When one leader goes, another comes: Hamas leader Haniya’s last words
Last Updated on August 4, 2024 7:49 am
Ismail Haniya, the head of the Palestinian independence organization Hamas, seemed to know about the approaching death. So Ismail Hania said some time before his death, if one leader leaves, another will rise.
Last Tuesday (July 30) Ismail Hania went to Tehran, the capital of Iran. He participated in the swearing-in ceremony of the country’s new president, Masud Pezheshkin. Then that day at around 2 am local time, the political head of Hamas, Haniya, was killed. At this time, one of his bodyguards was also killed.
The Hamas leader spoke with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hours before he was killed at a guest house in Tehran, Iran. There Haniya recited a verse from the Holy Quran about life, death, immortality and resistance and said, ‘Allah gives life and causes death. He is aware of everything. If one leader leaves, another will emerge.’
This televised comment was captured during a conversation with Haniya Khamenei.
His philosophy of life was influenced by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas. He advocated jihad against Israel. Although Yassin was killed by Israel in 2004, Hamas continued to grow stronger as a military force.
In an interview with Reuters in Gaza in 1994, Hania said Yassin taught them that Palestinians could only regain their occupied homeland through struggle.
Hania said that she learned from Sheikh Yasin the love of Islam and self-sacrifice for this Islam and not bowing down to tyrants and dictators.
To Palestinian supporters, Haniyeh and Hamas leaders represent the path to freedom from Israeli occupation.
Haniya became a prominent figure in international diplomacy. His three sons and four grandchildren and at least 60 relatives were killed in an Israeli airstrike last April.
At that time, Hania said, “The blood of the children of the Palestinian people is more important to me than the blood of my children.” All the martyrs of Palestine are my children.
He also said, we dream of the future in return for the blood of the martyrs and the pain of the injured. It is in return for their sacrifice that we dream of freedom for our people.
Hania, who was appointed to the top position of Hamas in 2017, bypassed travel bans in besieged Gaza and went to Turkey and Qatar’s capital, Doha. He was given the opportunity to act as a mediator in ceasefire talks or to talk with Iran, a ally of Hamas.
After the attack by Hamas fighters in Israel on October 7, 1,200 people were killed and 250 people were taken hostage, Haniya told Arab countries that they (Arab countries) will not end the conflict with the agreement they signed to normalize relations with Israel.
Israel’s response was a military campaign that has so far killed nearly 40,000 people inside Gaza and bombed much of the enclave.
Adeeb Ziadeh, an expert on Palestinian affairs at Qatar University, said Hamas was an ideology and killing Haniya would not end the group.
He said that whenever Hamas loses a leader, another leader comes in, sometimes stronger in his performance and in fulfilling Hamas’ policies.
One of the masterminds of the October 7 attacks, Mohammed Deif, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza last month, Israel said on Thursday.
Saleh al-Auri, one of the founders of Hamas’ military wing, was killed in January 2024 in an Israeli drone strike in a southern suburb of Beirut.
Source: Reuters, TRT World