Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh met with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian in Qatar on Tuesday, showcasing the international patronage of the organization that massacred 1,400 people in an Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel.
“We are confident that in the most severe and difficult situations and circumstances, God will send down His patience, comfort, and support to the believers,” Haniyeh said, according to the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
ELECTION SECURITY AT CENTER OF VOTING SOFTWARE DEBATE FOLLOWING RECOMMENDATIONS TO UPDATE
Haniyeh suggested that Israel Defense Forces fear “engaging with the resistance forces” in Gaza. Israeli leaders, on the other hand, have signaled that Haniyeh might find the Israeli intelligence forces far more engaging than he will prefer.
“The State of Israel must not stop and must not let go until we kill six people: Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, Ismail Haniyeh, Saleh al-Aruri, Khaled Mashaal and Marwan Issa,” Israeli opposition leader Yair Laid said Monday. “All six have to die.”
Israel’s Mossad and Shin Bet reportedly have established a special unit known as NILI, an acronym for a phrase taken from 1 Samuel 15:29, “Netzah Yisrael Lo Yeshaker,” or “the Eternal One of Israel will not lie.” The phrase was used as the password of “a secret, pro-British spying organization” that aided the British in their invasion of Ottoman Palestine during the First World War, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.
"After the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Mossad tracked down those involved in the massacre, killing them one by one,” Dr. Ahron Bregman, a retired major in the IDF who teaches at King’s College London, told France24. “This is what is now to be expected from NILI.”
Israeli political leaders, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his predecessors and current political rivals, have agreed on the need to destroy Hamas. The unprecedented nature of the Oct. 7 attack — in which more than 1400 people were killed and another 5,400 wounded, with footage of many atrocities recorded and published by Hamas terrorists eager to celebrate the murders — has raised expectations that Haniyeh and other senior leaders will be targeted wherever they might be found.
“These Hamas leaders are dead men walking,” American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Michael Rubin predicted. “And the question is now whether Qatar wants them to be killed on Qatari territory and face even more hits to its reputation or whether they will be sent walking somewhere else — perhaps to Lebanon, perhaps to Moscow, perhaps to Malaysia — let those governments try to protect them as best they can. But again, these guys have lifelong targets on their heads.”
Israeli forces demolished the West Bank home of Salih al Aruri on Tuesday. Al Aruri is Haniyeh’s deputy and “one of the founders of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing,” according to a State Department bulletin that offers $5 million for information about him. Al Aruri has Lebanese citizenship, according to the U.S. government. Deif is reportedly in Gaza as a successor to al Aruri. Marwan Issa is his deputy, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations, and Sinwar has functioned as Hamas’s political leader inside Gaza since 2017.
Haniyeh is known to travel in Qatar and Turkey. Mashel, who led the Hamas politburo from 1996 to 2017, has been based in Doha since 2017.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
"I would be surprised if a lot of these people were to live past, I don't know, July of next year," Foundation for Defense of Democracies Senior Vice President Jonathan Schanzer said. "As Israel gains the initiative in Gaza, Hamas leaders worldwide are now in the crosshairs."
Lapid, the leader of Israel's center-left, maintained that it is essential. "Until they die, Israel will not avenge the murdered of Be’eri and Sderot, Kfar Aza and Ofakim," he said, per the Times of Israel. "Until they die, the Middle East will not understand that we are not messing around.”