A brand new poster of Hamas members killed, including Ismail Haniyeh (bottom left) is put on the wall the day after the Hamas political leader was killed in a strike in Iran in the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon on July 31.Oliver Marsden/The Globe and Mail
The Middle East was on the edge of a widening war on Wednesday after the political leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas was assassinated in Tehran.
Iran immediately blamed Israel and its ally, the United States, for the targeted killing of Ismail Haniyeh, who had been living in exile in Qatar since 2017. Mr. Haniyeh, 62, was killed by what Iran’s official Fars news agency said was “a projectile from the air” that struck a private residence in Tehran one day after he attended the swearing-in ceremony of newly elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the targeting of Mr. Haniyeh was “something we were not aware of or involved in.” Speaking during a visit to Singapore, Mr. Blinken said he still hoped to “put things on a better path for more enduring peace and more enduring security.”
That was not the path the region was on Wednesday. The assassination in Tehran came just hours after an Israeli airstrike on a low-rise apartment block in Harat Hreik, a suburb of Beirut, killed at least seven people – including Fuad Shukr, a top military commander of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia. More than 80 others were injured.
Although it claimed responsibility for the attack on Harat Hreik, Israel did not immediately do so for the assassination in Tehran. In a televised speech late Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nonetheless warned his country to be ready for retaliation. “Challenging days lie ahead. Since the strike in Beirut there are threats sounding from all directions,” he said. “We are prepared for any scenario, and we will stand united and determined against any threat. Israel will exact a heavy price for any aggression against us from any arena.”
Both Hezbollah and Hamas are backed by Iran, which also wields influence over the Houthi rebel group in Yemen, as well as militias in Iraq and Syria. There were fears of a multifront counterattack after Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed that Israel would face “harsh punishment” for assassinating Mr. Haniyeh on Iranian soil. Hezbollah has separately vowed it will respond to the attack on Harat Hreik.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Iran on July 31, the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said in separate statements.
Reuters
Shortly after Mr. Netanyahu’s speech, the U.S. State Department raised its travel warning to Level 4, “Do Not Travel.” The Canadian Embassy in Beirut – which estimates there are some 45,000 to 50,000 Canadians in Lebanon, many of them dual nationals – repeated its warning to “leave Lebanon now,” warning commercial airline services could be cancelled or diverted.
In April, Iran launched an unprecedented attack on Israel involving more than 300 missiles and drones in retaliation for Israel’s bombing of an Iranian diplomatic outpost in Damascus.
Israel, with the assistance of allies including the United States, Britain, France and Jordan, shot down nearly all of the incoming projectiles and was convinced by Washington to limit its response and end the cycle of escalation.
Similar diplomacy – again aimed at averting a regionwide war – is expected in the hours and days ahead.
Israel has vowed vengeance against Hamas leaders since the group’s Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel, which left almost 1,200 Israelis dead and saw Hamas take some 250 Israelis and foreigners hostage.
Israel said Mr. Shukr, whom it described as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s “right-hand man,” had been targeted for his role in the July 27 rocket attack that killed 12 children – all members of the Druze religious minority – in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Israel’s revenge, however, seemed to push the prospects for peace in Gaza – where the Palestinian Ministry of Health says more than 39,000 people have been killed in almost 10 months of fighting – further out of view. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani – whose country has been a key mediator in ceasefire talks – said negotiations were in jeopardy after the killing of Mr. Haniyeh, who was the chief negotiator for Hamas, though final decisions are believed to have remained with Hamas military chief Yahya Sinwar, who remains in Gaza.
“How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Sheikh Abdulrahman Al Thani posted on X. More than 100 Israelis are still being held hostage in Gaza, though some are believed to already be dead.
In Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut, there were calls for revenge, not a ceasefire.
The bullet-scarred walls of the densely packed slum – home to more than 30,000 people – are lined with posters of Yasser Arafat and other “martyrs” of the struggle against Israel. Within hours of the assassination in Tehran, a group of black-clad men were gluing up new posters, adding Mr. Haniyeh to the list. In one, he is portrayed alongside Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi and Saleh al-Arouri – all former Hamas leaders assassinated by Israel.
“Anger has taken over the camp. After all, this is a political assassination, and Ismail Haniyeh represented millions of Palestinians and Arabs,” said Khaled Abu Nour, the Shatila representative for the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a leftist group that has its own small armed wing.
“People are expecting an answer from the Resistance,” the 60-year-old Mr. Abu Nour said, referring to the axis of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and other Tehran-backed militias. “The retribution has nothing to do with the position of the martyr. It will have to do with the fact Iran’s sovereignty has been violated. This will be a long war,” he predicted.
While Mr. Haniyeh, who served as Palestinian prime minister from 2006 to 2007 – before Hamas violently clashed with the rival Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas – was considered one of the more pragmatic figures in the Hamas leadership, he was also on the U.S. list of “specially designated global terrorists.”
Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ top leader in exile who landed on Israel’s hit list after the militant group staged its surprise Oct. 7 attacks, was killed in an airstrike in the Iranian capital Tehran early July 31.
The Associated Press
Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, announced in May that he was seeking the arrest of Mr. Haniyeh, Mr. Sinwar and Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Oct. 7 attacks. Mr. Khan has also issued arrest warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
In Harat Hreik, a 10-minute drive from Shatila, the mood was similar Wednesday. “War is not a solution, but you can’t show Israel that you’re afraid. You have to hit back twice as hard,” said 16-year-old Jawad Tneich, who works at a corner store a short walk from the building where Mr. Shukr was targeted. “Civilians shouldn’t die, in Lebanon or in Israel. But an eight-year-old and a 10-year-old died here. What did they do to deserve death?”
Civil Defence crews dig through the rubble of a residential building that was the target of an Israeli assassination strike in the southern suburb of Dahiyeh in Beirut, Lebanon on July 31.Oliver Marsden/The Globe and Mail
On the road outside, where the sounds of construction equipment could be heard digging at the shattered building where Mr. Shukr had been targeted, a woman in a head-to-toe black abaya said she placed her faith in Hezbollah’s leader. “The enemy is trying to scare us, but we will never be scared as long as we have Hassan Nasrallah,” 40-year-old Nada Nasr al-Dine said.
Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz sent a letter to dozens of his counterparts Wednesday saying that Mr. Shukr had been targeted to send the message that “we will harm with great force whoever harms us.” Mr. Katz said that Israel did not want all-out war with Hezbollah, “but the only way to prevent it is the immediate implementation” of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which calls for only the official Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers to be present in the area between the Israeli border and Lebanon’s Litani River.
The area south of the Litani, which The Globe and Mail visited last week on a patrol with UN peacekeepers, is controlled by Hezbollah, which has used it to launch drones and missiles at Israel in what the militant group says is an act of solidarity with Hamas and the people of Gaza. Hezbollah claims Israel is also violating Resolution 1701 by occupying the strategic Shebaa Farms area, as well as the northern half of the village of Ghajar, both of which are claimed as Lebanese territory.
Almost 10 months of tit-for-tat exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and the Israeli army have left 387 Hezbollah members dead, the group says, as well as more than 100 Lebanese civilians. Israel says 22 of its soldiers and 25 civilians have been killed on its side of the border.
Dahlia Scheindlin, a pollster based in Tel Aviv, said that while many Israelis felt “a sense of satisfaction” over the elimination of Mr. Haniyeh and a senior Hezbollah commander, it was tempered by worries over what might happen next.
“Nobody’s in the mood to be celebrating anything. There’s also fear over whether this undermines or destroys negotiations,” Ms. Scheindlin said, referring to the apparently halted progress toward a ceasefire and the release of the hostages in Gaza. “There is no joy. Everything is very mixed and ambiguous.”