By Sara Flounders
August 6, 2024
The International Action Center sends our great respect for the Hamas leader and martyr Ismail Haniyeh and his decades of unbending resistance to Zionist occupation.
The IAC denounces the latest Israeli-U.S. attacks in Lebanon, Iran and on Palestine. These criminal acts are a major escalation of the genocidal war on Palestine.
The martyrdom of Dr. Haniyeh, the head of the Political Bureau of Hamas and the chief Palestinian negotiator, is an egregious war crime. It will have broad consequences.
Haniyeh was in Tehran, Iran, to attend the swearing in ceremony of Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkin. The targeted assassination of Haniyeh on July 31 flows directly from the U.S. public embrace of Israeli war criminal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just days before, by President Joe Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump and both Houses of the U.S. Congress which gave him 30 standing ovations.
This outrageous act is intended to launch a far more deadly U.S. involvement in an effort to save the Israeli state from its pending collapse.
Haniyeh devoted his life to the fight for the decolonization of Palestine and died for his homeland. He was born into struggle in 1963. He was a refugee child in the Al Shati Refugee Beach Camp in northern Gaza. His parents had fled from Al-Jura, part of the Palestinian city of Majdal Asqalan, renamed Ashkelon by the Zionist occupiers, during the Nakba in 1948.
Haniyeh graduated in 1987, as the first Palestinian Uprising, the First Intifada, began. He was arrested numerous times during the uprising and exiled to Lebanon, along with hundreds of other Palestinian leaders and activists. He returned to Gaza in 1993 after the Oslo Accords and became Dean of the Islamic University in Gaza. Haniyeh was a scholar in Arabic literature.
Haniyeh was the head of the Hamas slate that won the Palestinian elections in 2006. Hamas was the largest political party and resistance force in Gaza. Haniyeh campaigned for the right to armed resistance against Israeli occupation and won overwhelming support. He became the first and only prime minister of the State of Palestine and the Palestinian National Authority.
A heroic life of sacrifice
Based on the Hamas electoral victory, Israel, the U.S. and the European Union boycotted the results of the election that they had called for and initially supported. They cut funding to Gaza, then blockaded and sanctioned Gaza to punish the entire population for their support of Haniyeh and of Hamas.
Based on Israeli and U.S. demands, President Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the elected Palestinian government in 2007. Haniyeh continued as prime minister in Gaza until 2014. In 2017, Haniyeh left Gaza to head the Hamas Political Bureau. He was responsible for international relations and the “negotiations” with the colonialists.
During the months of negotiations, Haniyeh always stressed the role of U.S. imperialism. In remembering him, media across the world raise this orientation: The United States is the “main axis” of the Israeli war on Gaza. The White House has given the green light to the Zionist regime to press ahead with its atrocities. The U.S.-backed Zionist project will fail as the path of resistance will continue.
Before murdering him, Israel had killed three of his children, four of his grandchildren, two siblings and dozens of members of his extended family. A point that Haniyeh made continually in the face of countless Israeli assassinations of Palestinian and other resistance leaders is: The assassinations of leaders will boost the strength of the resistance.
Attacks strengthen the resolve of the resistance
Other well-known quotes from Haniyeh on Israeli assassinations include:
“A movement that offers its leaders and founders as martyrs for the dignity of our people and nation will never be defeated.”
“These attacks only strengthen the resolve, resilience and unwavering determination [of the resistance]. This is the history of the resistance and the movement: following the assassination of its leaders, it became even stronger and more determined.”
Haniyeh’s assassination on Iranian soil was fully intended to provoke a response from the country that has stood firm in facing Western imperialism for decades. Iran has consistently helped the resistance of all peoples in the region. This targeted assassination is the ultimate rejection – by Israel and its U.S. and NATO sponsors – of any form of negotiations or a lasting peace in the region.
The day of his martyrdom, Ismail Haniyeh had released three points that are a realistic evaluation and prophetic description of this juncture of the class struggle in Asia:
“The Palestinian people and resistance fighters must establish their heroism and victory against Israel as the regime’s genocidal war on Gaza has reached a critical and historical stage after 300 days.”
“Palestinian resistance today stands on the front line against Western hegemony. The enemy seeks to dismantle this front line to impose its policies and dominate the region, aiming to bring the resistance to its knees.”
“This underscores the critical strategy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in supporting resistance and countering the influence of regional representations of arrogance, notably the Zionist regime.”
All quotes listed above can be found at: Press TV, posted Aug. 1. (tinyurl.com/mvdvpt5v)
