 "Hamas ‘beehive’ leadership ensures survival despite Haniyeh’s killing")
As Hamas fiends laughed devilishly and waved rifles atop a mini truck revving up through a desert on a TV screen in a room on October 7, 2023, Ismail Haniyeh and several other men smiled and offered a prayer.
“This was Hamas chief Haniyeh’s reaction to the Hamas massacre on October 7. He’s not celebrating anymore,” US-based account Israel War Room posted on X while sharing the video.
This was Hamas chief Haniyeh's reaction to the Hamas massacre on October 7.
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) July 31, 2024
He's not celebrating anymore. 🎯 pic.twitter.com/xYsPsSNHZ3
During a speech at the funeral of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Tehran in May, he said, “The Al-Aqsa Flood [codename for the attacks] was an earthquake that struck the heart of the Zionist entity and has made major changes at the world level.”
In January 2018, the US designated Haniyeh, the president of the Hamas Political Bureau and Palestinian Authority’s former Prime Minister (PM), a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.
“Haniyeh has close links with Hamas’s military wing and has been a proponent of armed struggle, including against civilians. He has reportedly been involved in terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens. Hamas has been responsible for an estimated 17 American lives killed in terrorist attacks,” the US Embassy in Israel said in a press release.
The ICC sought Haniyeh’s arrest warrant accusing him of war crimes and crimes against humanity after the October Hamas bloodbath.
Haniyeh was nearing his end. Around 2 am on Wednesday, he and one of his bodyguards were killed by an Israeli “airborne guided projectile” at an IRGC guesthouse in Tehran after attending the inauguration of Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian on Tuesday. Israel has refused to comment on its role in the assassination.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsIt’s unclear whether he was killed by a rocket or missile. An Iranian source told the pro-Hezbollah Lebanese Al Mayadeen news site that a missile fired from another country killed Haniyeh.
Haniyeh’s assassination won’t help Israel
After the Hamas massacre, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Mossad to target the Hamas top brass, including Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar and its military wing Al Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades commander Mohammed Deif and his deputy Marwan Issa. Deif was killed in an Israeli airstrike in July and Issa in March.
The IDF and the Shin Bet officially confirm this morning The elimination of Muhammad Deif pic.twitter.com/KHQNqQFGNX
— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) August 1, 2024
Haniyeh and his family were in Israel’s crosshairs for almost two decades. Israel had earlier targeted Haniyeh and his mentor and Hamas co-founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in an airstrike in a Gaza City building in September 2003, but both survived.
In October 2023, Haniyeh lost 14 family members, including his brother and nephew, in an Israeli airstrike on his family home in Gaza City. In November, his granddaughter and eldest grandson were killed in Israeli airstrikes.
On April 10, his three sons and three grandchildren were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip. On June 25, his 10 family members, including his 80-year-old sister, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza’s al-Shati refugee camp.
Doha-based Haniyeh was the international and diplomatic face of Hamas jetting between Qatar, Egypt and Iran and had the most significant role in the Israel-Hamas hostage and ceasefire dialogue. Unlike Sinwar, Deif and Issa, Haniyeh was willing for a deal with Israel if the IDF withdrew from Gaza and also backed the two-state solution.
Assassinating Haniyeh will neither help Israel destroy Hamas nor affect the terrorist organisation’s ongoing and future operations.
Haniyeh had little to do with Hamas military operations with Sinwar calling the shots and masterminding the October 7 terrorist attack.
The initial friendship between Haniyeh and Sinwar under Yassin in the 1980s gradually eroded over the years as the former presented the moderate face of Hamas and the latter the ruthless.
Earlier, Haniyeh was the Hamas leader in Gaza and also represented it abroad. However, Sinwar was elected as the Gaza boss in the February 2017 Hamas internal elections and again in the March 2021 elections.
Hamas was increasingly getting divided with Haniyeh’s influence waning and Sinwar refusing to take orders from the political bureau and becoming closer to IRGC’s late Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani for financial and military assistance.
Haniyeh’s assassination won’t deter but make Hamas more vengeful.
Threatening Israel with an escalation, the al-Qassam Brigades issued a statement: “… The criminal assassination of the leader Haniyeh in the heart of the Iranian capital is a significant and dangerous event that shifts the battle to new dimensions and will have major repercussions across the entire region.”
It also threatened to spill Israel’s “blood in Gaza, the West Bank and within its borders—wherever our fighters reach by God’s will”.
Hydra with beehive leadership
A beehive loses around a thousand bees daily in the summer, but the loss is replaced by the queen bee, which could lay more than 1,500 eggs per day.
Hamas is a hydra with a beehive leadership structure. Once Israel eliminates the topmost leader or commander, another head grows—the second-in-command or the most capable member replaces him. Both the military and political wings have a beehive structure.
Add to list of removed: Elusive Mohammed Deif, one of founders of Hamas's military wing Qassam Brigades. Deif presumably eliminated 2 wks ago. Was terror org's military chief until his July 13 demise near city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Yahya Sinwar remains the most wanted: pic.twitter.com/llnmn5FYMM
— Two-State Solution ☜ David in SoCal 🇺🇸🇮🇱 (@alpern) July 31, 2024
Hamas is never devoid of leadership as successive Israeli assassinations have proved.
After Haniyeh’s assassination, senior Hamas member Sami Abu Zuhri said, “This assassination by the Israeli occupation of brother Haniyeh is a grave escalation that aims to break the will of Hamas and the will of our people and achieve fake goals. We confirm that this escalation will fail to achieve its objectives.”
According to the latest news reports, Haniyeh’s predecessor, Khaled Mashal, is tipped to replace him. He was appointed Hamas leader after Yassin and his successor Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantissi were eliminated in Israeli airstrikes in March and April 2004, respectively. A year after he moved to Jordan, where Mossad agents tried to assassinate him by injecting poison in 1997 on Netanyahu’s orders.
Like Haniyeh, Mashal was Hamas’s diplomatic face and represented the organisation internationally. Like his successor, the Doha-based leader also supported the October 7 attacks but had indicated the acceptance of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem for a permanent ceasefire with Israel.
Mashal eventually stepped down in 2017 as divisions surfaced in Hamas over his souring relations with Iran and his attempt to reconcile with rival Fatah’s leader and Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. In 2021, Meshaal was elected to head the Hamas office in the Palestinian diaspora.
There are also other contenders to fill Haniyeh’s post if Mashal is not elected or assassinated.
Sanwar’s name also cropped up, but Hamas won’t risk his life considering that he is Israel’s most wanted. The Butcher of Khan Younis, as he is known for his ruthlessness, Sinwar spent around 22 years in Israeli prisons. Besides, Sanwar, who established al-Majd—Hamas’s feared internal security organisation—in 1989, is a brute, not a diplomat.
Sinwar has been elusive since October 7 and is reportedly operating from inside Hamas’s maze of tunnels, which are around 350 miles long. He was last seen inside a tunnel in Khan Younis accompanied by his children in a video posted by the IDF.
BREAKING: The IDF just published footage showing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the evil mind behind the October 7 massacre, escaping in a tunnel under the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) February 13, 2024
He is accompanied with children which is a known Hamas tactic to protect the terrorists… pic.twitter.com/lbC3U8RE6P
Khalil al-Hayya, Sanwar’s deputy in Gaza, is another contender, but again, he has been an Israeli target. He survived an airstrike on his home in Gaza in 2007.
Another contender is Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau and a Hamas co-founder.
Israel has been eliminating top Hamas leaders since its formation during the First Intifada in 1987.
Yahya Ayyash, Hamas’s chief bombmaker, advanced suicide bombing and was known as ‘The Engineer’. The leader of the West Bank al-Qassam Brigades was assassinated via a cell phone bomb on January 5, 1996.
Salah Shehade, who founded the al-Qassam Brigades, was killed in an airstrike on his home in Gaza’s Al-Daraj neighbourhood on July 22, 2002.
Yassin was eliminated in a helicopter missile strike in Gaza City on March 22, 2004.
Rantisi was killed when his car was hit by a helicopter missile in Gaza City on April 17, 2004.
Adnan al-Ghoul, Hamas’s master bomber and known as the ‘Father of the Qassam’ rocket, was killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on October 21, 2004.
Nizar Rayyan, a cleric who called for renewed suicide bombings, was killed in the bombing in Jabalya refugee camp on January 1, 2009.
Ahmad al-Jabari, the de facto leader of the al-Qassam Brigades, was killed in an airstrike in Gaza on November 14, 2012.
Raed al-Attar, a top al-Qassam Brigades leader who coordinated the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal, was assassinated in an airstrike in Rafah on August 21, 2014.
Ayman Nofal, another al-Qassam co-founder and Hamas’s main security and intelligence figure, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Bureij refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, on October 17, 2023.
Saleh al-Arouri, Haniyeh’s deputy and a co-founder of al-Qassam Brigades, was killed by an Israeli drone in Dahiyeh, Beirut, on January 2, 2024.
Issa, al-Qassam’s deputy commander, was killed in an airstrike on a tunnel in central Gaza’s Nuseirat, on March 11.
Deif, the most elusive Hamas terrorist, was killed in an airstrike in Khan Yunis on July 13.
However, as Zuhri said, Hamas is “a concept and an institution and not persons. Hamas will continue on this path regardless of the sacrifices and we are confident of victory”.
There are already two important Hamas members ready to succeed Deif. First, Sinwar’s brother Muhamad, a former commander of the Khan Younis Brigade who helped in the Shalit’s abduction in 2006. Second, Izz al-Din Hadad, commander of the Gaza City Brigade, was a key conspirator in plotting the October 7 attack.
If Sinwar is assassinated, either of the two members who have been his closest aides for around 40 years will fill his position. First, Rawhi Mushtaha, a member of the political bureau in Gaza. Second, Tawfiq Abu Naim, former head of the internal security force. All three were members of the al-Majd, which executed Israeli collaborators.
According to Michael Milshtein, director of the Palestinian Studies Forum in Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Centre, most beehive members are 50-60 years old and born in refugee camps and underprivileged families with hostility towards Israel.
This explains Sinwar’s animosity towards Haniyeh. The beehive members have been on the battlefield while members like Haniyeh reached top positions through politics.
Hamas has survived the loss of its co-founders and topmost leaders in several Israeli assassinations and attempted targeted killings. Israel will probably target the replacements of Haniyeh, Deif and Issa, but more heads will grow back in their places like the Hydra.
The writer is a freelance journalist with more than two decades of experience and comments primarily on foreign affairs. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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