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Tough-Talking Haniyeh Was Seen as the More Moderate Face of Hamas 

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh speaks during a press briefing after his meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian in Tehran, Iran, March 26, 2024. (AP)
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh speaks during a press briefing after his meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian in Tehran, Iran, March 26, 2024. (AP)
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Tough-Talking Haniyeh Was Seen as the More Moderate Face of Hamas 

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh speaks during a press briefing after his meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian in Tehran, Iran, March 26, 2024. (AP)
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh speaks during a press briefing after his meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian in Tehran, Iran, March 26, 2024. (AP)

Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who was killed in Iran, was the tough-talking face of the Palestinian group's international diplomacy as war raged back in Gaza, where three of his sons were killed in an Israeli airstrike.

But despite the rhetoric, he was seen by many diplomats as a moderate compared to the more hardline members of the Iran-backed group inside Gaza.

Appointed to the Hamas top job in 2017, Haniyeh moved between Türkiye's and Qatar's capital Doha, escaping the travel curbs of the blockaded Gaza Strip and enabling him to act as a negotiator in ceasefire talks or to talk to Hamas' ally Iran.

Hamas fighters launched on Oct. 7 a raid which killed 1,200 people in Israel, according to Israeli tallies, and took another 250 or so to hold as hostages in Gaza, one of the most crowded places on earth.

Israel's response to the strike has been a military campaign that has killed more than 39,000 people inside Gaza so far, and bombed much of the enclave into rubble, according to health authorities in the territory.

In May, the International Criminal Court prosecutor's office requested arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders, including Haniyeh, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes. Israel and Palestinian leaders have dismissed the allegations.

SONS KILLED IN AIRSTRIKE

Hamas' 1988 founding charter called for the destruction of Israel, although Hamas leaders have at times offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state on all Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. Israel regards this as a ruse.

Hamas also sent suicide bombers into Israel in the 1990s and 2000s.

In 2012, when asked by Reuters if Hamas had abandoned the armed struggle, Haniyeh replied "of course not" and said resistance would continue "in all forms - popular resistance, political, diplomatic and military resistance".

Three of Haniyeh's sons - Hazem, Amir and Mohammad - were killed on April 10 when an Israeli air strike struck the car they were driving, Hamas said. Haniyeh also lost four of his grandchildren, three girls and a boy, in the attack, Hamas said.

Haniyeh had denied Israeli assertions that his sons were fighters for the group, and said "the interests of the Palestinian people are placed ahead of everything" when asked if their killing would impact truce talks.

"All our people and all the families of Gaza residents have paid a heavy price with the blood of their children, and I am one of them," he said, adding that at least 60 members of his family were killed in the war.

Yet for all the tough language in public, Arab diplomats and officials had viewed him as relatively pragmatic compared with more hardline voices inside Gaza, where the military wing of Hamas planned the Oct. 7 attack.

While telling Israel's military they would find themselves "drowning in the sands of Gaza", he and his predecessor as Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, had shuttled around the region for talks over a Qatari-brokered ceasefire deal with Israel that would include exchanging hostages for Palestinians in Israeli jails as well as more aid for Gaza.

Israel regards the entire Hamas leadership as terrorists, and has accused Haniyeh, Meshaal and others of continuing to "pull the strings of the Hamas terror organization".

But how much Haniyeh knew about the Oct. 7 assault beforehand is not clear. The plan, drawn up by the Hamas military council in Gaza, was such a closely guarded secret that some Hamas officials seemed shocked by its timing and scale.

Yet Haniyeh, had a major hand building up Hamas' fighting capacity, partly by nurturing ties with Iran, which makes no secret of its support for the group.

During the decade in which Haniyeh was Hamas' top leader in Gaza, Israel accused his leadership team of helping to divert humanitarian aid to the group's military wing. Hamas denied it.

SHUTTLE DIPLOMACY

When he left Gaza in 2017, Haniyeh was succeeded by Yahya Sinwar, a hardliner who spent more than two decades in Israeli prisons and whom Haniyeh had welcomed back to Gaza in 2011 after a prisoner exchange.

"Haniyeh is leading the political battle for Hamas with Arab governments," Adeeb Ziadeh, a specialist in Palestinian affairs at Qatar University, said before his death, adding that he had close ties with more hardline figures in the group and the military wing. "He is the political and diplomatic front of Hamas," Ziadeh said.

Haniyeh and Meshaal had met officials in Egypt, which has also had a mediation role in the ceasefire talks. Haniyeh travelled in early November to Tehran to meet Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei, Iranian state media reported.

Three senior officials told Reuters that Khamenei had told the Hamas leader in that meeting that Iran would not enter the war having not been told about it in advance. Hamas did not respond to requests for comment before Reuters published its report, and then issued a denial after its publication.

As a young man, Haniyeh was a student activist at the Islamic University in Gaza City. He joined Hamas when it was created in the First Palestinian intifada (uprising) in 1987. He was arrested and briefly deported.

Haniyeh became a protégé of Hamas' founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, who like Haniyeh's family, was a refugee from the village of Al Jura near Ashkelon. In 1994, he told Reuters that Yassin was a model for young Palestinians, saying: "We learned from him love of Islam and sacrifice for this Islam and not to kneel down to these tyrants and despots."

By 2003 he was a trusted Yassin aide, photographed in Yassin's Gaza home holding a phone to the almost completely paralyzed Hamas founder's ear so that he could take part in a conversation. Yassin was assassinated by Israel in 2004.

Haniyeh was an early advocate of Hamas entering politics. In 1994, he said that forming a political party "would enable Hamas to deal with emerging developments".

Initially overruled by the Hamas leadership, it was later approved and Haniyeh become Palestinian prime minister after the group won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 a year after Israel's military withdrew from Gaza.

The group took control of Gaza in 2007.

In 2012, when asked by Reuters reporters if Hamas had abandoned the armed struggle, Haniyeh replied "of course not" and said resistance would continue "in all forms - popular resistance, political, diplomatic and military resistance".

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Baby Freezes to Death Overnight in Gaza as Israel, Hamas Trade Accusations of Ceasefire Delays

Hundreds of displaced people are experiencing a shortage of blankets and warm clothing, little wood for fires and tents have grown increasingly threadbare over months of heavy use, according to aid workers and residents. (AP video shot by Mohammad Jahjouh; Production by Wafaa Shurafa)
Hundreds of displaced people are experiencing a shortage of blankets and warm clothing, little wood for fires and tents have grown increasingly threadbare over months of heavy use, according to aid workers and residents. (AP video shot by Mohammad Jahjouh; Production by Wafaa Shurafa)
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Baby Freezes to Death Overnight in Gaza as Israel, Hamas Trade Accusations of Ceasefire Delays

Hundreds of displaced people are experiencing a shortage of blankets and warm clothing, little wood for fires and tents have grown increasingly threadbare over months of heavy use, according to aid workers and residents. (AP video shot by Mohammad Jahjouh; Production by Wafaa Shurafa)
Hundreds of displaced people are experiencing a shortage of blankets and warm clothing, little wood for fires and tents have grown increasingly threadbare over months of heavy use, according to aid workers and residents. (AP video shot by Mohammad Jahjouh; Production by Wafaa Shurafa)

A baby girl froze to death overnight in Gaza, while Israel and Hamas accused each other of complicating ceasefire efforts that could wind down the 14-month war.

The 3-week old baby was the third to die from the cold in Gaza's tent camps in recent days, doctors said, deaths that underscore the squalid conditions, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crammed into often ramshackle tents after fleeing Israeli offensives.

Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

The offensive has caused widespread destruction and displaced some 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are packed into tent camps along the coast as the cold, wet winter sets in. Aid groups have struggled to deliver food and supplies and say there are shortages of blankets, warm clothing and firewood, The AP reported.

Israel has increased the amount of aid it allows into the territory, reaching an average of 130 trucks a day so far this month, up from around 70 a day in October and November. Still, the amount remains well below than previous months and the United Nations says it is unable to distribute more than half the aid because Israeli forces deny permission to move within Gaza or because of rampant lawlessness and theft from trucks.

The father of 3-week-old Sila, Mahmoud al-Faseeh, wrapped her in a blanket to try and keep her warm in their tent in the Muwasi area outside the town of Khan Younis, but it wasn't enough, he told The Associated Press.

He said the tent was not sealed from the wind and the ground was cold, as temperatures on Tuesday night dropped to 9 degrees Celsius (48 degrees Fahrenheit.) Muwasi is a desolate area of dunes and farmland on Gaza’s Mediterranean coast.

“It was very cold overnight and as adults we couldn’t even take it. We couldn’t stay warm,” he said. Sila woke up crying three times overnight and in the morning they found her unresponsive, her body stiff.

“She was like wood,” said al-Faseeh. They rushed her to a field hospital where doctors tried to revive her, but her lungs had already deteriorated. Images of Sila taken by the AP showed the little girl with purple lips, her pale skin blotchy.

Ahmed al-Farra, director of the children’s ward at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, confirmed that the baby died of hypothermia. He said two other babies — one 3 days old, the other a month old — had been brought to the hospital over the past 48 hours after dying of hypothermia.

Meanwhile, hopes for a ceasefire looked complicated Wednesday, with Israel and the militant Hamas group that runs Gaza trading accusations of delaying an agreement. In recent weeks, the two sides appeared to be inching toward a deal that would bring home dozens of hostages held by the militants in Gaza, but differences have emerged.

Although Israel and Hamas have expressed optimism that progress was being made toward a deal, sticking points remain over the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, people involved in the talks say.

On Wednesday, Hamas accused Israel of introducing new conditions related to the withdrawal from Gaza, the prisoners and the return of displaced people, which it said was delaying the deal.

Israel's government accused Hamas of reneging on understandings that have already been reached.” Still, both sides said discussions are ongoing.

Israel’s negotiating team, which includes members from its intelligence agencies and the military, returned from Qatar on Tuesday evening for internal consultations, following a week of what it called “significant negotiations."

During its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, Hamas and other groups took about 250 people hostages and brought them to Gaza. A previous truce in November 2023 freed more than 100 hostages, while others have been rescued or their remains have been recovered over the past year.

Israel says about 100 hostages remain in Gaza — at least a third whom it believes were killed during the Oct. 7 attack or died in captivity.

Sporadic talks have taken place for a year, but in recent weeks there's been a renewed push to reach a deal.

President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office next month for his second term, has demanded the immediate release of Israeli hostages, saying on social media that if they're not freed before he is sworn in, there will be “HELL TO PAY.”

Families of the hostages are becoming increasingly angry, calling on the Israeli government for a ceasefire before Trump is sworn in.

After Israel’s high-level negotiation team returned from Doha this week, hostage families called an emergency press conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, pleading for a ceasefire and a complete end to the war.

Shir Siegel, the daughter of Israeli-American Keith Siegel, whose mother was released after more than 50 days in captivity, said every delay could endanger their lives. “There are moments when every second is fateful, and this is one of those moments,” she said.

Families of the hostages marked the first night of Hannukah with a candle lighting ceremony in Tel Aviv as well as by the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

The agreement would take effect in phases and include a halt in fighting, an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, and a surge in aid to the besieged Gaza, according to Egyptian, Hamas and American officials. The last phase would include the release of any remaining hostages, an end to the war and talks on reconstruction.