On April 10, the second day of Eid al-Fitr, an Israeli drone struck a car in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza carrying three sons and four grandchildren of Hamas’ Political Bureau Chief Ismail Haniyeh. All the occupants were killed.
Haniyeh was given the news as he came out of a meeting in Doha. A figure of grace and resolve, he stoically raised his hands and said a silent prayer for his family killed in a Zionist strike. Later, in a presser, he said the killings will not “deter Palestinian leaders or force them to back down.”
In an interview to Al Jazeera Arabic, Haniyeh disclosed that around 60 members of his family, including nieces and nephews, had been killed since the start of the war. “Through the blood of the martyrs and the pain of the injured, we create hope, we create the future, we create independence and freedom for our people and our nation,” he told the channel.
That also gave the lie to Israeli propaganda that the families of Hamas leaders were safely away from Gaza.
On the morning of July 31, Haniyeh joined other martyrs from his family and the thousands of Palestinians that have been killed by Zionist occupation forces in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. He was in Tehran for the inauguration ceremony of Masoud Pezeshkian, the new Iranian president. The residence he was staying in was struck by an air-to-ground projectile, most likely from an Israeli drone.
Earlier, on Tuesday, Israel had struck in a suburb of Beirut, killing Fouad Shukur, a senior Hezbollah commander that it accused of ordering the rocket attack in Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights. Hezbollah had denied it was behind the rocket attack.
The modus operandi goes back to Jewish underground terrorist militias during the British mandate and continues to this day. In fact, according to some estimates, Israel has conducted more state-sponsored political assassinations since WWII than any other single country, possibly with the exception of the United States.
The Haniyeh assassination has been widely condemned. Western diplomats are particularly and predictably alarmed. Speaking to ABC News, one Western diplomat, whose country has worked to prevent an Israeli-Hezbollah escalation, said the double strikes in Beirut and Tehran have “almost killed” hopes for a Gaza cease-fire and could push the Middle East into a “devastating regional war.”
This fear has also been expressed by statements from the foreign ministries of Russia and China and it is not unfounded. There’s increasing evidence that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not interested in peace. He wants the war to continue and has constantly scuttled the process by inserting new demands into a ceasefire text that Hamas has already agreed to.
But going beyond what has happened and leaving aside the moral questions surrounding political assassinations as a policy tool, it is important to flag Israel’s penchant for covert operations, especially conducting assassinations. The modus operandi goes back to Jewish underground terrorist militias during the British mandate and continues to this day. In fact, according to some estimates, Israel has conducted more state-sponsored political assassinations since WWII than any other single country, possibly with the exception of the United States.
In his 2018 book, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, investigative Israeli journalist Ronan Bergman writes:
Since World War II, Israel has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world. On innumerable occasions, its leaders have …time and again decided on clandestine operations, with assassination the method of choice. This, they believed, would solve difficult problems faced by the state, and sometimes change the course of history. In many cases, Israel’s leaders have even determined that in order to kill the designated target, it is moral and legal to endanger the lives of innocent civilians who may happen to find themselves in the line of fire. Harming such people, they believe, is a necessary evil.
Changing the course of history through assassinations is a contested question, though. British historian Michael Burleigh in his 2021 book, Day of the Assassins informs us through multiple case studies that while “targeted killing” is as old as politics and human conflict, such murders rarely achieve their ends or change the course of history. For instance, even Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination before WWI was not “necessarily determinative” since the Austro-Hungarians would have invaded Serbia anyway.
Be that as it may, there are many instances in human history where the success or failure of a targeted killing did impact the course of history. If bad weather had not forced Adolph Hitler to leave a Munich beer hall earlier than scheduled in 1939, the bomb planted by Georg Elser would have likely killed him. Would that have changed the course of history? A counterfactual, it is safe of assume that it would have. The success of Julius Caesar’s assassination, however, did change the course of Roman history.
In 1992, Israel assassinated Abbas Musawi, the Hezbollah leader. Musawi was replaced by Hasan Nasrallah. Meanwhile, Hezbollah today is demonstrably the most potent non-state military actor anywhere in the world. It is more powerful than the Lebanese state from where it operates and has acquired capabilities that can cause serious damage to Israel even per Israeli defence analysts.
But returning to Israel’s case, Bergman provides the reader a history of Jewish groups using assassinations to advance the Zionist objectives — from Yitzhak Ben-Zvi’s small band called Bar-Giora in 1907 to Stern Gang (Lehi) that acquired infamy through its attacks on Arabs and British officers, Zionism has shown a consistent propensity for political assassinations and covert action.
But the policy “touches two very difficult dilemmas,” as Bergman says: First, is it effective? Can the elimination of an individual, or a number of individuals, make the world a safer place? Second, is it morally and legally justified? Is it legitimate, both ethically and judicially, for a country to employ the gravest of all crimes in any code of ethics or law — the premeditated taking of a human life — in order to protect its own citizens?
Meir Dagan, a former Major-General and director of Mossad who died in 2016 and under whose watch Mossad conducted a number of covert operations and assassinations considered the policy both moral and practical — it’s a lot more moral than waging an all-out war, he told Bergman.
But is it effective too? Take the case of Iran. Mossad has conducted several covert operations within Iran, including in Tehran. Some of them were, operationally speaking, spectacular. They demonstrated remarkably savvy intelligence information about the target and professional execution. Most such operations were meant to degrade Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes and instil fear to create a deterrent effect.
Strategically speaking, the policy has been a rank failure. Not only has Iran not been deterred, it has advanced both its missile and nuclear programmes, created an axis of resistance in the Greater Middle East to degrade Israel’s security environment and only recently launched an aerial attack on Israel from Iranian soil.
In 1992, Israel assassinated Abbas Musawi, the Hezbollah leader. Musawi was replaced by Hasan Nasrallah. Meanwhile, Hezbollah today is demonstrably the most potent non-state military actor anywhere in the world. It is more powerful than the Lebanese state from where it operates and has acquired capabilities that can cause serious damage to Israel even per Israeli defence analysts.
Israel did the same with Hamas. There’s a long list of Hamas leaders that Israel has intermittently targeted to degrade the group. In the case of Khaled Marshal’s botched assassination attempt in Amman, it also ended up with international embarrassment. Despite these covert operations, it has failed to degrade Hamas’ capabilities or create a deterrent effect. Every new leader has helped strengthen the group politically and militarily. The most potent demonstration of those capabilities came on October 7, 2023 and the resolve has since been on display in the ongoing war despite Israel’s genocidal savagery.
If Israel knows that its policy of targeted assassinations will beget a similar response, that would serve as a deterrent.
Haniyeh was not a military commander. His movements were known. He was an easy target. His assassination now threatens a wider war and the breakdown of any peace process. Israel targeted him precisely for these reasons.
As I have often noted, this war has many battles. The battlespace is distributed, not limited in spatiotemporal terms. In other words, this war and its many battles do not allow for a single-point strategy where the weight of effort — what Clausewitz called Schwerpunkt — could be brought for a decisive outcome.
It is, therefore, imperative for the axis of resistance to choose its responses carefully. From the early stages of this war, Israel has shown impressive intelligence capabilities in acquiring and neutralising Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian targets. This strategy has to be countered with equally effective covert operations by the axis of resistance. That makes Israeli top officials fair game for a similar policy of targeted killings.
If Israel knows that its policy of targeted assassinations will beget a similar response, that would serve as a deterrent.