The killing of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, on Wednesday upends ceasefire talks at a critical moment and, in the longer term, risks empowering more hard-line figures within the movement, according to experts and officials monitoring the group.
Haniyeh was Hamas’ diplomat. He led its operations from exile in Qatar. Through 10 months of war, he was the group’s negotiator on the global stage, tasked with brokering a deal acceptable to the group in exchange for pausing fighting and releasing scores of Israeli hostages.
“In the short-term, it is pretty clear that it will, at best, postpone the ceasefire negotiations indefinitely,” said Erik Skare, a researcher at the University of Oslo and author of a forthcoming book on Palestinian militancy. “Hamas would have little interest negotiating with Israel after the latter assassinated one of its most senior members.”
Israel has remained quiet about the assassination but is widely seen to be responsible.
Political analysts described Haniyeh’s death in Tehran as a significant blow but cautioned that earlier assassinations of figures with greater political or symbolic influence had not substantially weakened the group. Israel killed a series of Hamas political and military figures in 2003. By the end of the following year, it had assassinated the group’s founder and Haniyeh’s mentor, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and then-leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi.
“While his death will undoubtedly leave an impact, this wound will soon be healed,” Suhail al-Hindi, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said of Haniyeh’s killing.
Haniyeh, who had already survived multiple attempts on his life, is likely to be swiftly replaced, said Azmi Keshawi, Crisis Group’s Gaza researcher. “Hamas is a well-constructed movement. They have lost their biggest leaders before, and a replacement is always ready,” he said.
The movement’s leadership structure is horizontal, meaning that other senior figures “have the experience and authority to step in,” said Jeroen Gunning, a professor of Middle Eastern politics and conflict studies at King’s College London and the author of Hamas in Politics. “There’s an obsession within Israel with assassinating top Hamas leaders because it’s a symbolic act, but it doesn’t do very much here in terms of the conflict overall, except push back a ceasefire and a two-state solution.”
It is unclear how many of Hamas’s leaders on October 7 – the day Hamas militants attacked southern Israel and killed about 1200 people – remain alive. Yehiya Sinwar, the group’s leader in Gaza, is thought to be running operations from the enclave’s extensive tunnel network. On July 13, an Israeli strike targeted the head of Hamas’s military wing, Mohammed Deif, and it is publicly unknown whether he survived. Scores of Palestinians were killed during that attack.
At least 39,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war. More than 100 Israeli hostages have been released from Gaza, but dozens more remain in captivity, with their fates uncertain.
The group’s leadership structure is divided between those inside Gaza and those on the outside. Haniyeh stepped down as Hamas’s leader in Gaza in 2017 to assume his latest position. Since then, Sinwar, who is considered more ideologically hard-line, has been the driving force behind policy inside Gaza and was among the masterminds of the October 7 assault that caught some Hamas leaders abroad off guard.
Traditionally, Hamas has used internal elections to select political leaders. “It’s not entirely clear how much of the process they have been famous for is still intact, or whether different wings in different places communicate as fully as they did before. But Hamas has a long history of holding elections in very adverse circumstances, including when they have been in the prisons,” Gunning said.
A key question now is which camp Haniyeh’s replacement will hail from. Haniyeh “was one of the moderate figures within Hamas, compared to the other, hawkish leaders or personalities,” said Mukhaimer Abu Saada, a political scientist who fled Gaza for Egypt late last year.
“The assassination of Haniyeh also matters because it potentially alters the power dynamics within Hamas, and not in favour of those desiring a ceasefire or a two-state solution,” Skare said. “Much depends on who takes Haniyeh’s place in the short, and then long term, after internal elections.”
After nine months of war, the Hamas-run Government remains a key source of civil authority across the Gaza Strip - a testament to the group’s reach and resiliency, and a reflection of the limits of the military campaign aimed at eradicating it.
Israel’s campaign to eliminate the group has been ruinous for Gaza. The enclave’s ability to feed itself has been destroyed, and famine is looming. Every family has seen loved ones killed in the war.
On Wednesday, Palestinians in Gaza described mixed feelings at the news of Haniyeh’s killing. Some Gazans were angry at senior Hamas leadership for provoking the war and in some cases not sharing the suffering of the people. Some said they felt exhausted and depressed about a conflict that shows no signs of abating.
Many Palestinians who voted for Hamas in 2006 - the last legislative elections to be held in Gaza - did so to protest the ruling Fatah party, which was widely viewed as corrupt and incompetent. Haniyeh was the group’s first Prime Minister.
Karima Hassan, 63, said she had voted for Hamas but had been disappointed when its promise of reforms yielded little change. “They just brought us from one war to another,” she said.
Some Palestinians fretted that Haniyeh’s death would empower more hard-line figures at the top of the party.
“I feel sad because Haniyeh was considered relatively balanced,” said Fadi Ahmed, 41, a father of four. But mostly he was angry at Hamas leadership for provoking the war. His children had all been severely wounded in the war, he said. “The fire in my heart will not cool down except with killing of their leaders outside Gaza, so that they taste the pain of loss that I have been living for seven months,” he said.
The assassination, experts said, was unlikely to bring an end to that suffering.
“I’m very much sure that ceasefire negotiations will be on hold for some time,” Abu Saada said. “No one will dare from Hamas to speak about a ceasefire with Israel right now, or in the very near future.”
Residential areas in both countries have suffered from deadly strikes in the conflict.