© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Palestinian group Hamas’ high chief, Ismail Haniyeh talks after assembly with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut, Lebanon June 28, 2021. REUTERS/Aziz Taher/File Photograph
By Stephen Farrell and Samia Nakhoul
(Reuters) – Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas chief primarily based in Qatar, has been the tough-talking face of the Palestinian group’s worldwide diplomacy as struggle has raged again in Gaza the place his household residence was destroyed in an Israeli air strike in November.
Appointed to the militant group’s high job in 2017, he has moved between Turkey and Qatar’s capital Doha, escaping the journey restrictions of the blockaded Gaza Strip and enabling him to behave as a negotiator within the newest ceasefire deal or discuss to Hamas’ most important ally Iran.
“All the agreements of normalisation that you (Arab states) signed with (Israel) will not end this conflict,” Haniyeh declared on Qatar-based Al Jazeera tv shortly after Hamas fighters launched their assault on Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 folks and taking greater than 200 folks hostage.
Israel’s response has been a fierce navy marketing campaign that has killed greater than 14,000 folks inside Gaza thus far. Two of Haniyeh’s grandchildren are amongst these killed, his household stated.
For all of the robust language in public, Arab diplomats and officers within the area view him as comparatively pragmatic in contrast with extra hardline voices inside Gaza, the place the navy wing of Hamas deliberate the Oct. 7 that shocked Israel to its core.
Whereas telling Israel’s navy they might discover themselves “drowning in the sands of Gaza”, he and his predecessor as Hamas chief, Khaled Meshaal, have shuttled across the area for talks over a Qatari-brokered ceasefire cope with Israel that features exchanging hostages held by Hamas for Palestinians in Israeli jails, in addition to extra help for Gaza.
Israel regards the whole Hamas management as terrorists, accusing Haniyeh, Meshaal and others of continuous to “pull the strings of the Hamas terror organisation.”
However how a lot Haniyeh knew concerning the Oct. 7 assault beforehand isn’t clear. The plan, drawn up by the Hamas navy council in Gaza, was such a carefully guarded secret that some Hamas officers appeared shocked by its timing and scale.
But Haniyeh, a Sunni Muslim, has had a significant hand build up Hamas’ combating capability, partly by nurturing relations with Shi’ite Muslim Iran, which makes no secret of its ethical and materials assist for the group.
In the course of the decade by which Haniyeh was Hamas’ high chief in Gaza, Israel accused his management staff of serving to to divert humanitarian help to the group’s navy wing. Hamas denied it.
SHUTTLE DIPLOMACY
When he left Gaza in 2017, Haniyeh was succeeded by Yahya Sinwar, a hardliner who spent greater than 20 years in Israeli prisons and whom Haniyeh had welcomed again to Gaza in 2011 after a prisoner trade.
“Haniyeh is leading the political battle for Hamas with Arab governments,” stated Adeeb Ziadeh, a specialist in Palestinian affairs at Qatar College, including that he had shut ties with extra hardline figures within the group and the navy wing.
“He is the political and diplomatic front of Hamas,” he stated.
Haniyeh and Meshaal have met officers in Egypt, which has additionally had a mediation function within the ceasefire talks. Haniyeh travelled in early November to Tehran to satisfy Iran’s supreme chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iranian state media reported.
Three senior officers advised Reuters that Khamenei advised the Hamas chief in that assembly, that Iran wouldn’t enter the struggle having not been advised about it prematurely. Hamas didn’t reply to requests for remark earlier than Reuters revealed its report, after which issued a denial after its publication.
As he has shuttled across the area, Israel stated on Nov. 16 its warplanes hit Haniyeh’s home in Al-Shati, the Gaza refugee camp the place he was born in 1962. It stated his residence “often served as a meeting point for Hamas’ senior leaders to direct terror attacks.”
As a younger man Haniyeh was a pupil activist on the Islamic College in Gaza Metropolis. He joined Hamas when it was created within the First Palestinian intifada (rebellion) in 1987. He was arrested and briefly deported.
Haniyeh turned a protégé of Hamas’ founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, who like Haniyeh’s household, was a refugee from the village of Al Jura close to Ashkelon.
In 1994, he advised Reuters that Yassin was a mannequin for younger Palestinians, saying: “We learned from him love of Islam and sacrifice for this Islam and not to kneel down to these tyrants and despots.”
By 2003 he was a trusted Yassin aide, photographed in Yassin’s Gaza residence holding a cellphone to the virtually fully paralysed Hamas founder’s ear in order that he may participate in a dialog. Yassin was assassinated by Israel in 2004.
Haniyeh was an early advocate of Hamas coming into politics. In 1994, he stated that forming a political celebration “would enable Hamas to deal with emerging developments”.
Initially overruled by the Hamas management, it was later permitted and Haniyeh develop into Palestinian prime minister after the group received Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 a 12 months after Israel’s navy withdrew from Gaza.
The group took management of Gaza in 2007.
In 2012, when requested by Reuters reporters if Hamas had deserted the armed battle, Haniyeh replied “of course not” and stated resistance would proceed “in all forms – popular resistance, political, diplomatic and military resistance”.
