While Israel’s apparent assassination of Hamas’ top leader – and cease-fire negotiator – Ismail Haniyeh in Iran’s capital has heightened tensions in an already tense situation, the most important lesson to be learned from this escalation is that Israel is dangerously desperate. As a result, the US is in danger of being dragged into a regional war that is neither winnable, nor supported by the American public. When asked to comment on Haniyeh’s assassination, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken peddled in plausible deniability claiming the US was not aware of or involved in the murder of Haniyeh.
This is not the first time Israel has killed top Hamas leaders. Only this past January Israeli drones killed Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut. He was Deputy Chairman of Hamas’ political bureau. The assassination of Hamas’ top political leader is only the latest in a long line of assassinations of the Palestinian leadership going back several decades. What Israel and its supporters don’t understand is that you can’t kill your way out of a moral failing – the unjust subjugation of the Palestinians.
This assassination of the head of the political bureau of Hamas, and the killing of Hezbollah’s most senior military commander, is Israel’s desperate attempt to divert attention from its huge losses in Gaza and its north, to reestablish its lost deterrence capability and to convince itself that it’s not falling apart as a society, government and state.
The country has been roiled by demonstrations over judicial reforms, over divisions among secular and religious Jews and now over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s handling of the War on Gaza approaching its tenth month. None of Israel’s stated goals of destroying Hamas, returning its captives or providing security for its citizens have been achieved – and no viable plan for how Gaza is to be administered when the war ends.
In the meantime, its military is exhausted, its weaponry and munitions damaged and depleted, its economy battered, its standing in the world at an all-time low and its political system in disarray. Recently far right Israelis overran a military base to protest the detention of soldiers arrested on allegations of raping a Palestinian prisoner. It’s but one incident of depravity in a long list of inhumane treatment of Palestinians.
Instead of some serious soul-searching Israeli leaders seem to believe that by assassinating Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas will weaken in its negotiating posture over release of Israeli captives for the thousands of Palestinians held and abused in Israeli prisons. They fail to see the Palestinian resistance for what it is – an indigenous national liberation movement.
It is ironic.
Israel assassinated Ahmed Yasin 20 years ago. A wheelchair-ridden quadriplegic, Yasin was the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas. Although sentenced to life he was released a few years earlier due to a botched Israeli assassination attempt in Amman, Jordan of the then head of Hamas’ political bureau, Khalid Mishal. Israel at the time thought it had dealt a death blow to Hamas.
In a generational span of twenty years, it is safe to say that nearly all of those Hamas fighters who burst out of Gaza into their ancestral lands on October 7th were infants and young children traumatized by Israel’s relentless onslaughts of the blockaded enclave, and inspired by the ailing quadriplegic’s martyrdom.
Ismail Haniyeh is similarly loved by Palestinians and millions around the world. Before he was killed, three of his sons had been killed and more of his direct family were killed in the latest massacre of Gaza’s civilian population. He handled their deaths with humility and dignity. He said that his family members were no less precious than the thousands of Palestinians who had lost their lives in quest of freedom from occupation.
Through his death he is setting another example of martyrdom and resistance for a new generation of Palestinian children traumatized by Israel’s civilian killing machine. Over 16,000 children have been killed since October of last year, with thousands missing and presumed dead and decaying under the rubble.
Yes, in America, most will read about Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination and consider him a terrorist. For a reality check, they should read the op-ed he penned in the Washington Post nearly two decades ago. The initial intention of the mainstream media to publish over a half dozen Hamas op-eds was ostensibly to expose the extremism of the movement – and to bolster its dwindling readership numbers. When the op-eds proved effective, the Washington Post, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times refused to publish for them again.
In those op-eds Hamas leaders consistently focused on the original injustices of 1948, yet demonstrated the movement’s pragmatism and willingness to negotiate a two-state solution based on equity and fairness. The concentrated media was determined to censor any position that did not fully support Israel’s policies of land theft and ethnic cleansing. Thus, Americans were deprived of assessing the facts for themselves.
In the 2006 Washington Post op-ed the then Prime Minister Haniyeh questioned “Surely the American people grow weary of this folly, after 50 years and $160 billion in taxpayer support for Israel’s war-making capacity – its “defense.” Some Americans, I believe, must be asking themselves if all this blood and treasure could not have bought more tangible results for Palestine if only U.S. policies had been predicated from the start on historical truth, equity and justice.”
Now, after some 70 years, over 200 billion in tax payer dollars and over 40,000 murdered Palestinians, surely Americans grow weary of the dangers a desperate Israel poses for the US and the region? Two political leaders awaiting International Criminal Court warrants for war crimes. One is dead and the other lives on with impunity. Who will reign in PM Netanyahu and his rogue state if it’s not Israel’s benefactor?
It will be the next generation of traumatized Palestinian children who will look to October 7th and its aftermath as inspiration to finally put an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Ashraf Nubani is an attorney and writer on political Islam and American foreign policy in the Middle East.
