier accountable for its crimes,” it said.

They mourned Haniyeh and affirmed that “this cowardly assassination will not break our people’s will to resist and endure, but will increase our determination and insistence to continue holding on to our rights, constants, struggle and resistance for freedom and independence.”

The strike was observed across cities and towns in the West Bank, and Haniyeh was mourned through loudspeakers in many mosques, according to an Anadolu correspondent.

Hamas announced, today, Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an Israeli strike on his residence in Tehran. Iranian state television confirmed his death, noting that an investigation into the assassination is ongoing.

Israel has made no immediate statement regarding the assassination.

Born on 29 January 1962 in Al-Shati Refugee Camp in the besieged Gaza Strip, Haniyeh was elected head of Hamas’s Political Bureau in 2017.

He was appointed as the Palestinian Prime Minister in 2006 after Hamas won the national elections but was dismissed the following year after factional fighting broke out between the group and rival Fatah, from which President Mahmoud Abbas hails.

Haniyeh served three years in Israel detention during the First Intifada in 1989 and was later exiled in 1992 to a no-man’s land between Lebanon and Israel. He has lived between Turkiye and Qatar after leaving Gaza in 2017 and has been active in negotiations efforts to bring an end to Israel’s ongoing genocidal war in Gaza.

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