Israel carried out airstrikes on Palestinian Gaza on the day of Eid. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s three sons and four grandchildren were killed. Ismail Haniyeh is the head of the political wing of Hamas, the Palestinian independence group that controls Gaza. He himself confirmed the loss of his son and grandchildren to Al-Jazeera on Thursday.
Al-Jazeera reported, citing a Hamas-affiliated news agency in Gaza, that the attack took place in a refugee camp west of Gaza City. The three sons of Hamas leader Haniyeh, Hazem, Amir and Muhammad Ismail Haniyeh, and at least three of his grandchildren were killed.
Ismail Haniyeh is currently staying in Qatar. In a telephone call to Al-Jazeera there, he said his son was stationed in Gaza during the war.
Israel has been indiscriminately attacking Gaza and the West Bank for more than six months. Around 35,000 Palestinians have lost their lives, most of them women and children. This is not the first time that members of Hamas leader Haniyeh’s family have been killed in an Israeli attack. Another son died last February and a brother and nephew died in October. Then in November one of his grandsons was killed.
Ismail Haniyeh today visited wounded Palestinians undergoing treatment at a hospital in Doha, Qatar. It was there that he was informed that his son and grandchildren had been killed.
According to the local media of Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh’s son and grandchildren were going to a relative’s house in a civilian car on the day of Eid. Israel launched an airstrike targeting that vehicle.
A ceasefire in Gaza is being discussed in the presence of the Prime Minister of Qatar in Cairo, the capital of Egypt. Hamas participated in that discussion. Ismail Haniyeh has made it clear that the death of his sons and grandchildren will not change the position of Hamas. He said that there will be no movement of Hamas position in the ongoing ceasefire talks. If the enemy thinks that Hamas will change its position by targeting my boys when the negotiations have gained momentum and Hamas has communicated its position, they are in a delusional world. The blood of the people of our country is nothing less to me than the blood of my sons.
In ongoing talks, Hamas has demanded a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of all Israeli troops from Gaza. Apart from this, they demanded that the displaced people from the northern part of Palestine should be allowed to return home without any obstacles.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, says the war will continue until Hamas is eliminated and its hostages freed.
It should be noted that Ismail Haniyeh is the head of the political wing of Hamas. Ismail Haniyeh was at the forefront of this political and military movement of Palestinian Muslims during the rise of Hamas in the eighties of the last century. Israel sentenced him to three years in prison in 1989. Then in 1992, the Israeli authorities released Haniyeh along with several other Hamas leaders at the border between Israel and Lebanon.
After a year in exile, Ismail Haniyeh returned to Gaza. In 1997, he became the head of the office of the ideological guru of Hamas. This increased his rank in Hamas.
Ismail Haniyeh became prime minister in 2006 after Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian national elections. The government was dissolved after weeks of bloody clashes with President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party. Fatah’s operations in Gaza were wound down. Hamas takes full control of Gaza.
In 2017, Ismail Haniyeh was elected head of the political bureau of Hamas. The following year, the US designated Ismail Haniyeh as a ‘terrorist’. Ismail Haniyeh has been living in Qatar for several years.