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ISRAEL HAS A HISTORY OF KILLING HAMAS LEADERS WHO ARE TRYING TO
SECURE CEASEFIRES  
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Mehdi Hasan
July 31, 2024
Zeteo
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_ Benjamin Netanyahu’s reckless assassination of Ismail Haniyeh
undermines the prospects for a peace deal and the release of the
hostages. They assassinated the man who had the power to make a deal
with Israel... _

Ismail Haniyeh in Doha, Qatar, on March 26, 2024., Photo by Agence
France-Presse (AFP) // Zeteo

 

“Israel's leaders killed three birds with one stone,” wrote Reuven
Pedatzur, a senior military affairs analyst for the Israeli
newspaper _Haaretz [[link removed]]_. “They assassinated
the man who had the power to make a deal with Israel; they took
revenge on someone who had caused more than a few Israeli casualties;
and they signaled to Hamas that communications with it will be
conducted only through military force.”

Was Pedatzur referring to the Israeli assassination of senior Hamas
leader Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the group’s political bureau, in
Tehran in the early hours of Wednesday morning?

No. Pedatzur died
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a road traffic accident in 2014. His quote from _Haaretz_, above, was
in response to the Israeli assassination
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another senior Hamas commander, Ahmed Jabari, in November 2012, which
kicked off the 2012 Gaza war
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As my former colleague at _The Intercept_, Jon Schwarz, documented
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great detail last year, “Jabari had come to believe that it was in
the best interest of Palestinians for Hamas to negotiate a long-term
truce” and had been in communication with the respected Israeli
peace activist Gershon Baskin. “Just before the assassination,
[Baskin] gave Jabari a draft proposal for such a truce to review and
approve. The draft was agreed to by Baskin and Hamas’s deputy
foreign minister, and Baskin also said he had previously shown it to
Ehud Barak, then the Israeli minister of defense.”

Would Jabari have signed off on a ‘hudna,’
[[link removed]] or long-term truce, between
Hamas and Israel? We’ll never know. 

Israel, in fact, has a long and cynical history of killing Hamas
leaders who are in the midst of ceasefire negotiations or, even,
proposing long-term truces with the Jewish state. 

Remember Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the quadriplegic co-founder and
spiritual leader of Hamas? He was assassinated
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than three months after he proposed
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long-term truce with Israel “if a Palestinian state is established
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” 

His successor, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, was assassinated
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three months after he made a similar truce offer
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Israel.

Then there was the Netanyahu government’s 2012 assassination
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Jabari, who, as mentioned, was reviewing a “long-term mutual
cease-fire” deal just “hours before he was killed,” according
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Baskin. 

The parallels between 2012 and 2024, between the killings of Jabari
and Haniyeh, are eery. 

"He was in line to die, not an angel and not a righteous man of
peace,” Baskin said
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Jabari shortly after his killing, “but his assassination also killed
the possibility of achieving a truce and also the Egyptian
mediators’ ability to function.”

The same could be said of Haniyeh. Mainstream Western media outlets
agree that the Hamas leader was – by Hamas standards – a
“pragmatist”; a key figure in the ongoing negotiations to secure a
ceasefire in Gaza and free the Israeli hostages.

From Reuters
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“For all the tough language in public, Arab diplomats and officials
had viewed [Haniyeh] as relatively pragmatic compared with more
hardline voices inside Gaza, where the military wing of Hamas planned
the October 7 attack. While telling Israel's military they would find
themselves ‘drowning in the sands of Gaza,’ he and his predecessor
as Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, had shuttled around the region for
talks over a Qatari-brokered cease-fire deal with Israel that would
include exchanging hostages for Palestinians in Israeli jails as well
as more aid for Gaza.”

From Sky News
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“Haniyeh was the pragmatic face of Hamas. He was less hard-line and
militaristic than Yahya Sinwar, who is the head of Hamas inside Gaza
and is leading the battle. Haniyeh was the public face of Hamas's
diplomacy in Arab capitals. He was leading efforts to negotiate a
ceasefire in Gaza.”

This was the person that the far-right Israeli government of Benjamin
Netanyahu chose to assassinate on Iranian soil on Wednesday.

Why?

Put simply, Netanyahu and his coalition of fascists and bigots do not
want a deal to release the hostages. They prefer to continue the war,
no matter the cost to Gaza’s civilians or to their own citizens
still held inside of the enclave. Despite Joe Biden’s ludicrous
claims
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the contrary, it is Netanyahu who has been the biggest obstacle
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a deal to free Israel’s hostages in Gaza. The former spokesperson
for the hostages’ families says
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rejected a deal. Benny Gantz, a former member of Israel’s war
cabinet, says
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defense officials tell
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“Netanyahu systematically foiled the negotiations to free the
hostages.”

There is nothing new here. To misquote Winston Churchill
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has always preferred “war-war” over “jaw-jaw.” Israeli
governments – especially those led by Netanyahu – have preferred
having Hamas as the permanent enemy – or as an “asset,”
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the current Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – rather than
trying to do a permanent deal with Hamas. 

As the late Israeli journalist Pedatzur wrote
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assassination in 2012: 

“Our decision makers, including the defense minister and perhaps
also Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, knew about Jabari’s role in
advancing a permanent cease-fire agreement. … Thus the decision to
kill Jabari shows that our decision makers decided a cease-fire would
be undesirable for Israel at this time, and that attacking Hamas would
be preferable.”

Change the name ‘Jabari’ to ‘Haniyeh’ above, and those words
could have been written today. 

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

_[MEHDI HASAN is founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief of Zeteo. He is a
British-American progressive broadcaster, political commentator,
columnist, author and co-founder of the media company Zeteo. He
presented The Mehdi Hasan Show on Peacock since October 2020 and on
MSNBC from February 2021 until the show's cancellation in November
2023.]_

_Zeteo [[link removed]] is a new media organization that seeks to
answer the questions that really matter, while always striving for the
truth. Founded by Mehdi Hasan, Zeteo is a movement for media
accountability, unfiltered news and bold opinions._

* Hamas
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* Israel
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* political assassinations
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* Ismail Haniyeh
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* Ceasefire
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* Hostages
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* Benjamin Netanyahu
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* Palestine
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* Gaza
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* war crimes
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* Genocide
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* Israel-Gaza War
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* Oct. 7
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* Iran
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