Politics, Media, and the Life and Death of Ismail Haniyeh
Subtle word choices in the media show how seriously Haniyeh and his death are being taken.
The Palestinian politician and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (1962-2024), was assassinated in an Iranian government residence in Tehran on July 30 or 31 by a bomb reportedly planted there months earlier in an Israeli intelligence operation. His death was announced the following day, eliciting widespread mourning and anger across much of the Arab and Muslim worlds; it is clear that many mourners, for example Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, see him as a Palestinian leader and not just a Hamas leader. His death is also generating anxious talk, from Washington to Ankara to Riyadh and beyond, about what might come next for the Middle East.
Obituaries for Haniyeh can be found in many outlets, but here is a succinct one from the Institute for Palestine Studies. This older profile of him also contains many important dates and (one hopes) facts.
Hamas is a political-military movement that grew out of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas was founded in 1987, and the Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928. The best English-language book on Hamas is, in my view, Tareq Baconi’s Hamas Contained.
Haniyeh belonged to the second generation of Hamas leadership, along with many of the names one hears in the press since the October 7 attacks. The first generation of leaders included the founders, most prominently Ahmed Yassin (ca. 1936-2004) and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi (1947-2004), who were also killed in (separate) Israeli strikes. This second generation included various university-educated men born in the 1950s and 1960s, in other words after the establishment of Israel; they came to Islamism, activism, and Hamas as students in the 1970s and 1980s. Key figures from this second generation are Haniyeh, Khaled Meshaal (b. 1956), Yahya Sinwar (b. 1962), and Mohammed Deif (1965-2024).
Here are some of the key dates and events that shaped these figures’ lives; I also give what Haniyeh was doing at each date, in italics:
1948: the creation of the state of Israel and the Nakba, or mass displacement and despoilment of Palestinians; Haniyeh’s parents were displaced from al-Jura
1967: the Six-Day War in which Israeli forces came to occupy the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as well as the Golan Heights; at this time Haniyeh was a child in al-Shati refugee camp in north Gaza
1987: the founding of Hamas and the First Intifada or violent uprising against Israeli occupation; Haniyeh graduated from the Islamic University of Gaza with a degree in Arabic Literature, participated in the Intifada, and was imprisoned three times by Israeli authorities, including from 1989-1992, and then was deported to Lebanon
1993: the Oslo Accords - a peace deal between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) - ostensibly created a roadmap for the establishment of a future Palestinian state, including a transitional stage involving the Palestinian National Authority; Hamas rejected and continues to reject Oslo; Haniyeh returned to Gaza and became dean of the Islamic University
2000: the Second Intifada; Haniyeh had been appointed assistant to Hamas’ then-leader Ahmed Yassin in 1997
2004: Israeli strikes kill Yassin and al-Rantisi, leading to a generational change as Meshaal became political leader of Hamas; Haniyeh moved into a senior leadership role in Gaza
2006: second elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council; Hamas had boycotted the first elections in 1996, but chose to compete in 2006 and - possibly without intending to - won a plurality; Haniyeh was appointed Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority, retaining the position - under some interpretations - until resigning in 2014, but a 2007 armed conflict between Hamas and Fatah, the largest party in the PLO, led to a political partition of Gaza and the West Bank, with Hamas remaining in charge of Gaza
2017: Haniyeh succeeds Meshaal as Hamas’ leader
2023: Hamas launches attacks on October 7 that trigger the ongoing war
Even from this brief timeline, one can see how Haniyeh’s life was interwoven with the key events of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and how he was both a mover in those events and someone profoundly shaped by them.
The United States government and various other Western governments consider Hamas a terrorist organization, with all the weight of moral condemnation that such a label conveys (indeed, anti-terrorism legislation in the United States was created partly to target Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups).
Many commentators and prominent people, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have equated Hamas to al-Qaida and/or the Islamic State. Yet behind the rhetoric, Washington tacitly, albeit reluctantly, places Hamas in a different category than al-Qaida and the Islamic State, as is evident through the willingness to openly engage in negotiations involving Hamas. (Hamas also, one should note, spent considerable energy fighting and suppressing Salafi-jihadis while in power in Gaza.)
In Western media, as outlets cover Haniyeh’s death, one can see a major difference between how Haniyeh’s death is discussed and how the deaths of figures such as al-Qaida’s Osama bin Laden (1957-2011) and the Islamic State’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (1971-2019) were framed.
Let’s compare the obituaries from the New York Times - an “official” American newspaper, if there is one - for Bin Laden and Haniyeh:
The crucial difference to notice here is in how the NYT discusses politics in relation to each man. The Times acknowledges that Bin Laden was considered a “freedom fighter” to some, including at one point the American government, but the Times quickly frames Bin Laden as someone too extreme to be reasoned with - words and phrases such as “radical,” “violent,” “seventh-century,” and “terrorism” all establish that immediately for the reader. Where the word “political” appears in the Bin Laden obituary, it is only in reference to Bin Laden’s ideology and his own words.
In contrast, the Times’ obituary for Haniyeh uses a fundamentally different vocabulary. The NYT’s headline for their Bin Laden obituary (which I couldn’t fit into the screenshot) called him “The Most Wanted Face of Terrorism,” where as the NYT calls Haniyeh “A Top Hamas Leader.” The differences in the Haniyeh obituary continue through word choices such as “militant” (not “terrorist”), “political chief,” “negotiations,” and “cease-fire.” Strikingly, the words “terror,” “terrorist,” and “terrorism” do not appear in the obituary for Haniyeh. Note too that many Western outlets are referring matter-of-factly to the “assassination” of Haniyeh whereas few outlets, if memory serves, used that term to describe the death of Bin Laden. In the Haniyeh obituary, he is repeatedly described as a “political leader,” a label one almost never sees used with reference to Bin Laden.
The New York Times is not apologizing for Hamas here and in fact, the NYT is routinely and persuasively accused of intense pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias. My point, again, is that the NYT, and by extension Western media and Western governments, place Hamas in a profoundly different conceptual and political category than they do al-Qaida and the Islamic State - Hamas is in a category of groups that Washington will tolerate and openly negotiate with under certain circumstances.
And those dynamics make the death of Haniyeh fundamentally different than the death of Bin Laden, because Haniyeh and Hamas are also - due to their different political status - woven into the fabric of Middle East politics in a way that al-Qaida never was and never could be. This is one reason why there’s not much visible celebration in the White House over Haniyeh’s death; in fact they’re openly concerned.
The questions emerging after Haniyeh’s death primarily concern regional and geopolitics, namely how Iran will react, how Hezbollah will react, whether there can still be meaningful negotiations between Israel and Hamas, etc. The questions that followed Bin Laden’s death were much more narrowly concerned with the future of particular forms of violence and ideological messaging. Perhaps this wrestling over whether Hamas is beyond the pale or not is part of the politics of that recurring question - “do you condemn Hamas?” - a question that demands the respondent not just condemn instances of violence committed by Hamas but in fact condemn Hamas existentially and thereby forge a rhetorical consensus that Hamas is outside of legitimate politics. Note, then, that such a consensus does not exist; Hamas is treated as being part of mainstream politics even by its enemies.
A final observation about the NYT’s obituary of Haniyeh is that even within Western media, there have been huge but still somewhat subtle shifts in coverage of Palestine, Palestinians, and Hamas since October 7 and indeed over the past decade as a whole. Alongside the contrast I’ve drawn between the obituaries of Bin Laden and Haniyeh, one could also compare the Times’ obituary of Haniyeh and the newspaper’s report on the death of Ahmed Yassin. It would take a longer post to draw out the differences in vocabulary and framing, but in the report on Yassin, there is more of an emphasis on Hamas as religious and violent, and less on the group as political. Here is one neo-Orientalist paragraph from the Yassin report:
Black smoke curled over Gaza City as Palestinians began burning tires in the streets and demonstrators chanted for revenge. Mosque loudspeakers blared a message across Gaza of mourning for Sheik Yassin in the name of Hamas and another militant group, Al Ksa Martyrs Brigades.
Note how the imagery is one of chaos and how the language emphasizes emotion, even subtly ascribing irrationality and pathos to Palestinians - even the loudspeakers “blared.” In contrast, the Haniyeh obituary strikes a calmer tone, and again the emphasis is on politics rather than emotion.
Other differences between the Yassin report and the Haniyeh obituary: Israeli officials are quoted and referenced more in the report on Yassin, whereas in the Haniyeh obituary it is analysts such as Baconi (author of the book I mentioned above) and International Crisis Group’s Tahan Mustafa who are quoted, giving comments on Haniyeh’s approach to politics and indeed humanizing Haniyeh in some notably ways. In short, perhaps even despite themselves, the NYT and other Western media have shifted to acknowledging Hamas as ultimately, a political group that uses violence rather than depicting Hamas as an otherworldly band of fanatics. Bin Laden was often presented as an enigma, a larger-than-life figure raging from a cave or a compound; Haniyeh is presented as even something of a pragmatist. The assassination takes on heightened meaning and anxiety in this context, because the ultimate meaning of his death is the removal of a pivotal regional figure rather than the “elimination of a terrorist.”
What happens next for Gaza and the region? I have no idea. I leave you with a few pieces I found insightful, with the caveat that even the best analysts are guessing at this point:
Azzam Tamimi, Middle East Eye: “Ismail Haniyeh: Hamas Will Survive Leader's Death As It Has Many Times Before.” (This piece is also, in part, an obituary for Haniyeh.)
Jeremy Scahill: “The Assassination of Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh Will Only Embolden Resistance.”
Mat Nashed, Al Jazeera: “What the Ismail Haniyeh Assassination Means for Gaza Ceasefire Talks.”
Amwaj Media: “Roundup: Region Reacts to Targeted Killings in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon.”