West Bank Palestinians Say Haniyeh Killing Will Not Affect Fight with Israel

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank condemned the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas who was killed in Iran on Wednesday, but said it would have little effect on the movement.
Israeli officials have not so far claimed responsibility for the killing of Haniyeh, who had been in Tehran for the inauguration of the new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, and there has been no official comment from the government, said Reuters.
But few doubted that Haniyeh, the public face of Hamas who took the top job in 2017, was the latest in a string of Hamas leaders to have been killed by Israel.
"We woke up this morning to a tragedy for the Palestinian people," said Fawzi Nassar, a resident of the southern city of Hebron.
"He is not the first one they assassinated - there were many leaders in the past like Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and others, but that will not affect our steadfastness," he said, referring to the founder of Hamas who was killed by an Israeli helicopter gunship in 2004.
Palestinian factions called for a day of protest and a general strike in the West Bank and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah faction is a political rival to Hamas, condemned the killing, which Fatah called a "heinous and cowardly act".
Although the West Bank is under the nominal leadership of the Palestinian Authority, run by Fatah, opinion polls show support for Hamas is strong.
"His assassination will not affect the party because the party is not a new one," said Suheil Nasrelddin, a resident of Hebron. "They have a lot of leaders, even the youngest child is a leader."
The West Bank has been in turmoil since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel which sparked Israel's invasion of Gaza, with regular raids by Israeli forces in cities across the area.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, many of them armed militants but also many stone-throwing youths or unarmed protesters and uninvolved civilians.
"The Israeli crime of assassinating Ismael Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, will not break the Palestinian resistance or the Palestinian people's determination to achieve our freedom," said Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian politician who heads the Union Of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees.
"Of course it will escalate the situation," he said. "And this is what Netanyahu wants, he knows that the end of this war is the end of his political career."

The Sudanese army said on Tuesday that it had completely pushed its rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) out of Khartoum state, nearly two months after it regained control of the capital's center.

"Khartoum state is completely free of rebels," army spokesman Nabil Abdallah said in a statement, referring to the RSF.

The war in Sudan broke out in April 2023 when the military and the RSF turned against each other in a struggle for power.

Their battles spread from Khartoum to around the country. At least 20,000 people have been killed, but the real toll is probably far higher.

Nearly 13 million people have fled their homes, 4 million of them streaming into neighboring countries. Half the population of 50 million faces hunger.

West Bank Palestinians Say Haniyeh Killing Will Not Affect Fight with Israel