DUBAI/LONDON: Ismail Haniyeh is the Hamas leader based in Qatar, who has been the tough-talking face of the Palestinian group’s international diplomacy as war has raged back in Gaza, where three of his sons were killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Now he faces the possibility of legal action after the International Criminal Court prosecutor’s office said on Monday (May 20) it had requested arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his defence chief and three Hamas leaders – including Haniyeh – for alleged war crimes.
Israel has denied committing war crimes in the Gaza war, triggered by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct 7 that killed 1,200 people and created a hostage crisis for the far-right government after more than 250 people were taken to Gaza.
The ICC’s decision “equates the victim with the executioner”, a senior Hamas official told Reuters.
It will be up to the court’s pre-trial judges to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to issue warrants.
Haniyeh was appointed to the Hamas top job in 2017. He has moved between Turkey and Qatar’s capital Doha, escaping the travel curbs of the blockaded Gaza Strip and enabling him to act as a negotiator in ceasefire talks or to talk to Hamas’ ally Iran.
“All the agreements of normalisation that you (Arab states) signed with (Israel) will not end this conflict,” Haniyeh declared on Qatar-based Al Jazeera television shortly after Hamas fighters launched the Oct 7 raid.
Israel’s response to the strike has been a military campaign that has killed more than 35,000 people inside Gaza so far, according to health authorities in the territory.
SONS KILLED IN AIRSTRIKE
Three of Haniyeh’s sons – Hazem, Amir and Mohammad – were killed on April 10 when an Israeli air strike struck the car they were driving, Hamas said. Haniyeh also lost four of his grandchildren, three girls and a boy, in the attack, Hamas said.
Haniyeh denied Israeli assertions that his sons were fighters for the group and said “the interests of the Palestinian people are placed ahead of everything” when asked if their killing would impact truce talks.
For all the tough language in public, Arab diplomats and officials view him as relatively pragmatic compared with more hardline voices inside Gaza, where the military wing of Hamas planned the Oct 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, have shuttled around the region for talks over a Qatari-brokered ceasefire deal with Israel that would include exchanging hostages for Palestinians in Israeli jails as well as more aid for Gaza.
Israel regards the entire Hamas leadership as terrorists, accusing Haniyeh, Meshaal and others of continuing to “pull the strings of the Hamas terror organisation.”
But how much Haniyeh knew about the Oct 7 assault beforehand is not clear. The plan, drawn up by the Hamas military council in Gaza, was such a closely guarded secret that some Hamas officials seemed shocked by its timing and scale.
Yet Haniyeh, a Sunni Muslim, had a major hand in building up Hamas’ fighting capacity, partly by nurturing ties with Shi’ite Muslim Iran, which makes no secret of its support for the group.
During the decade in which Haniyeh was Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, Israel accused his leadership team of helping to divert humanitarian aid to the group’s military wing. Hamas denied it.
