Ismail Haniyeh, a Top Hamas Leader, Is Dead at 62

Ismail Haniyeh, a founding member of Hamas who rose to lead the Palestinian militant group’s political office from exile, was killed while visiting Iran on Wednesday. He was 62.

Mr. Haniyeh played a central role in Hamas’s evolution over the past two decades as it seized control of Gaza by force and then led the territory for 17 years, through multiple wars with Israel. More recently, he managed high-stakes negotiations and diplomacy for Hamas, including the ongoing indirect cease-fire talks with Israel seeking to end the war in Gaza.

He was assassinated in the Iranian capital, Tehran, where he was attending the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian. He was there along with other senior members of Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance” — allied forces that include Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

He had already survived a previous assassination attempt in 2003, when Israel targeted him and his mentor, the spiritual leader and a founder of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin. The Israeli military assassinated Mr. Yassin the next year.

“You don’t have to cry,” Mr. Haniyeh told a crowd gathered outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City at the time. “You have to be steadfast, and you have to be ready for revenge.”

Mr. Haniyeh was killed hours after meeting with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Tuesday. At the time of his death, Mr. Haniyeh was staying at a guesthouse affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The overseas arm of the Guards, the Quds Force, is responsible for overseeing and nurturing the allied armed groups outside of Iran like Hamas.

Iran and Hamas blamed Mr. Haniyeh’s killing on Israel, which had no immediate comment. Israel has vowed to kill Hamas’ leaders and defeat the group in the wake of the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, which set off the war in Gaza.

It was unclear how much control he and the other exiled Hamas political leaders exercised over the group’s leaders in Gaza and its military wing, which carried out the Oct. 7 attacks.

Hamas’s leadership was blamed by some Palestinian residents of Gaza for helping to start a war that led to an unprecedented Israeli military offensive that brought massive death and destruction across the entire territory. Gazans have also blamed leaders for being too slow to agree to a cease-fire deal. Now Mr. Haniyeh’s assassination threatens to further set back prospects for a truce.

Mr. Haniyeh was born in 1962 in the Shati refugee camp north of Gaza City to Palestinian parents who in 1948 had been permanently displaced from their home in what is now the Israeli city of Ashkelon in what Palestinians call the nakba, or catastrophe. He studied Arabic literature at the Islamic University of Gaza.

In 1988, he was among Hamas’s founding members. Israel arrested him for participating in the first intifada, or uprising, against the Israeli occupation. That was during Israel’s decades-long occupation of Gaza, and he served several sentences in Israeli prisons in the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1992, Mr. Haniyeh was among about 400 Palestinians expelled by Israel from their homes in Gaza to southern Lebanon, which was then occupied by the Israeli military.

At the time, Israel said that the forced exile of hundreds of leaders of Palestinian armed groups was meant to strike hard against Hamas. But it had undesired effects.

“It shed international light on the movement,” said Tareq Baconi, the author of “Hamas Contained” and president of the board of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, a think tank. “I think surprisingly for Israeli authorities who thought they were being effective by exiling these leaders, it actually shed more light on them.”

It also gave the newly established Hamas an international platform, and many of the group’s leaders who would later emerge were part of those forced into exile from Gaza, he said.

Mr. Haniyeh once served as personal secretary to Mr. Yassin, who aided the younger man’s ascent to power in Gaza, and in 2006, he became the leader of Hamas in the territory.

That same year, Hamas won legislative elections against Fatah, a rival Palestinian faction.

Mr. Haniyeh briefly served as prime minister of a Palestinian unity government with other factions. But it was dissolved after months of tensions that erupted into armed conflict between the groups. Hamas routed Fatah forces from Gaza and forcibly seized control of the territory.

The group went on to rule Gaza with an authoritarian hand, tolerating little dissent.

Mr. Haniyeh moved to Qatar in 2017, when he was named the Hamas political leader. Inside Gaza, he was succeeded by Yahya Sinwar, who is considered one of the chief architects of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. At the time of his move, Hamas was trying to soften its public image as it jockeyed for influence both with Palestinians and the international community.

Living in exile, Mr. Haniyeh shuttled regularly between Qatar and Turkey.

At first, Mr. Haniyeh was seen as a leader who could not rise to the military capabilities of Mr. Sinwar or the diplomatic charisma of Khaled Meshal, a former chief of the group’s political office, Mr. Baconi said. But he was not overshadowed.

Mr. Haniyeh was “someone who was politically savvy and was able to engage in sort of playing the diplomatic game internally within the movement and trying to carry Hamas’s strategic and military goals into the negotiations,” he said.

“He was quiet and effective,” Mr. Baconi added. “And quite a tactful leader internally within the movement and someone who could have nudged toward a cease-fire if a serious offer was on the table.”

In April, three of Mr. Haniyeh’s sons and several of his grandchildren were killed in an Israeli strike near Gaza City. Israel identified the three adult sons as Amir, Mohammad and Hazem Haniyeh and said that all three were Hamas military operatives.

In June, Hamas said that Mr. Haniyeh’s sister and her family were killed in a strike by the Israeli military on the family home in Gaza.

Mr. Haniyeh was defiant in the face of the loss, a running theme in his life.

“We shall not give in, no matter the sacrifices,” he said at the time.

Tahani Mustafa, a senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, called Mr. Haniyeh one of Hamas’s most astute diplomats. His assassination would likely extend the war in Gaza, she said.

“It’s not to say he renounced armed resistance, but at the same time, he was of the centrist moderates who thought conciliation, diplomacy were better routes to take,” Ms. Mustafa said. “In that sense, it’s a huge blow.”

In May, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court said he would seek an arrest warrant for Mr. Haniyeh, along with two other Hamas leaders and two Israeli leaders.

Karim Khan, the prosecutor, said he had “reasonable grounds to believe” that Mr. Haniyeh and the other Hamas leaders were responsible for “war crimes and crimes against humanity,” including “the killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians in attacks perpetrated by Hamas.”

In one of his last interviews, Mr. Haniyeh spoke to a Palestinian news agency on Tuesday as he toured a theme park exhibition in Tehran of replicas of landmarks from “axis of resistance” nations.

“We were filled with great pride and honor as we roamed the land of civilizations, moving from one country to another and from one state to another, with Jerusalem at its heart,” Mr. Haniyeh said as he stood in front of a replica of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.