Ismail Haniyeh was born on January 23, 1962, in the Al-Shati refugee camp in western Gaza City. His family came from the village of Al-Jura, near present-day Ashkelon, and had been displaced in the Nakba. He went to UNRWA schools, then to the Islamic University of Gaza, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Arabic literature.
Hamas marked the first anniversary of his death with a statement describing him as a preacher and national leader. It said he was killed by an Israeli strike in Tehran on July 31, 2024, a day after he attended the inauguration of Iran’s president. The account of his life below comes from that Hamas-aligned tribute, carried by the ILKHA news agency, and is attributed to it.
Student activist to prison and exile
According to the tribute, Haniyeh became a student leader in 1978 and gave speeches during the First Intifada, which ran from 1987 to 1993. He was arrested several times: in 1987, again for six months in 1988, and for three years starting in 1989.
In 1992 Israel expelled him and 415 other Palestinian figures to Marj Al-Zuhur in Lebanon. They were allowed to return a year later. In 1997 he was named director of the office of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, and the tribute says he survived an assassination attempt alongside Yassin in 2003.
Prime minister and party chief
Hamas won 76 of 132 seats in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, with Haniyeh leading its Change and Reform list. As prime minister he sought a unity government with Fatah and other factions, the tribute says. Fatah declined, and Hamas governed alone.
The 2006 capture of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit happened during his time in office. It ended in a 2011 prisoner exchange that freed 1,047 Palestinians. “One hand builds, the other resists,” Haniyeh said of the deal, according to the tribute.
He resigned as prime minister under the 2014 Al-Shati Agreement. Hamas elected him head of its Political Bureau in 2017 and re-elected him in 2021. In 2020 he visited the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon.
Family losses
In April 2024, three of Haniyeh’s sons and five of their children were killed in an airstrike while visiting relatives for Eid al-Fitr, the tribute says. It adds that a granddaughter and his eldest grandson died in separate attacks, and that more than 60 relatives have been killed in all.
The statement ended with a quote it attributed to Haniyeh: “We will not recognize Israel.”
