Ismail Haniyeh (b. January 29, 1962 d. July 31, 2024) was the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority from 2006 to 2014, succeeding Ahmed Qurei and preceding Rami Hamdallah. He was a major leader of Hamas alongside Khaled Mashal, and he exercised prime ministerial authority in the Gaza Strip though he was dismissed by the Palestinian Authority in 2007, he was disputed until 2024. Haniyeh was regarded as a relatively moderate leader of Hamas, causing him to have a rivalry with Hamas' Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar. He assassinated in Tehran during the Israel-Hamas War.
Biography[]
Ismail Haniyeh was born on 29 January 1963 in the al-Shati refugee camp of the Gaza Strip to two Sunni Muslim refugees originally from Ashkelon, and in 1987 he graduated from the Islamic University of Gaza with a degree in Arabic literature. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood and joined the First Intifada in 1988, being imprisoned by Israel a year later. In 1992, after three years in prison, he was deported to Lebanon alongside Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, Mahmoud al-Zahar, and 400 other activists. Later, he returned home and became a dean of the Islamic university, and he became close to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin during the 1990s. In 2003 he was wounded in an Israeli Air Force bombing, but he survived and was made Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority in 2006, succeeding Ahmed Qurei. In 2007 he was dismissed from office by Mahmoud Abbas, leading to a split between Haniyeh's Hamas and Abbas' Fatah that also resulted in a war over the Gaza Strip. Haniyeh continued to exercise prime ministerial authority from 2007 to 2014 in Gaza, and in 2011 he condemned the United States' killing of Osama bin Laden, whom he saw as an Arab holy warrior. On 6 May 2017, Haniyeh replaced Khaled Mashal as chairman of Hamas' political bureau, upon which he relocated to the relative safety of Qatar. Following the start of the Israel-Hamas War in 2023, Israel declared its intention to assassinate all Hamas leaders, and three of Haniyeh's sons and three grandchildren were killed in an airstrike on Gaza in early 2024. In May 2024, the International Criminal Court's prosecutor announced his intention to apply for an arrest warrant for Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders. On 31 July 2024, Haniyeh was killed in an Israeli bombing while visiting Tehran to attend the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian. A bomb placed in his guest room months before the inauguration was detonated, killing him and his bodyguard. Yahya Sinwar succeeded him as the political leader of Hamas on 6 August 2024.