We’re starting to get some thought of how Ismail Haniyeh was killed. Early indications counsel that he and his bodyguards died when a rocket hit the home the place he was staying in Tehran.
All eyes will inevitably fall on Israel, which vowed to search out and punish all Hamas leaders following the brutal assaults of seven October, wherein round 1,200 Israelis and foreigners have been killed.
Israel usually doesn’t touch upon its operations overseas, however this assault could have adopted the identical sample as an Israeli operation which focused Iranian air defences round its nuclear facility in Natanz on 19 April.
Israeli jets are believed to have fired rockets from exterior Iranian airspace.
However whereas particulars of the assault slowly emerge, its political penalties are additionally coming into focus.
The obvious is the possible injury to fragile efforts to barter a ceasefire in Gaza.
Ismail Haniyeh could not have been in command of day-to-day occasions on the bottom in Gaza – that’s the area of the army commander Yahya Sinwar – however because the Hamas chief in exile he was a essential interlocutor in negotiations brokered by Qatar, the US and Egypt.
American officers had lately urged that ceasefire negotiations would possibly quickly succeed, though a gathering in Rome final weekend didn’t lead to a breakthrough.
However this can be very laborious to see how any progress might be made within the rapid wake of the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh.
All of which begs the query: If this was, as everybody assumes, an Israeli operation, why was it carried out?
Past the will to actual revenge on anybody related to Hamas, what was Israel hoping to realize?
Turkey’s overseas ministry has already summed up the possible response of many within the area.
“It has been revealed as soon as once more that the federal government of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has no intention of reaching peace,” it mentioned in a press release.
In Ramallah, headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, information of Haniyeh’s loss of life has been greeted with dismay.
“It’s opening the door of hell,” Sabri Saidam, deputy secretary normal of the Central Committee of the ruling social gathering, Fatah, advised the BBC.
Mr Saidam mentioned he was feeling a mix of shock and anger.
“Not solely did I really feel that Israel was concentrating on the lifetime of Ismail Haniyeh,” he mentioned, “however slightly the lifetime of any settlement within the area. Israel has killed all hopes and aspirations for an finish to hostilities.”
Fatah and Hamas have lengthy been rivals, generally bloody rivals. However Mr Saidam strongly rejected the suggestion that Fatah would possibly profit from the loss of life of the Hamas chief.
“There’s by no means been in Palestinian politics a sense that management by elimination is the best way ahead,” he mentioned.
“If something, it creates extra resentment and extra friction.”
A strike has been known as in Ramallah and throughout the West Financial institution.
Retailers are closed and a protest march being held which may very well be an ungainly second for the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.
The newest opinion ballot confirmed that Ismael Haniyeh was significantly extra well-liked than the aged Palestinian President, Mahmud Abbas.
The timing of Haniyeh’s killing suggests this was a wider a part of Israel’s threatened retaliation for the Hezbollah rocket assault that killed 12 Druze kids and younger folks within the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday – retaliation that included the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut on Tuesday.
Israel had warned that its response could be harsh.
Israeli officers usually level out that Iran is the nexus for the so-called “arc of resistance” within the Center East, which incorporates Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the West Financial institution, and the Houthis in Yemen.
After dealing a blow to Hezbollah in Beirut (and lately to the Houthis in Hodeidah), killing the Hamas chief in Iran sends an emphatic, chilling message, to the militant teams and their Iranian backers: Israel can and can come after you, wherever you might be.
