The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) announced early Wednesday morning the assassination of the leader of the Palestinian Islamist group, Ismail Haniyeh, in an attack blamed on Israel against the building where he was staying in Tehran, the capital of Iran, without the Israeli authorities having commented so far.
“Brother, leader, martyr, Ismail Haniye, head of the Movement, killed in a treacherous Zionist attack on his residence in Tehran, after participating in the inauguration ceremony of the new Iranian president,” reads a statement from the organization published by the Palestinian newspaper ‘Filastín’ on its Telegram channel.
This has also been confirmed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which has reported the death of one of Haniyeh’s bodyguards, and has offered its condolences to “the heroic nation of Palestine,” according to the Iranian news agency Tasnim.
For his part, Musa Abu Marzouk, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, has said that the assassination of Haniyeh is “a cowardly act” that “will not go unpunished,” while spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri has said that Israel is aware that this attack “means shooting itself in the foot.”
“The occupation wants to break the will of the movement and it wants to break the will of the Palestinian people, but Hamas is an idea,” he said, before stressing that the group “is strengthened with every drop of blood shed for freedom.”
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“This is a high price and we are ready to pay it for the sake of Jerusalem and liberation, and this path has no end except that of liberation,” he said, adding that “the moment of truth has arrived.” In this regard, he clarified that the assassination will not serve to “make Hamas surrender” and stressed that they will “continue to the end” in their fight for the Palestinian cause.
Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, with whom he held a meeting on Tuesday along with Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhala, who was also in the building at the time of the attack. The two Palestinian leaders had also held a meeting with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The attack, which could lead to the spread of the conflict in the region, has led Palestinian authorities to call for general mobilization and an “uprising against the occupation” from mosques in the West Bank.
Haniyeh has become the most senior Palestinian official to be killed since Saleh al-Arouri was killed earlier this year in a bombing in southern Lebanon. He served as prime minister after Hamas won an absolute majority in Legislative Council elections in 2006, but was later dismissed by Mahmoud Abbas.
If Israeli responsibility is confirmed, it would be the largest operation carried out by the Israeli army since the Hamas attacks on October 7. However, the authorities have refused to comment on the matter and have refused to “respond to reports from foreign media.”
Although Haniyeh is not a significant military figure, he was in charge of the Palestinian armed group’s international relations and was a vital interlocutor in the framework of the talks mediated by Egypt and Qatar with a view to reaching an agreement for the release of the hostages and a ceasefire in Gaza, so his death is expected to have repercussions on these negotiations. However, the Israeli government considered Haniyeh to be one of those responsible for the attacks of 7 October.
