The killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital, Tehran, has sparked threats of retaliation against Israel and raised concerns that the conflict in Gaza is turning into a wider war in the Middle East.
Although the attack was widely assumed to have been carried out by Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has not claimed responsibility and said it would not comment on the killing.
Haniyeh, who lived in Qatar, was the face of Hamas' international diplomacy as the war sparked by Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel raged in Gaza. He participated in indirect negotiations on reaching a truce in the Palestinian enclave with international mediation.
Hamas's capacity to respond is severely limited after nearly ten months of war against Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip. Instead, the answer could come from the allies of that Islamist group and bring the Middle East closer to a regional war between Israel and Iran and its mediators, the "Guardian" assesses.
The killing came just hours after Israel announced it had killed a Hezbollah commander in the Lebanese capital Beirut in retaliation for a deadly attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The armed wing of Hamas stated in a statement that the killing of Haniyeh will raise the fight to a new level and have major consequences. Vowing to retaliate, Iran declared three days of national mourning and held the US accountable for its support for Israel.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Israel provided the basis for "severe punishment" and that it was Tehran's duty to avenge the death of the Hamas leader.
The extent of the reaction of Iran and its regional proxies to the attacks on Israel's two main enemies could determine whether the low-intensity regional struggle will turn into a full-scale conflict, the New York Times estimates.
During the intense war with Hamas in Gaza, Israel fought a parallel conflict with Hamas allies across the Middle East in which all sides risked major escalation but ultimately avoided drawing the region into a larger multi-front war.
The attacks on two of Israel's leading enemies on Tuesday and Wednesday created one of the biggest challenges to that balance since the conflict began in October, according to The Times.
Tuesday night's Israeli attack on Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut, is the first time this war that Israel has targeted such an influential Hezbollah leader in the Lebanese capital. A few hours later, the assassination of Haniyeh was seen in Iran as the most brazen breach of Iranian defenses since October.
"Hamas will survive"
The high position of the targets, the sensitive location of the strikes and the fact that they were carried out almost simultaneously are interpreted as a particularly provocative escalation that makes the region fear an even greater response from Iran and its regional allies, including Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq.
Some analysts say the killing of Haniyeh also makes a ceasefire deal in Gaza less likely in the near future. Israel hoped that killing such an influential leader would eventually help break Hamas's resolve and make the group more willing to compromise in the long run. However, others say Haniyeh's death is unlikely to hit Hamas hard.
The organization has several possible candidates to succeed Hania, most notably Khaled Meshaal, a former Hamas leader who survived an Israeli assassination in Jordan in 1997 and now lives in Qatar.
"Hamas will survive. They have a lot of other leaders," said Jost Hilterman, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the International Crisis Group.
Analysts also say both Iran and Hezbollah have reason to respond in a way that makes all-out war less likely. For Iran, the attack on its soil is unpleasant, but not catastrophic, because the target was a foreign guest, not a senior Iranian official, according to Andreas Krieg, a Middle East expert at King's College London.
"I don't necessarily think that Iran's strategic calculus has changed. Iran will have to respond in some way. But that is not the breaking point," Krig said.
There is more pressure on Hezbollah
Hezbollah is under more pressure to act than Iran because one of its commanders was hit in the attack on Beirut, not one of its allies, says Michael Stevens, a Middle East expert at the Foreign Policy Institute in Philadelphia. However, it is not clear whether the killing of Haniyeh in Iran will change Hezbollah's calculus in Lebanon, Stevens said.
"We have to be very clear and careful about connecting these two issues," Stevens said. "Over the past nine months, Hezbollah has repeatedly demonstrated that what is happening to Hamas is unrelated to Hezbollah's strategic imperatives. That doesn't mean there won't be conflict. I just think the road to get there is more complicated than it seems."
The "New York Times" writes that past experiences show that de-escalation is still possible. Israeli strikes in January killed a senior Hamas leader in the Hezbollah stronghold of Beirut, prompting fears that Hezbollah would respond fiercely on behalf of Hamas. A few days later, Hezbollah chose a response that was interpreted as largely symbolic, firing a barrage of rockets at an Israeli army base that caused little damage.
After Israel killed several Iranian commanders in Syria in April, Iran responded with a heavy barrage of cruise and ballistic missiles. After a symbolic Israeli counterstrike, the two sides then decided to pull back from the brink.
This double murder could offer a way out of the war by allowing Netanyahu to declare a symbolic victory, and give him room to make concessions in Gaza and perhaps agree to a ceasefire, "The Times" estimates.
He adds that this will not happen, however, if Netanyahu judges that a truce would bring down his government, given that the coalition is dependent on far-right lawmakers who have threatened to leave if the war ends without defeating Hamas.
Blinken: The US did not participate
In Jerusalem, an Israeli government spokesman declined to comment on Haniyeh's killing, but said the country was on high alert for possible Iranian retaliation.
Spokesman David Menser told reporters that Israel is committed to negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza and securing the release of Israeli hostages held by Palestinian militants in Gaza.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, speaking at an event in Singapore, sidestepped the question of Haniyeh's killing, saying the Gaza ceasefire agreement was crucial to avoiding a wider regional escalation. He told an Asian media outlet that the US did not know about the killing or was involved.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said that Israel is not trying to escalate the war, but that it is prepared for all scenarios.
Qatar, which is mediating negotiations with Egypt to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, condemned the killing of Haniyeh as a dangerous escalation of the conflict. Egypt said it showed Israel's lack of political will to defuse tensions. China, Russia, Turkey and Iraq also condemned the killing. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the killing, and Palestinian factions in the occupied West Bank called for mass demonstrations.
There was rapture in Israel. Citizens hailed what they saw as a major success in the war against Hamas, Reuters reported.
"He was like a father to us"
Gazans fear that Haniyeh's death will prolong the conflicts that have devastated the enclave.
“What a waste. We lost one of our own," Fatima al-Sati told Reuters.
Hachem al-Sati, also a resident of Gaza, said: "This news is terrifying. He was like a father to us."
Haniyeh, who was appointed to Hamas' top post in 2017, has been on the Turkey-Qatar route, avoiding travel restrictions in the blockaded Gaza Strip so he could act as a negotiator in ceasefire talks or talk to Iran, Hamas' main ally. His three sons were killed in an Israeli airstrike in April.
Israel killed his deputy Saleh al-Aruri in January, after which Yahya al-Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza and the architect of the October 7 attack on Israel, and Zaher Jabarin, the group's leader in the West Bank, kept their positions but are in hiding. .
A conflict in which Israel cannot win
In Israel, the killing of Haniyeh will be celebrated as revenge for the atrocities of Hamas on October 7, but it will be seen by Islamist hardliners in Iran and militant groups across the Arab world as further evidence of their belief that the state of Israel is a threat that must be destroyed at all costs. which means the continuation of hatred, violence and misery, according to the foreign policy commentator of the British "Observer" Simon Tisdall.
He believes that it would have been better if Haniyeh, like the leaders of Hamas based in Gaza, appeared before the International Criminal Court (ICC) and answered for his crimes. Instead, Israel again tried to achieve "justice" through extrajudicial killing.
"The man overseeing these killings, Benjamin Netanyahu, the chief architect of the genocidal campaign against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, should also be held accountable for his crimes. The ICC's chief prosecutor is trying to make sure that happens, despite US opposition. But there are few signs that this will happen. It is more likely, given the example he sets, that Netanyahu himself will be the target of an assassin," Tisdal writes.
A wider war in the region that Israel claims it wants to avoid is already raging, Tisdal says, noting that extreme violence is Netanyahu's answer to almost every problem. He assesses that Netanyahu's message "to our enemies that there is no place where the long arm of the state of Israel cannot reach" sounded like a declaration of war on the entire region. "Nevertheless, it is a war that Israel cannot win in the end," Tisdal believes.
He points out that no outcome is excluded in the region where the rules of the game that have prevented total war are being abolished day by day.
“People say the Middle East is complicated. And it is. They say there is no answer. That may be true. But despite the rockets, Gaza is not rocket science. It's not that complicated. Stop the war. Stop the killing. Save the children. Arrange a ceasefire and release the hostages. And then all the other problems, although they won't go away, can become easier to solve," concluded Tisdal.
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