Before Ismail Haniyeh, these members of the Palestinian movement targeted by the Israeli army since October 7

Iran accuses the Jewish state of being behind Ismail Haniyeh’s death, which it denies. Since the October 7 attacks, Israel has targeted several members of the Palestinian movement.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in a strike today in Tehran. The Palestinian Islamist movement accuses Israel of assassinating him. Based in Doha, Qatar, Ismail Haniyeh was coming to Iran to participate in the inauguration ceremony of reformist Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian. For the moment, Israel has not claimed responsibility for the death of this Hamas figure. But since the attacks of October 7, the Jewish state has launched a series of reprisals against figures in the Palestinian movement.

Six priority targets

According to the Lebanese daily The Orient-The-DayIsrael has drawn up a list of six key leaders to be captured or killed as a priority. Ismail Haniyeh was on this list. Before him, the last target killed by Israel was Marwan Issa, in early March in a strike on the Gaza Strip. According to the Hebrew state, Issa was “one of the organizers of the October 7 massacre”number 2 of the armed wing of Hamas. At almost 60 years old, he held several positions within the Islamist organisation and acted as a link between its military and political branches.

Two months earlier, on January 2, Hamas’s number two political bureau official Saleh Arouri was killed. This time, Israel struck in Lebanon. A drone hit his apartment near Beirut, where he had been living in exile since his release from an Israeli prison 14 years ago. Al Arouri had helped create Hamas’s armed wing 30 years ago. He was known for being a link between the Palestinian movement, Iran, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. What the Shiite regime calls the“axis of resistance”.

Other Hamas leaders missing

The situation of some targets needs to be clarified. There is no certainty, for example, about the fate of Israel’s public enemy number one: Muhammad Deif. He is the man who announced in a recording on October 7 the start of the operation “Al Aqsa flood”, which led to the killing by Hamas members of nearly 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

The army of the Hebrew state assures that it has “more and more signs” which indicate that the head of the armed wing of Hamas died after a strike on the Gaza Strip. But the Palestinian movement assures for its part that he is still alive. For 30 years, he has been involved in kidnappings of soldiers, suicide attacks and rocket attacks. He is nicknamed “the cat with nine lives” by his enemies and has already escaped six assassination attempts.

Yaya Sinouar, a “death on borrowed time” in the tunnels of Gaza

The situation of the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip is also unknown to the general public. Yaya Sinouar is probably hiding in the tunnels of the Palestinian enclave: he has not been seen in public since the attacks of October 7 in Israel, which he himself prepared. In early July, a Palestinian prisoner told Agence France Presse that Israeli soldiers had tortured him and offered him money to find Sinouar’s hiding place. The latter is considered a “death on borrowed time”, according to the Israeli army, which means that his hunt will not end until he is captured dead or alive.