The martyr, the mujahid, the great national leader: Ismail Haniyeh
The martyr leader Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh was born on January 23, 1963 in Gaza, in the al-Shati refugee camp. His family had taken refuge there, forced from the village of Al-Joura, near the city of Ashkelon, occupied in the 1948 Nakba.
He attended primary and secondary school in the schools of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza, and obtained his high school diploma from Al-Azhar Institute. He then attended the Islamic University in Gaza and graduated with a degree in Arabic literature in 1987.
The political and national role of the great mujahid Ismail Haniyeh emerged during his university studies. He was an active member of the Student Union Council, in addition to his interest in athletics. He held several positions at the Islamic University of Gaza before becoming its dean in 1992. In 1997, he assumed the presidency of the office of the founding Sheikh of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, the martyr leader Ahmed Yassin, after his release from Zionist prisons.
Haniyeh was arrested by the “Israeli” occupation authorities for the first time in 1987, shortly after the outbreak of the great Palestinian Intifada. He remained in prison for 18 days, then was arrested for the second time in 1988 for six months. Haniyeh entered Zionist prison again in 1989 on charges of belonging to the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and spent three years in prison. He was then exiled to the Marj al-Zuhour area in southern Lebanon with fellow cadres of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but returned to the Gaza Strip after spending a year in exile and became head of the Islamic Bloc at the Islamic University of Gaza.
Haniyeh was subjected to assassination attempts and attacks on multiple occasions. His hand was injured on September 6, 2003, following an occupation raid that targeted some Hamas leaders, including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. He was prevented from entering Gaza after returning from an international tour on October 14, 2006.
His convoy was also fired upon in Gaza on October 20, 2006, during an armed clash between Fatah and Hamas, and Israel targeted his home in Gaza with shelling in multiple aggressions on Gaza in attempts to assassinate him.
Haniyeh was known for his commitment to Palestinian national unity and the unity of the Hamas movement, and on May 6, 2017, the Hamas Shura Council chose him as head of its political bureau.
On January 31, 2018, the US administration included Haniyeh’s name on the “Specially Designated Terrorist” list. This decision came as part of the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the enemy entity, issued by then-US President Donald Trump.
On November 10, 2023, Israeli occupation aircraft bombed Haniyeh’s granddaughter while she was in a school that was sheltering displaced people due to the ongoing Zionist genocide. About 10 days later, Haniyeh’s eldest grandson was martyred after an Israeli air strike on his house.
On April 1, 2024, Israeli police arrested one of Haniyeh’s sisters near the city of Bir al-Saba in the Naqab on charges including communicating with members of the Hamas movement. The Israeli occupation also assassinated three of Ismail Haniyeh’s sons on April 10, 2024, who were in a car with five of their children to perform family visits and congratulate their neighbours on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr.
The Israeli army announced that the killing of Haniyeh’s sons was an assassination operation planned with the internal security service (Shabak).
He was assassinated by the Zionist enemy today, Wednesday, July 31, 2024, during his visit to the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Glory to the martyrs
Shame on the Zionists and their cowardly agents.
Victory to our Palestinian people!