Hamas leader assassination raises fears of regional war

The political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated today in a pre-dawn strike on his residence while he was visiting Iran’s capital Tehran. It is widely believed that Israel carried out the assassination, although the Israeli government and military have declined to comment.

Haniyeh’s killing comes as fears of a wider war in the Middle East were already escalating following an Israeli airstrike on a building in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Israel said the strike targeted Fouad Shukur, a top military commander in Hezbollah, the powerful Iranian-backed Lebanese political party and militant group.

Concern about a wider regional war has been simmering since Israel began bombarding and laying siege to the Gaza Strip following Hamas’ unprecedented attacks into Israel on 7 October last year. Israel’s war in Gaza has now been going on for almost 10 months.

Nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to health authorities in Gaza; almost the entire population of the enclave has been forcibly displaced; a severe man-made hunger crisis has pushed the population to the brink of famine; much of the life-sustaining infrastructure in the enclave has been destroyed, and aid efforts have been stymied at every turn.

On 8 October, Hezbollah began bombarding northern Israel in what it said was an effort to draw some of Israel’s forces away from the war in Gaza, beginning a cycle of tit-for-tat strikes. Through the middle of June, Hezbollah and other armed groups in Lebanon had launched around 1,250 attacks on Israel, while Israel had launched more than 6,000 attacks on Lebanon. Hezbollah has said it will stop its attacks on Israel if Hamas and Israel reach a ceasefire deal.

However, a rocket strike on 27 July killed 12 children in the town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, which were occupied by Israel from Syria in 1967 and annexed in 1981 in a move that was not internationally recognised. Israel blamed Hezbollah for the attack – a claim Hezbollah denied.

Israel said the attack targeting Shukur in Beirut was retaliation for the strike on Majdal Shams and that Shukur had been the architect of Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel since 8 October. The region was already bracing for Hezbollah’s response to Shukur’s killing when news broke that Haniyeh had been assassinated in Tehran.

Haniyeh has been the international face of Hamas for years, and he was a key figure in ceasefire negotiations with Israel. Israel vowed to hunt down Hamas’ leadership following the group’s 7 October attacks and has a long history of assassinating people it considers enemies.

Haniyeh’s killing will likely further complicate Gaza ceasefire talks, which had made little progress for months but were ongoing. He was visiting Tehran to attend the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian. It remains to be seen how Iran will respond to Haniyeh’s assassination and how Hezbollah will respond to the strike targeting one of its senior leaders.

Already, nearly 100,000 people have been displaced from southern Lebanon and more than 60,000 Israelis have been displaced from the northern border region since last October.

For more on the devastating impact a broader war would have on Lebanon, read: