Hamas blames Israel for leader’s death – DW – 07/31/2024

Iranian political and religious leaders vowed revenge on Wednesday after Haniyeh’s death.

Meanwhile, Iranian analysts and commentators on social media were critical of the latest major security shortfall, with the visiting Hamas leader struck as he was in the government’s protection in Tehran.

One journalist called it a “total embarrassment” for the country’s security apparatus.

DW’s Asia and Farsi language departments compiled this overview of responses in Tehran on Wednesday.. 

Hezbollah has made its first on-the-record comments confirming that the body of commander Fouad Shukur has been found. 

Shukur was targeted in an airstrike on the southern suburbs of Beirut on Tuesday. 

Israel’s military had already said he was killed late on Tuesday. Conflicting off-the-record reports from Lebanon followed.

Hezbollah said that its leader, Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, would make a statement at Shukur’s funeral on Thursday.

Unlike the strike that killed Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh, Israel has claimed responsibility for targeting Shukur.

Senior Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya told a news conference in Tehran that Ismail Haniyeh was hit “directly” by a missile. 

He was in a state guesthouse in Tehran at the time.

Al-Hayya was citing witnesses who he said were with Haniyeh at the time. 

“Now we are waiting for the full investigation from the [Iranian] brothers,” he said. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a televised address on Wednesday evening. 

He did not mention the attack on Ismail Haniyeh specifically or claim any Israeli involvement, but he did say Israel had delivered “crushing blows” to Iran’s proxies over the last few days, including Hamas and Hezbollah. 

He only referred to the Beirut strike that killed Hezbollah’s Fouad Shukur by name.

“Citizens of Israel, challenging days lie ahead,” Netanyahu said. “Since the strike in Beirut there are threats sounding from all directions. We are prepared for any scenario and we will stand united and determined against any threat.”

Netanyahu said Israel would “exact a heavy price for any aggression against us from any arena.” 

Several international news outlets including Reuters and AFP cite sources from Hezbollah as saying the body of the Lebanese militant group’s commander Fouad Shukur has been found in rubble in the southern suburbs of Beirut after an Israeli strike Tuesday evening. 

Israel’s military said late on Tuesday night that it believed Shukr had been killed.

But there has been no official word from Lebanon, except that search and rescue operations were ongoing, and similar reports on Tuesday citing Hezbollah sources had said that he survived.

Shukur, thought to be in his 60s, had been a key member of Hezbollah since its foundation in the 1980s.

Israel described him as Hezbollah’s most senior military commander and blamed him for an attack on the weekend that killed a dozen children in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The attack on Shukur has since been somewhat overshadowed by the death of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, news of which emerged just a few hours later in the early hours of Wednesday.

Unlike with Shukur, Israel is yet to explicitly claim responsibility for Haniyeh’s death.

Hundreds of Palestinian demonstrators marched through major West Bank cities like Ramallah and Hebron on Tuesday in protest against Ismail Haniyeh’s killing. 

Many of them carried green Hamas flags or wore their headbands. 

They chanted “the people want al-Qassem brigade,” in reference to the group’s military wing. 

Public displays of support for Hamas in Ramallah, the administrative capital of the West Bank governed by Fatah, are relatively rare. 

Hamas and Fatah have long been at odds over the governance of the two Palestinian territories. 

Qatar’s Al Jazeera TV said on Wednesday that its Arabic language reporter Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Ramy Al-Refee were killed in an airstrike on Gaza City. 

The broadcaster said that the strike “targeted a car near the Aidia area, west of Gaza City.” 

A colleague of the two dead journalists, Anas al-Sharif, told Al Jazeera that the two men were trying to film near the house of Ismail Haniyeh following his death. 

The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said the new deaths increased the total number of journalists killed by Israeli fire since October 7 to 165.

A study published earlier this month by the New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists came to a lower tally, but still put the figure, as of July 5, at 108.

In a tweet, Al Jazeera’s managing editor Mohamed Moawad said Al-Ghoul was renowned for his “professionalism and dedication” and helped draw the world’s attention to the “suffering and atrocities committed in Gaza.”

Haniyeh was born in a Gaza refugee camp in 1962 and attended a United Nations school. He joined Hamas in 1987 at the beginning of a major uprising against Israel known as the first Intifada.

Haniyeh was appointed prime minister of the Palestinian Authority by President Mahmoud Abbas after Hamas won a majority of seats in the 2006 legislative elections.

However, Abbas tried to dismiss him when Hamas unleashed a wave of violence to oust his Fatah party from the Gaza Strip. Haniyeh refused to step down and Hamas continued to rule the Gaza Strip, while Fatah remained responsible for the occupied West Bank.

Haniyeh moved to Qatar to live in exile in 2016. In 2017, he was elected head of Hamas’ political bureau, succeeding Khaled Mashaal.

Israel had vowed to kill him following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians.

The Hamas militant group is designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and Germany, among others.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Wednesday called for restraint to avoid plunging the Middle East “into chaos,” following the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran that the militant group has blamed on Israel. 

“The central issue now is to prevent a regional conflagration and not plunge the entire region into chaos,” Baerbock said.

She called on all parties in the conflict to “exercise maximum restraint and de-escalate in the interest of the people in the region.”

Baerbock also pointed a finger at Hamas, “a terrorist organization that has carried out countless cruel and deadly attacks on Israel.”

The European Union “has a principled position of rejecting extrajudicial killings,” said Peter Stano, the EU’s spokesperson for foreign affairs and security policy.

He said the EU was following developments around the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political wing, closely.

“We call on all parties to exert maximum restraint and avoid any further escalation. No country and no nation stand to gain from a further escalation in the Middle East,” Stano said in a statement to DW Brussels correspondent Rosie Birchard.

He added the EU and others had listed Hamas as a terrorist organization, and that the ICC Prosecutor had been seeking an arrest warrant against Ismail Haniyeh on various charges of war crimes.

The burial of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh will take place in Doha on Friday, following a public funeral ceremony in Tehran the day before, the militant group announced.

Haniyeh was killed in an airstrike on Iran’s capital, Tehran, early on Wednesday.

He “will be given an official and public funeral ceremony in the Iranian capital, Tehran, tomorrow,” Hamas said in a statement.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that Washington was not involved in the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

“This is something we were not aware of or involved in. It’s very hard to speculate,” Blinken said in an interview with Channel News Asia during a visit to Singapore.

The top diplomat said it was imperative that Israel and Hamas continue to work towards a ceasefire and avoid creating a broader conflict.

“It’s vitally important to hopefully put things on a better path for more enduring peace and more enduring security,” he said.

Pakistan described the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in neighboring Iran as a “reckless act.”

It described extrajudicial and extraterritorial killings as “terrorism.”

“Pakistan views with serious concern the growing Israeli adventurism in the region. Its latest acts constitute a dangerous escalation in an already volatile region and undermine efforts for peace,” Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry added.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the killing of his close ally and “brother” Ismail Haniyeh as treacherous.

“May God have mercy on my brother Ismail Haniyeh, fallen in martyrdom after this odious attack,” Erdogan wrote on the X, formerly Twitter.

“This shameful act aims to sabotage the Palestinian cause, the glorious Gazan resistance and our Palestinian brothers’ just fight, and to intimidate Palestinians,” Erdogan added.

The Turkish leader has regularly hosted Haniyeh, who spent much time in Turkey before the October 7 Hamas terror attacks on southern Israel.

Turkey is a vocal critic of Israel’s military operation in Gaza and often expresses support for Hamas.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry had earlier denounced the attack as “a shameful assassination.”

Germany, the EU, the US, and others have designated Hamas as a terrorist group.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani has condemned the strike that killed Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh without pinning blame or naming parties.

“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,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Sheikh Mohammed has been the public face of Qatar in negotiations related to securing a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas and the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

Qatar, along with Egypt and the US, has held several rounds of talks between Israel and Hamas representatives given the close links it has to both sides, especially Hamas, as Doha is home to much of the militant group’s exiled political bureau. Haniyeh had been living there, but was visiting Iran at the time of his death.