The assassination of the two Ismails: Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran ‘Part-1’

“What a day !!”

Renowned Egyptian TV host Mahmoud Saad said it late Wednesday when he opened a live-streaming discussion about yet another long bloody day in the Gaza war that has taken a very heavy toll on all of us as Arab people.

In a livestream watched by hundreds of thousands, Saad discussed the two major events that defined the day and made it a particularly heavy one.

The major event was the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political bureau in the heart of Iran’s Tehran in the early hours of Wednesday.

Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the swearing-in ceremony of the new Iranian President on Tuesday.

Haniyeh's last photo at an exhibition in Tehran dedicated to Al-Quds and
and the Dome of the Rock on Tuesday. 

What happened was like a practical Israeli declaration of war against Israel killing any chance of a ceasefire.

Ismail Haniyeh is not part of Al-Kassam, the military branch of Hamas. Already many experts believe that Yahia Senwar and Mohamed El-Deif are more powerful than him and they are the ones who gave the orders currently to the Political office

Ismail Haniyeh was playing two roles, Hamas’ top negotiator as well as its top spokesperson. He was the top negotiator of Hamas and Palestinian factions in the current ceasefire talks mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the US.

I won’t say anything more than what the Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister said on Wednesday Mohamed Abdel Rahman Al-Thani.

Political assassinations & continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side? Peace needs serious partners & a global stance against the disregard for human life.

— محمد بن عبدالرحمن (@MBA_AlThani_) July 31, 2024

“How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side? Peace needs serious partners & a global stance against the disregard for human life?” He said in his first comment on the assassination.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken spoke with Al-Thani on the phone to make sure the ceasefire talks go on and I do not know how this can be achieved now.

According to informed sources that spoke to Mada Masr, Cairo is currently furious over what happened because of how on earth and in heaven you can have a deal when you kill the other’s side top negotiator.

Needless to say, this means you want to avoid talking at all.

On Saturday, a high-level Israeli delegation from Mossad and Shin Bet arrived in Cairo to meet with Egyptian General Intelligence officers, including the Egyptian spy chief, Abbas Kamel. 

The talks focused on the ceasefire deal and arrangements in the Philadelphi Corridor (also known as the Salah El-Din Corridor), as requested by the Americans.

The Israeli delegation came to Cairo in less than 24 hours after some screaming match between the Mossad Chief and Benjamin Netanyahu as the latter refused any deal.

It was another fiasco and nothing was reached. That meeting could have been conducted via email or, at best, over Zoom to reduce carbon emissions.

I believe that the delegation came for the sake of changing the scenery because what did they expect to happen?

Haniyeh was also Hamas's top negotiator in the Palestinian reconciliation talks.

Most people do not know that China held Palestinian reconciliation talks among the factions and a week ago, the Palestinian factions above them Hamas and Fatah signed the Beijing Declaration to start a new page.

Despite being demonized in the Western media, Ismail Haniyeh was among the moderate voices in Hamas who welcomed the two-state solutions if Israel was serious.

He welcomed it when he was Palestine’s Prime Minister and welcomed it recently.

Yet historically, Israel kills any voice in Hamas who declares his support for the two-state solution.

Israel killed the founder of the militant group Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in March 2004 three months after proposing a long-term truce with Israel if it allows a Palestinian state in Gaza and West Bank.

I remember how his assassination using a missile targeting him in his wheelchair as he was coming back from Al-Fajr prayer from the mosque to his home turned Egypt and the Arab world’s streets upside down.

In less than a month, Israel killed in April 2004 Dr Abdel Aziz Al-Rantisi, the co-founder of Hamas and its famous leading figure. Al-Rantisi who was from the survivors of the famous Khan Younes massacre of 1956 also made the same offer as part of the Arab mediation efforts, a truce for true two-state solutions. “The Israeli army killed his wife, a leading figure in Hamas and destroyed the only children's hospital bearing his name.”

In November 2012, Israel killed Ahmed Jabri, another leading member of Hamas when he was reviewing a truce agreement with Israel brokered by Egypt. I remember very well what happened during then because I was covering it as a journalist.

Some in the West say that Hamas is not serious in its offer for truce and peace in return for true two-state solutions but the true question here begs to be asked: Has Israel ever been serious about the two-state solutions?

One simple look at the settlement policies in the West Bank and the apartheid policies it applied against the Palestinians in the past decades, and you will know the answer.

The thing is that for 75 years, Israel adopted assassination policies when it came to Palestinian resistance figures and that did not stop anything.

Israel killed figures like Ghassan Kanfani of the Popular Front to Liberate Palestine “PFLP”, Khalil Al-Wazir aka Abu Jehad of Palestinian Liberation Organization/Fatah “PLO/Fatah” and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas himself among hundreds of similar figures and those groups still exist till this day and they still carry the gun against Israel

In fact, assassinating Palestinian resistance figures only resulted in producing even more toucher and radical figures as well as new resistance groups.

Now Ismail Haniyeh is a martyr icon like other Hamas martyr icons.

The Israeli army killed nearly 100 members of his family including three sons and eight grandchildren before it would kill him.

Ismail Haniyeh is now revered as an independence and freedom fighter, a Mujahid and a Fida’i who fought for his land and sacrificed his own children for the cause.

“Our children’s blood is not more precious than the blood of any child in Gaza” Haniyeh said following the cold assassination of his sons and grandchildren on the first day of Eid in April. Some Westerners believed that Haniyeh was a cold bastard because he did not break down when he got the news in Doha as he appeared on TV strongly.

In our culture, this is the highest level of patience and accepting the fate drawn by God.

His children and their children are martyrs who will be granted heaven and according to mainstream Islamic tradition will intercede for their parents and their families on the Day of Judgement. It is not about virgins in the heavens, it is greater than that. Many people in the West do not get it and think it is all about sex but it has nothing to do with it.

Yet again, Israel has inadvertently served both Hamas and the Palestinian cause, as well as the broader Arab Islamic world, despite years of inciting Sunni-Shia hatred online that I have not seen since the Israel-Lebanon or Hezbollah war in 2005. 

The past ten months have been particularly horrific, marked by an unprecedented wave of sectarianism between Sunni and Shia that has dominated social media.

Haniyeh is the first Muslim figure to have Sunni and Shiite funerals probably in our recorded history. It is the first time I see the highest Shia figure in the world leading the funeral prayer of a Sunni Muslim figure. 

Ayatollah Khamenei leading Haniyeh and his security's guard funeral
in Tehran on Thursday "AFP" 

It is the first time I have seen Shia Iranian mourners threw personal items towards the coffins of Sunni figures like Haniyeh, hoping they would be blessed through contact with them.

Iranian Shia mourners threw their personal belongings to get blessings 
from the martyrs' coffins. It is not a Sunni or mainstream Islamic tradition but I believe
a Shia one. 

Haniyeh was also mourned by Egypt's Al-Azhar, the world's biggest Sunni institution describing him as a "martyred fighter".

Secular Turkey and Malaysia held the absentee prayer for him. “The absentee prayer is like the funeral prayer but without the deceased body”.

There are areas in northern Syria that held a memorial service for him. Syrians, particularly in the north, suffer under Russian and Iranian control, but they have not forgotten that despite his ties with the Iranians, Haniyeh supported the Syrian revolution.

For ten months, both Israeli Hasbara trolls and Gulf/Saudi trolls unleashed a huge campaign of misinformation targeting Ismail Haniyeh specifically for months.

That campaign proved to be a waste of time and effort especially now.

Now one more thing to discuss in this long post.

It is really shocking to see Iran, a nuclear regional power that has controlled four Arab countries for years, suffering from a severe security breach. This assassination took place less than 24 hours after the new President's swearing-in ceremony, which was attended by delegations from all over the globe.

I believe that the Police state of the Iranian regime is no longer strong nor capable of protecting the country ironically.

At the same time, the Iranian state won’t be silent after this huge insult in front of its own people inside Iran or abroad.

Israel or rather Benjamin Netanyahu is praying for a full-scale war with Iran that would continue till November when Donald Trump is elected as the US president or that is what he wishes.

One last thought, Bibi Netanyahu does not give a damned for the families of the Israeli captives or his own people or his own army or his own country. He only cares for himself and for how long he will continue being a Prime Minister.

In a way, he is fully integrated as a Middle East strongman who only cares for himself and his family screwing democracy over and over. Trust me, we know one when we see as Arabs and Mideasterns. The Israelis won't admit but their country has joined the Strongmen Club of the Middle East.

Yet to be fair, there is a huge difference between other strongmen in the Middle East including thought in the Gulf: He got full support from the West.

Returning to Ismail Haniyeh, the issue is that Israel repeatedly targets and kills leading members of Hamas, yet this cycle of violence continues. 

Assassinating Haniyeh won't make Israel safe in any way. 

The reality is that Hamas is fundamentally a militant resistance movement born out of the struggle against occupation. To truly address and potentially end the cycle of violence, the root cause— the occupation— must be resolved. Ending the occupation could diminish the raison d'être of Hamas and all Palestinian military groups.

However, this crucial issue often remains unaddressed, leaving the core problem unresolved.