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August 2, 2024 - 4:00pm
The Guardian‘s obituary of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, who was recently assassinated in Tehran, labeled him a ‘politician’ rather than a terrorist, despite him leading a proscribed terrorist organization.
In the tribute, Haniyeh was described as ‘burly and genial in demeanor’ and a ‘keen soccer player and devout Muslim’. Having lived in Doha, Qatar since 2017, he was the leader of the 15-member political bureau that runs Hamas.
Haniyeh led Hamas — of which The Guardian says ‘Europe and the US called [it] a prohibited terrorist group’ — to political victory in the 2006 legislative elections in Gaza. In the same year, ‘renegade Palestinian commandos’ killed two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped a third, sparking an Israeli invasion which The Guardian says ‘hardened’ Haniyeh’s ideological stance. ‘We will never recognize the usurper Zionist government and will continue our jihad-like movement until Jerusalem’s liberation,’ he said.
He was jailed by Israel three times after 1989. Haniyeh was then deported to Lebanon in 1992 with ‘415 fellow Hamas activists where they learned suicide bombing techniques from Hezbollah, which they used against Israeli civilians from 1994 onwards.’ In 1993, Hamas rejected the Oslo accords and accused Yasser Arafat, head of the PLO, of conspiring with the ‘Zionist enemy’.
Yet, there is a wide consensus that he was more ‘moderate’ than his fellow Hamas officials and members. In 2007, he was instrumental in the release of the BBC journalist Alan Johnston when he was taken hostage by an Islamist group. Haniyeh went on to gain a doctorate, become dean of the Islamic University and chair Gaza’s Islamic Society Club. In 2018, the US State Department designated him a ‘terrorist’.
Still, his moderate credentials are further outlined in the Guardian piece: ‘He hinted at extending a truce with Israel, eschewed ‘global terror’, equated Hamas with America’s 1776 revolutionaries, and even gave interviews to Israeli television.’ This vision is, however, contradicted in the following paragraph: ‘Yet Haniyeh still refused demands from the US, Europe, Israel and the Arab League to recognize Israel, disarm Hamas’s military wing, or abide by agreements signed by the PLO.’
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