Dr Amira Abo el-Fetouh
This is not an article about mourning Ismail Haniyeh, as martyrs are not mourned like the rest of us are; they have, after all, achieved the highest of rewards for eternity, no questions asked.
A man like Haniyeh could not die a death through illness or an accident. The Almighty blessed him with martyrdom to accompany the many other Palestinians who have given their lives for freedom and justice in their homeland. The procession of heroic martyrs will only end when the land of Palestine is free of Zionism, God willing.
So, we do not mourn Haniyeh, but to paraphrase Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) after the Battle of Uhud, when the pagans of Makkah were rejoicing in their victory: “Our dead are in paradise; yours are in the Hellfire.”
The criminals who rejoiced at Haniyeh’s murder and deluded themselves into believing they had achieved a great victory of a kind that they have failed to achieve on the battlefield over the past ten months should keep that quote in mind. When they have to resort to political murder, they must know that they have lost the battle and the war. The occupation state may have killed Ismail Haniyeh, but it has not and will not be able to kill the ideology of the Islamic Resistance Movement.
Hamas will live to haunt the Zionists with resistance that is entirely legitimate under international law. Occupation is, by definition, an act of aggression, and the International Court of Justice has recently reaffirmed that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal.
Haniyeh’s assassination is the latest of many carried out by the Zionist entity targeting Hamas leaders. His reported last words were, “If a leader leaves, another will come.”
That is what happened when the Zionists killed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Dr Abdel Aziz Al-Rantisi in 2004, and other senior officials since then. The movement will not be stopped with the assassination of its leadership. The occupation state has killed a number of Hamas leaders since last October, including Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of the movement’s military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades; Ayman Nofal, a member of Al-Qassam’s military council; Saleh Al-Arouri, Haniyeh’s deputy on the Hamas political bureau; Samir Fandi, a Hamas official in southern Lebanon; Azzam Al-Aqraa, one of the founders of Al-Qassam Brigades; Ahmed Bahar and Jamila Al-Shalti, both members of the political bureau; Ayman Siam and Ahmed Al-Ghandour, of Al-Qassam Brigades; and senior officials Osama Al-Muzaini and Faeq Al-Mabhouh. None of these assassinations affected the performance of Al-Qassam Brigades in Gaza.
Political assassinations are not a new Zionist tactic. Israel is, after all, an entity built primarily on terrorist, settler-colonial foundations. In 1948, for example, Zionist terrorists killed UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte, a man who had secured the release of thousands of prisoners from Nazi concentration camps during World War Two. The man tipped to be Haniyeh’s successor, Khaled Meshaal, survived a Zionist assassination attempt in 1997.
The Zionist state has implemented from day one of its occupation a system of apartheid with discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens — one-fifth of the population — built into legislation. The government coalition is propped up by far-right Jewish extremists who have called for the genocide of the Palestinians, people such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, for example.
Western democracies, meanwhile, continue to sing the praises of this criminal entity, claiming that it is an oasis of democracy amidst the darkness and backwardness of the surrounding Arab regimes, which has “shared values” with the West. If so, it is disgraceful for the West to admit it.
There is no doubt that political assassinations have a negative impact on resistance movements in general, as they are part of the psychological war waged by the Zionist enemy to cause disruption for a while. However, they do not achieve victories on the battlefield and do not pass unnoticed. In the case of the killing of Haniyeh and Hezbollah’s Fuad Shukr, the Zionists are fanning the flames of armed conflict in the region. We can all see who wants peace in the region, and it’s not the Zionist state of Israel.
Resistance is a right, and rights do not disappear until they have been fulfilled. Hamas as a movement will not simply roll over and die as long as the need for resistance exists, which means as long as the occupation exists. New generations are born, grow and live under occupation, so how and why are they supposed to abandon this right as long as the occupation is in place? Young Palestinians born in 2008 have already lived through half a dozen major Israeli military offensives and numerous armed incursions; they won’t be bombed into submission.
