CAIRO: The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran strips Palestinian group Hamas of one of its sharpest political minds but will have no bearing on the leadership of the military wing that the Zionist entity says is trying to destroy in Gaza.
Hamas has several possible candidates to replace Haniyeh, notably Khaled Meshaal, the group's former leader who survived an assassination attempt in 1997 after Zionist agents injected him with poison on a street outside his office in the Jordanian capital Amman. He now splits his time between Cairo and Doha.
Whoever emerges, experts say it won't impact the way Hamas runs its war against Israel in the Gaza Strip, where leaders including Yahya Sinwar have been directing operations with a significant degree of autonomy during the conflict.
For Hamas leaders based outside the Palestinian territories, the assassination in Tehran indicates heightened risks. Haniyeh was the second Hamas leader killed in a Middle East capital this year, following a drone strike that took out the group's deputy leader — Saleh Al-Arouri — in Beirut in January.
The Zionist entity has tried to kill several Gaza-based commanders who it says are responsible for planning and executing the cross-border October 7 attack. In March, The entity said it had killed Marwan Issa, the deputy military commander of the Hamas armed wing known as Al Qassam Brigades. The United States confirmed Issa's death in a Zionist operation. Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied his death. In July, a Zionist attempt in Gaza to kill Mohammed Deif — head of the Qassam Brigades and believed to be one of the masterminds of the attack on southern Zionist communities — resulted in scores of Palestinian dead but no confirmation he was among them. Qatar-based senior Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya has denied that Deif was killed.
Sinwar, is still believed to be directing military operations, possibly from bunkers beneath Gaza, while playing a leading role in indirect negotiations with the Zionist entity for a prisoner swap deal. Zionist Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Sinwar and the other Hamas leaders were "living on borrowed time" after October 7, which prompted the Zionist entity to launch the ongoing offensive that has laid waste to much of Gaza and killed almost 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.
"Assassinations don't impact Hamas," a source close to the Islamist militant group told Reuters from Gaza, declining to be identified due to the sensitivity of the subject. "Fighters on the ground have their own orders, they are bound to fight until Sinwar and the leadership tell them there is a deal in place," the source said. Asked to confirm that the Zionist entity was behind the assassination of Haniyeh, a Zionist government spokesperson said: "We are not commenting on that particular incident."
'A fake victory'
Haniyeh was appointed to the top leadership role in 2017. Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official located outside the Palestinian territories, said the Zionist entity assassinated Haniyeh because they had failed to defeat the Iran-backed group in Gaza, calling it an attempt to portray "a fake victory".
He noted Hamas had weathered numerous assassinations over the years, including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin — Hamas' co-founder and spiritual leader — who was killed in a helicopter missile strike in 2004 as he left a mosque in Gaza City. "Hamas is a movement of institutions, it doesn't die when its leaders die," Abu Zuhri told Reuters.
Ashraf Abouelhoul, a specialist on Palestinian issues and managing editor of the Egyptian state-owned paper Al-Ahram, said Hamas had other veteran politicians such as Meshaal to fall back on. "He is set to have a big role," he said. Meshaal has lived most of his life outside the Palestinian territories. Born in Silwad near the West Bank city of Ramallah, Meshaal moved as a boy with his family to the Gulf Arab state of Kuwait, a hotbed of pro-Palestinian sentiment. But on the military front, nothing would change. "Haniyeh had no role when it comes to the military aspect. (That) is up to the military leaders in Gaza," he said. — Reuters