Ismail Haniyeh’s death fuels fears of conflagration and sparks outrage

Hamas and Iran have vowed to avenge the death of Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed Wednesday in Tehran. Without mentioning the Hamas leader, Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel had dealt “severe blows” to its “enemies” in recent days. The international community is concerned about an escalation in the Middle East, and the continuation of negotiations for a ceasefire is being questioned. Pro-Palestinian rallies have broken out in several countries, including Tehran, Rabat, Tunis and Istanbul.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed on Wednesday July 31 in Tehran in a strike blamed on Israel by the Palestinian Islamist movement and Iran, which have vowed to avenge his death, raising fears of a flare-up in the region in the midst of the war in Gaza.

This assassination, as well as an Israeli strike which killed the military leader of Lebanese Hezbollah, Fouad Chokr, near Beirut on Tuesday, raise fears of contagion of the war which has been raging for almost ten months in the Gaza Strip between Israel, sworn enemy of Iran, and Hamas, supported by Tehran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday night that Israel had dealt “severe blows” to its “enemies” in recent days, explicitly mentioning the killing of Fouad Shokr. According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, he was notably responsible for the suicide bombing “that killed 241 American marines in Lebanon in 1983.”

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“We have eliminated the right arm of Hassan Nasrallah,” the leader of Hezbollah, “who was directly responsible for the massacre of children,” he said on television, referring to the deaths of 12 children and teenagers killed Saturday by a strike on the part of the Syrian Golan occupied and annexed by Israel. The Lebanese armed Islamist movement denied any involvement in the strike.

Israel, however, has not commented on the attack in Tehran.

“Dangerous escalation” feared

After the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, who was living in exile in Qatar, at the age of 61, Iranian officials unanimously pointed the finger at Israel, which was threatened with “severe punishment” by the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

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The attack “will not go unanswered,” said Moussa Abou Marzouk, a Hamas official.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday expressed alarm at the attacks in Beirut and Tehran, which “represent a dangerous escalation,” his spokesman said.

Many members of the UN Security Council, which met urgently on Wednesday at Iran’s request, expressed concern about the risks of a conflagration in the Middle East. “We fear that the region is on the brink of total war,” declared Japanese deputy ambassador Shino Mitsuko, while Slovenia described a region “in the eye of the storm.”

The United States, Israel’s main ally, said the strikes in Tehran and Beirut were “not helping” to reduce regional tensions, while saying there was no sign of an “imminent” escalation in the Middle East.

Continuation of negotiations questioned

Ismail Haniyeh had attended the inauguration ceremony of Iranian reformist President Massoud Pezeshkian in Tehran on Tuesday, whose country is a sworn enemy of Israel and an ally of Hamas and Hezbollah. According to Iranian media, he “was in one of the special residences for war veterans in northern Tehran when he was killed by an aerial projectile” at around 2 a.m. local time (2230 GMT Tuesday).

Ismail Haniyeh will be buried in Doha on Friday after an official funeral in Tehran on Thursday. Iran has declared three days of mourning.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the United States was neither “informed” nor “involved” in the death of Ismail Haniyeh.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007 and which it considers a terrorist organisation, along with the United States and the European Union, after the unprecedented attack carried out by the Palestinian movement on Israeli soil on 7 October.

Qatar, the main mediator in Gaza truce negotiations, has questioned whether to continue mediation. “How can mediation succeed when one side assassinates the other side’s negotiator?” asked Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani.

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Antony Blinken, for his part, stressed that “the imperative of obtaining a ceasefire (…) remained.”

Israelis have expressed concern for the hostages held in Gaza after the death of Ismail Haniyeh. “This jeopardizes the possibility of an agreement” for their release, said Anat Noy, a resident of Haifa in the north.

Protests against Israel’s actions

The Palestinian Authority, China, Russia, Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Algeria, among others, condemned Haniyeh’s assassination, as did Yemen’s Houthis and Hezbollah, two movements that, along with Hamas, are part of what Iran calls the “axis of resistance” against Israel.

The Houthi rebels have announced “three days of mourning”, according to their official agency Saba.

Several hundred protesters gathered in Tehran’s Palestine Square on Wednesday, waving Palestinian flags and shouting “death to Israel, death to America,” according to AFP correspondents.

In Jordan, more than 2,000 people demonstrated Wednesday evening near the Israeli embassy in Amman to protest Haniyeh’s assassination.

There were nearly a thousand demonstrators gathered in Rabat (Morocco) and more than 400 in Tunis (Tunisia) in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to denounce the death of the leader of Hamas.

In Turkey, thousands of people marched in Istanbul on Wednesday, with a large crowd gathering outside the imposing mosque in the conservative Fatih district, chanting messages hostile to Israel.

A pro-Palestinian demonstration after the death of Ismail Haniyeh, in Istanbul (Turkey), Wednesday July 31, 2024. © Kemal Aslan, AFP

With AFP