Killing of Hamas leader likely to derail Gaza peace talks, inflame tensions

Supporters of a Pakistani religious group hold posters of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh

July 31, 2024 3:06 PM PT

WASHINGTON — The killing Wednesday of top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh will likely derail urgent U.S.-led talks to stop the fighting in Gaza and open the door to a potentially ferocious response from Iran.

In an action widely blamed on Israel, Haniyeh was killed in an airstrike while in Tehran for the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Israel has not claimed responsibility, but few entities have the military capability to pull off what was apparently a precisely targeted lethal attack.

The timing of the assassination frustrated the Biden administration, which has invested enormous capital in cease-fire talks to bring at least a temporary end to the nearly 10-month-old Israel-Hamas war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington just last week. Both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris separately hammered him on the vital importance of agreeing to a cease-fire.

For months, the U.S., Qatar and Egypt have been engaged in tense and arduous negotiations with Israel and Hamas on a deal that would stop the fighting and release the hostages still being held by Hamas.

The hostages were captured in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led assault on southern Israel that killed nearly 1,200 people and triggered the current conflict. Nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory attacks in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians. The fighting has spurred a massive humanitarian crisis.

Haniyeh, who was based in exile in Qatar and headed the political wing of Hamas, was key in the cease-fire negotiations and the group’s main international interlocutor.

He was the Hamas figure who would sit with Qatari negotiators to receive the latest proposals and counterproposals from Israel, then relay them to the ultimate decision-maker, Yahya Sinwar, head of the Hamas military wing and believed to be in hiding in deep tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip. Then Haniyeh would relay Sinwar’s response back to negotiators.

Both the Israeli side and Hamas have put up obstacles to impede a final agreement, negotiators say. Hamas has wanted agreement to a permanent cease-fire, while Israel has wanted to reserve the right to resume bombardments.

U.S. officials Wednesday were urgently trying to prevent talks from breaking down altogether. Though a short-term suspension seems all but certain, U.S. officials said they believe talks will eventually resume, especially because there are lower-level leaders in Hamas who want a cease-fire despite Sinwar’s resistance.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spent much of the day in brief but pointed phone calls with Arab allies, particularly the Qataris, in an effort to get talks back on track. The Qataris have not yet threatened to end their mediation role, but voiced displeasure over Haniyeh’s killing.

“Political assassinations & continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Qatar’s Prime and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani said on the social media platform X. “Peace needs serious partners & a global stance against the disregard for human life.”

U.S. officials also warned of more conflict exploding across the Middle East.

“Right now, the path that the region is on is toward more conflict, more violence, more suffering, more insecurity,” Blinken said Thursday in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. “It is crucial that we break the cycle, and that starts with a ceasefire. ... To get there it also first requires all parties to stop taking any escalatory actions.”

Blinken said the U.S. had no role in or advance knowledge of the assassination.

Netanyahu, however, has long vowed to wipe out Hamas.

“Israel is trying to show its own people that it’s open season on Hamas leaders,” said Daniel Byman, a veteran researcher on the Middle East and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Pointing to the killing of senior people is one way to say ‘we are winning.’”

But experts say “winning” against Hamas is an elusive goal. And Hamas leaders quickly said Wednesday that no killings will stop its fight against Israel.

“Hamas and the resistance are following a clear strategy, that was laid through multiple institutions,” said senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya in a news conference after the assassination. “It shall not be erased either by martyrdom or the death of a leader or 10 leaders. Whoever will carry the flag after Commander Ismail Haniyeh will walk the same path.”

That the assassination took place in Tehran — hours after an inauguration ceremony with some 110 foreign delegates amid heightened security — infuriated Iranian officials.

“The criminal, terrorist Zionist regime martyred our dear guest in our territory and has caused our grief, but it has also prepared the ground for a severe punishment,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in response Wednesday.

“Following this bitter, tragic event which has taken place within the borders of the Islamic Republic, it is our duty to take revenge.”

Further exacerbating regional tensions was Israel’s drone strike Tuesday on a high-ranking Hezbollah commander in a residential building in Beirut that killed seven people — including two women and two children — and wounded 78, Lebanese officials said.

The attack, which left the building half destroyed in a Hezbollah-dominated neighborhood in a suburb of the Lebanese capital, may constitute a red line for Hezbollah. The group has threatened to bomb Israeli cities if Israel struck Lebanese cities.

The widening cross-border violence heightened fears that the Gaza conflict will ignite a broader Mideast war.

In Israel, reaction was mixed. While there was little outrage at the assassination of one of Hamas’ political leaders, many braced for the retaliatory fallout. There was particular anxiety among the hostages’ families who questioned Israel’s timing of the attack and feared another possible doorway to freedom for their relatives was now closed.

Longtime observers of Israeli politics blame Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders for effectively boosting the profile of radical Hamas over the more moderate Palestinian Authority and the Fatah party that leads it — both of which, unlike Hamas, recognized Israel’s right to exist and advocate for two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side.

Eliminating Haniyeh put the more extremist Sinwar “more at the center of gravity,” said Sarah Parkinson, a political scientist and international studies professor at Johns Hopkins University.

“Assassinations can cause friction, disarray, competition [in the targeted group],” she said, but they can also serve as “a way of elevating more extreme adversaries.”

Wilkinson reported from Washington and Bulos from Beirut.