Haniyeh fulfilled with great honour his duty towards Palestine

The terrorist regime of Israel has taken another step in the impossible mission of liquidating the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, crossing all red lines to force a comprehensive war and save the war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. The last move was the sin of assassinating Hamas Political Bureau leader Ismail Haniyeh and attacking Iranian sovereignty.

This heinous crime carried out by Israel constitutes a serious violation of international law and the Charter of the United Nations, as well as Iran’s sovereignty and national security, and could not have occurred without the permission and support of US intelligence, once again confirming the decades-old pattern of Israeli terrorism which targets Palestinians and supporters of the Palestinian cause.

The treacherous murder of Haniyeh will not slow the struggle of the Palestinian people for their liberation. His struggle, his example and his martyrdom will not be in vain, which raises the responsibility of the UN Security Council to fulfill its obligations and take immediate action against this pattern of crimes committed by the Zionist regime against leaders and countries in the region.

Ismail Haniyeh: assassinated in Israel’s war on peace and quest for endless occupation

Ismail Haniyeh’s life was marked by imprisonment and exile, injury and martyrdom. Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh or simply Ismail Haniyeh, was born on 29 January 1962, in the Shati refugee camp near Gaza City. His parents had been expelled from the city of Ashkelon during the Nakba, when the self-proclaimed State of Israel was established in 1948, becoming refugees in their own country.

He received his primary and secondary education in UN schools. In 1983, he began his studies at the Islamic University of Gaza where he earned a degree in Arabic Literature. In 1987 he was appointed professor of the institution, assuming the position of Rector of the University in 1993 after his return from exile in southern Lebanon.

He was an engaged activist of the Islamic Student Bloc at the University, the youth branch of the Muslim Brotherhood that would give rise to the Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas. In 1987, Hamas brought together several Palestinian intellectuals and politicians, led by the Sheikh and Islamic political leader Ahmed Yassin, with the fundamental objective of leading the Intifada against the Israeli military occupation of the Gaza Strip, which lasted from 8 December 1987, to 13 September 1993.

Haniyeh was imprisoned for a few months between 1987 and 1988 for his participation in the Intifada. In 1989, he was sentenced to three years in prison for belonging to Hamas. Released in 1992, he was deported to Marj Al-Zuhur in southern Lebanon along with 400 other leaders and militants from the West Bank and Gaza. He and other Hamas members would later be detained by the Palestinian Authority, which considered the group’s ideology and activities a threat to the Oslo Peace Accords.

In 1997, after the release of the then-leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, from Israeli prisons he became its secretary. In 2001, after the start of the Second (Al-Aqsa) Intifada he consolidated his position as the third man in the movement’s hierarchy after Sheikh Yassin and physician Abdel Aziz Al-Rantisi, both martyred in cowardly attacks by the Zionist occupation.

Following the murders of Sheikh Yassin on 22 March 2004 and of Al-Rantisi on 17 April of the same year, Hamas was led by Khaled Meshal, who had survived an assassination attempt by poisoning, when agents of the secret service and terrorist Mossad managed to inject a toxic substance into his body in Amman, Jordan, in 1997. With the ascension of Meshal to the political leadership of Hamas, Haniyeh assumed the maximum political and military responsibility of the movement.

Following Hamas’s surprise victory in the Palestinian elections of 25 January 2006, Haniyeh took over as Palestinian prime minister and head of the government, only to be dismissed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007 leading to political clashes between Hamas and Fatah, a move rejected by the movement. In those elections, Hamas won 76 of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council, while its biggest rival, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah, won 43 seats.

Read: Haniyeh’s assassination unleashes a new era of political violence

He resigned from his post in 2014 as part of the effort he has always undertaken for Palestinian national reconciliation. On 6 May 2017, he was chosen as Hamas’s political leader, succeeding Khaled Meshal through videoconference voting by the members of the Shura Council, the main decision-making body of Hamas composed of 48 members, which chooses the Movement’s Central Committee, in Gaza, the West Bank and outside the Palestinian territories.

He suffered several assassination attempts by Israeli terrorists. Since 7 October, more than 60 of his relatives have been martyred in Gaza, including three children, four grandchildren and a sister. He always said: “Our martyrs are a source of pride for us and the whole [Islamic] nation, and we will never forget them, especially the women and girls of Palestine.”

On 31 July he gave his most precious thing – his life – becoming a martyr for the Palestinian cause. In this context, the martyr is, above all, a mujahid or fidae, a Palestinian resistance fighter, a Muslim fighter willing to sacrifice his life for a cause based on justice and the fight against oppression.

The blood of martyrs will continue to fuel the struggle for Palestinian freedom against Israeli colonial occupation. And the struggle for which Haniyeh was martyred will continue until the entire historic land of Palestine, with blessed Jerusalem at its core, is liberated.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.