How Israel has killed peace hopes in Palestine over the years

On July 31, Ismail Haniyeh, a top Hamas leader, and a key figure in ceasefire negotiations, was assassinated by Israel in Tehran, Iran.

His killing has heightened concerns that prospects for peace will be jeopardised in the nearly 10-month-long war in Gaza.

It has also revealed a pattern of Israeli assassinations of top Hamas leaders carried out during critical junctures for peace.

Yahya Ayyash (1996)

Nicknamed “The Engineer”, Ayyash was one of Hamas’s top military strategists. He was assassinated on January 5, 1996, when his booby-trapped cellular phone exploded in his hands, in what was then PLO-ruled Gaza.

It was the third year of the Oslo Accord, an agreement signed by Palestinian and Israeli leaders at the White House to initiate a process leading to a two-state solution that would finally bring an end to decades of conflict.

In the months following the assassination, Hamas retaliated with four suicide attacks in nine days, killing 59 people in three cities across Israel.

Ahmed Yassin (2004)

Ahmed Yassin was the co-founder and spiritual leader of Hamas. Israel assassinated him in a helicopter missile strike on March 22, 2004 as he left a mosque in Gaza City, a year after a failed attempt.

About a year before his assassination, on December 1, 2003, Yassin had stated that Hamas was prepared to enter into a long-term truce with Israel.

“But the enemy (...) must pull out from all the Palestinian territories and (...) remove all shapes and kinds of occupation,” Yassin had declared on December 1, 2003.

More than 200,000 Palestinians attended Yassin’s funeral procession, with widespread protests over his death triggered across the broader Muslim world.

Baha Abu al Ata (2019):

Baha Abu al Ata was a senior commander of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad (PIJ). He was assassinated by an Israeli strike in Gaza City on November 12, 2019.

Netanyahu claimed that al Ata was “plotting attacks,” against Israel and described him as a “ticking bomb”, in a statement following his assassination.

Ata's killing in his Gaza home presented a new challenge for Hamas, which had largely attempted to maintain a truce with Israel since the 2014 war. It also triggered clashes between Israeli occupation forces and Palestinians, with PIJ firing hundreds of rockets from Gaza into Israel in retaliation.

Ismail Haniyeh (2024):

Assassinated by Israel on July 31, Haniyeh was elected political leader of Hamas and the Palestinian resistance group’s key operator on the international stage.

Described by Joost Hiltermann, the director of International Crisis Group's Middle East programme as a “bridging figure” and a “pragmatic” leader “who wanted to get a deal done”, Haniyeh played a critical role in talks with mediators in Qatar, where Hamas's political office has been based since 2012.

"Even before the killing of Haniyeh, in the last couple of days and weeks, the Israeli government, Netanyahu in particular, didn't give the mediators any confidence," said Middle East expert Andreas Krieg, a military analyst and senior lecturer in security studies at King's College London.

Haniyeh’s killing has drawn fears of wider escalation in the Middle East shaken by Israel's war in Gaza, which has claimed almost 40,000 lives.