See also: Hamas Palestinian Authority
Born
in 1955
in the Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniya studied Arabic literature at the
Islamic University of Gaza in the 1980s. During the early stages of the First Palestinian Intifada (1987-1993), he helped Hamas plan many of its terror
attacks against Israel. Arrested in 1989, Haniya was briefly exiled
to Lebanon in 1992—along with 400 other Hamas terrorists—before being permitted to return to Gaza in 1994. During his time in Lebanon, Haniya
formed a close friendship with Hamas founder Ahmad Yassin, a
relationship that hastened Haniya’s meteoric rise through the
terror group’s organizational ranks. At one point, he served
as bureau chief for Yassin.
Because of his involvement in
terrorist
attacks against Israeli citizens, Haniya was targeted
for assassination by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). In
2003 an Israeli military plane dropped a bomb on a house in Gaza in an
effort to kill Haniya,
Yassin, and bombmaker Mohammad Deif, but all three escaped relatively
unharmed.
Shortly
after Yassin’s death in 2004, Haniya was chosen to lead the slate
of Hamas candidates running in the December 2005 Palestinian parliamentary
elections, elections in which Hamas ultimately won majority control of the
Gaza-based government. Having always favored violence over diplomacy,
Haniya happily declared
that Hamas's victory at the polls proved that a
majority of Palestinians were in favor of terrorism against Israel. In March 2006 Haniya was sworn in as prime minister of the new government by Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud
Abbas.
In an October
2006 speech,
Haniya stated that Hamas's legitimacy as an organization was derived directly “from the
legitimacy of the jihad … against the Zionist occupation.” Adding
that the Hamas-led government was “born from the womb of the
resistance, from the womb of the martyrs,” Haniya pledged that Hamas
would “not change its constant principles,” and that it would “stay
faithful to jihad, to resistance, to guns, to Palestine and to
Jerusalem.”
In
December 2006 Haniya expressed gratitude for the support of the Islamic theocracy that ruled Iran, and pledged
that Hamas “will never recognize the usurper Zionist government
and will continue our jihad-like movement until the liberation of
Jerusalem.”
Haniya resigned
from his post as prime minister on February 15, 2007, as part of the process by which a unity
government between Hamas and Fatah was instituted. Thirty-one days later, he was
sworn in as head of the new cabinet.
Throughout his
tenure in government, Haniya has consistently preached a death-cult mentality to
his enthusiastic followers in Gaza. In 2010 he said, on Hamas-controlled Al-Aqsa TV: “This is a nation of martyrdom and
martyrdom-seeking, a nation of Jihad for the sake of
Allah.”
Moreover, according to Haniya, the dictates
of Allah preclude the possibility of Hamas ever deviating from a
jihadist course: “The strategic option of Jihad was determined by
Allah for this nation. At no time may Muslims—especially under
occupation—negotiate whether there should or shouldn’t be
resistance or Jihad.... We have no choice in this matter. The
strategic option was determined when the first arrow was shot, the
first spear cast, and the first bullet fired.”
More than
just a religious imperative, Haniya preaches that the importance of
terrorism as a strategy lies in the fact that it works so well on
Jews, who, unlike the Palestinians, “love life more than any other
people, and they prefer not to die.”
Americans, too, are the
objects of Haniya’s hatred. In May 2011 he issued this
statement
on the recent killing (by U.S. soldiers) of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin
Laden:
“We believe that this continues an American policy that is based on oppression and on the shedding of Arab and Muslim blood. Regardless of the different views in Arab and Islamic circles, we, of course, condemn the assassination or killing of a Muslim mujahid and an Arab. We pray for Allah to cover him with His mercy, next to the prophets, the righteous, and the martyrs.”
At a December
2011 rally marking the 24th anniversary of Hamas’s founding, Haniya
issued a call for the formation of
an Arab army “to liberate Jerusalem and the Aksa mosque.” He
then told the 350,000 cheering Palestinians in attendance: “Resistance is the way and it is a strategic choice to
liberate Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and
to remove the invaders from the blessed land of Palestine.”
This profile is adapted, in part, from "Voices of Palestine: Ismail Haniya," by Frank Crimi (December 22, 2011).