For decades, Israel has hunted its enemies wherever they are, targeting Hamas leaders in the Palestinian territories and far beyond.
The assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday is likely to add to the list. Hamas and Iran accuse Israel of his assassination and have vowed revenge, raising fears of a new explosion in the Middle East powder keg.
The Israeli military and the Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment on Mr. Haniyeh’s death. Israel has not claimed responsibility.
But Israel has previously confirmed its role in targeted strikes. The Israeli military said this week that it had killed Fouad Shokr – Hezbollah’s “top military commander,” according to Israel – in an airstrike in Beirut. The military said the attack was in response to a deadly rocket attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday.
But Israel has also often refused to confirm or deny its role in cross-border assassinations, deeming this strategic ambiguity preferable.
Here are some strikes on Hamas leaders that are attributed to Israel.
Yahia Ayache, 1996
Yahia Ayache, Hamas’ chief bomb maker, was killed while answering a booby-trapped cell phone in Gaza in 1996. Nicknamed “the engineer,” Yahia Ayache was killed by Israeli agents.
Ayache was considered by Israel to be the mastermind behind a strategy of suicide bombings targeting Israel that since 1992 had left at least 60 dead and hundreds injured.
His assassination by the detonation of a powerful explosive lodged in the telephone was never claimed, but Israeli state radio announced his death first, citing “well-informed Israeli sources”.
Yahia Ayache’s death sparked a series of deadly bus bombings in Israel.
Khaled Mechaal, 1997
Khaled Meshaal, a Hamas leader who grew up in the West Bank, survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997.
Meshaal had left the West Bank for Kuwait after the Israeli army entered the territory in 1967. In 1991, he moved to Jordan and joined Hamas, becoming its political bureau chief in 1996.
In 1997, on a street in Amman, the capital of Jordan, Meshaal was injected with a deadly poison into his ear by an agent of Israel’s foreign intelligence service, the Mossad. The operation had been approved by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Mossad agents were captured, and King Hussein of Jordan demanded the antidote or break a recently concluded peace agreement with Israel. Meshaal survived.
The Israeli agents were later released in exchange for an official apology and the release of 20 Palestinian prisoners.
Meshaal left Jordan in 1999, when the king banned Hamas. He then lived in Qatar, then Syria, and then Qatar again, where he became for a time, in 2004, Hamas’s top political leader after Israel assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Hamas’s political leader in Gaza, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi.
Meshaal remains a prominent figure in Hamas.
Sheikh Ahmed Yassine, 2004
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, co-founder in 1987 and spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed by rockets fired from Israeli helicopters in Gaza in March 2004.
The wheelchair-bound Palestinian cleric spent part of his life in Israeli prisons. In 1983, he was arrested on charges by Israel of forming an underground organization and possessing weapons. He was released two years later in a prisoner exchange.
In 1989, he was arrested again and sentenced to 40 years in prison, accused of inciting violence and ordering the murder of an Israeli soldier. He was released in 1997, after King Hussein of Jordan reached an agreement with Israel.
Upon Yassin’s death, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi succeeded him, but he was killed by an Israeli airstrike less than a month later.
Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, 2004
Barely appointed head of Hamas, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi was killed along with two bodyguards when an Israeli helicopter fired two rockets at his car in Gaza in April 2004.
Rantissi had succeeded Ahmed Yassin in March. A former pediatrician opposed to any compromise with Israel, he could mobilize tens of thousands of Palestinians onto the streets within hours.
The airstrike came three days after President George W. Bush vowed to eradicate Palestinian terrorism during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Israel has publicly defended the necessity of the assassination.
“We prevent terrorist attacks, and part of prevention is hitting terrorists like Rantissi,” said Gideon Meir, a senior Israeli diplomat. “Anyone who replaces him and continues his terrorist activities against Israel is a legitimate target.”
“Israel will regret it — vengeance is coming,” Ismail Haniyeh told reporters at the time. “This blood will not have been shed in vain. The battle will not break our determination or our will.”
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, 2010
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas official, was assassinated in a Dubai hotel room in January 2010. Hamas officials blamed Israel for the assassination and vowed to avenge his death.
Israel, in line with its policy regarding such allegations, made no comment.
Mabhouh, a co-founder of Hamas’ military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was known for his involvement in the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989.
His brother said forensic evidence given to the family indicated that Mabhouh had been subjected to electric shocks and strangled.
Dubai’s official media office did not mention the cause of death, saying only that Mabhouh entered the country on January 19 and was found dead the same day, suggesting he was being tracked.
This text was originally published in the Washington Post.
Read this article in its original version (in English; subscription required)