Israel has virtually wiped out Hamas leadership, but the group is still scrambling to organise
The assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, at a safehouse during a visit to the Iranian capital Tehran, is a severe blow to the Palestinian Islamist movement, which has been engaged in intense fighting with Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip since it attacked Israel on 7 October.
Haniyeh is far from the first senior Hamas figure to be repeatedly targeted and eventually killed by Israel. The movement’s founder and spiritual leader, Ahmed Yassin, co-founder Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, and military commander Salah Shehadeh were all assassinated by precision airstrikes inside the Palestinian enclave in the 2000s. Ahmed al-Jabari, who spearheaded Hamas’s 2007 takeover of Gaza, was killed by a drone strike in Gaza City in 2012.