Israeli killing of Ismail Haniyeh: A futile act by a rogue state

Israel's double assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's political leader, in Tehran, and Fuad Shukr, a senior military figure in Hezbollah, in Beirut, on July 31 has sent shockwaves around the world.

A major escalation that could spiral out of control into a regional war; Israel has lashed out, attacking two sovereign nations in 24 hours, all whilst knees deep in mass atrocities in Gaza.  

But this is nothing new. In fact, Ismail Haniyeh is just the latest in a long history of Israeli assassinations.

In July 2002, at the height of the Second Intifada, an Israeli F-16 dropped a one-tonne bomb on al-Daraj neighbourhood in Gaza City.

The target was Salah Shehadeh, the head of Hamas’ military wing al-Qassam Brigades. An entire residential block was destroyed, killing Shehadeh and his family, along with 15 other people, including seven children.

The brutal raid was followed by a wave of assassinations of Hamas politicians and military officials, climaxing with the killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the movement, on March 22 2004.

An Apache helicopter fired a Hellfire missile at him as he was being wheeled out of a Gaza mosque after prayer. The 67-year-old and nine other worshippers were killed.

A month later, Israel assassinated Hamas’ senior official, Dr. Abdul-Aziz Rantisi. And to complete the circle, in 2012, Israel killed Hamas Commander Ahmed Jabari.

Ahmed Jabari was second in command to Mohammed Deif, chief of the Al-Qassam Brigades and Israel’s most wanted for two decades. Deif survived multiple assassination attempts and lost his wife and children in one of them in 2014. The Israeli alleged attempt on his life in Mawasi in southern Gaza in early July resulted in a horrific massacre. 

Israel’s policy of ‘targeted killing’ has become progressively comprehensive, indiscriminate, and mindlessly brutal in the past decade or so, reaching a level of mass atrocities in the current Gaza onslaught.

In October 2023, an Israeli jet levelled the heart of Jabalia refugee camp and killed fifty people to allegedly hunt a Hamas commander.

To kill Deif, several jet fighters were deployed and much more firepower was unleashed on an area designed as a ‘safe zone’ for the displaced Gazans by the Israeli army. 

Throughout the war, the pattern has been repeated: level areas and kill dozens of innocent people to target a single individual. Not only in the war-torn Gaza Strip but also in the occupied West Bank, with the Israeli army resorting to drones and jet fighters to target Palestinian activists.

Israel: A rogue state

In his book Rise and Kill First, Israeli journalist Ronan Bergman claims that, since World War II, Israel has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world.

Up to 2019, the time of the book publishing, Israel carried out 2300 operations, killing several thousand people. There are no official figures to affirm the accuracy or lack thereof of Bergman’s claims.

However, no other nation has been more forthcoming, and openly comfortable, about assassination as a state policy and frequently executed practice as Israel.

Jewish terrorist group Lehi initiated the assassination policy in 1944 by killing British politician Walter Guinness, who opposed illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine.

After the Zionist state was established in 1948, assassination became an official state policy and went through three phases. The first phase came after the launch of the Palestinian armed struggle in 1965, where dozens of Palestinian key figures were eliminated. The second wave came after Oslo in the mid-1990s and targeted primarily Hamas operatives accused of masterminding suicide bombings in Israel. The Second Intifada in 2000 saw a third but particularly intense wave of assassinations that killed tens of resistance figures and, with them, more civilians. 

Israel’s ‘targeted killing’ has repeatedly come under fire on legal and moral grounds; firstly because these assassinations are extrajudicial executions — and thus forbidden under international law — and secondly because of its sheer disregard for innocent lives.

However, Israeli decision-makers prioritise the perceived strategic value of these assassinations over the legal or moral costs, such as international criticism or excessive collateral damage.

Israeli officials argue that killing is a last resort when arrest is not an option. It also boosts the Israeli public morale. The goal is selective disincentives that up the cost of ‘militancy’ — anti-occupation resistance in Palestinian terms — and deter activists and organisations from planning or carrying out attacks against the occupying state or its civilians.

Another typical assessment would be that target killing is disruptive; it deprives dissident groups of valued members and forces them into hiding instead of focusing on resisting/fighting.

In part, the practice complements Israel’s doctrine of pre-emptive strike — hence the Talmudic reference: "rise and kill first", as per Bergman’s book title as well. 

The Hydra of Hamas and Hezbollah

That said, experience shows that Israeli extrajudicial killing has reaped tactical benefits by disrupting the target group’s command chain and ability to organise and recruit, but only for a short period.

None has amounted to a strategic gain in the long run. Quite the opposite, it often backfired in terms of revenge, re-recruiting, and boosting general antagonism toward the Zionist state.

A study by the US Department of Justice shortly after the end of the Second Intifada concluded that Israeli targeted killing did not have a significant impact on the rate of Palestinian attacks on Israeli targets. It did, in fact, result in increased attacks over a short or long period.

One reason for the failure is the inability, or sheer impracticality, of the Israeli intelligence to strike a balance between the ‘repression’ of Palestinian dissidence and stopping the flow of resources, which is a replacement for the assassinated leader.

It fails to fully appreciate that — theoretically — demoralising Palestinians by murdering their leaders does not — realistically — amount to a mass or long-term acceptance of the status quo. A reason above all else is the settler colonial context, which leaves Palestinians no options but to fight Israel’s occupation, regardless of the cost. The alternative would be the loss of their right to self-determination and, subsequently, national oblivion.

Every Palestinian or Arab key figure that Israel has assassinated, including senior leaders, since 1948 has been replaced.

Israel killed most of the active frontline members of the PLO between 1965 and 2005, but the movement took the blows and readapted. The Mossad killed Fathi al-Shiqaqi, the founder of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in Operation ‘Kidon in Malta in 1995, but today’s PIJ is much fiercer and better armed.

The core leaders of Hamas — Yassin, Rantisi, and Jabari — were all assassinated, but they were replaced by Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif who are less compromising than their predecessors and have successfully reshaped Hamas’ military wing into a capable army-like militia to fight Israel’s occupation.

The same goes for Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s military chief, Imad Mughniyeh, was killed in a car bomb in a joint US-Mossad operation in Syria in 2008, but the Lebanese group has since grown in strength and is today actively and successfully engaging the Israeli army in Northern Israel in support of Gaza.

Israel may have rationalised and justified extrajudicial murder as a way to provide security. But doing so augmented the very antagonism that makes it insecure. Instead of tackling the root of the problem, the occupation and colonialism, Israelis can only see and deal with the symptoms of their deeds.

This headhunting never worked and will not work in the future, unless repeating the same thing over and again and expecting a different result is no longer the definition of insanity.  

Dr Emad Moussa is a Palestinian-British researcher and writer specialising in the political psychology of intergroup and conflict dynamics, focusing on MENA with a special interest in Israel/Palestine. He has a background in human rights and journalism, and is currently a frequent contributor to multiple academic and media outlets, in addition to being a consultant for a US-based think tank.

Follow him on Twitter: @emadmoussa

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.