Israeli air strike in Gaza kills 3 sons and 4 grandchildren of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh
- Targeted strike comes as Israel, Hamas are involved in delicate ceasefire negotiations
- Israel’s military campaign continues to lay waste to the Gaza Strip and kill civilians
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh insisted that the death of three of his sons in an Israeli air strike would not influence truce talks in Gaza.
The Israeli military confirmed carrying out the attack on Wednesday, which came amid delicate ceasefire negotiations. Israel described the three sons as operatives in the Hamas armed wing.
The sons – Hazem, Amir and Mohammad – were killed when the car they were driving in was bombed in Gaza’s Al-Shati camp, Hamas said. Four of Haniyeh’s grandchildren, three girls and a boy, were also killed in the attack, Hamas said.
Asked about the four grandchildren killed in the air strike, the Israeli military said there was “no information on that right now”.
Haniyeh, based abroad in Qatar, has been the tough-talking face of Hamas’ international diplomacy as war with Israel has raged on in Gaza, where his family home was destroyed in an Israeli air strike back in November.
“The blood of my sons is not dearer than the blood of our people,” Haniyeh, 61, who has 13 sons and daughters according to Hamas sources, told pan-Arab Al Jazeera TV.
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The three sons and grandchildren were making family visits during the first day of the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday in Shati, their home refugee camp in Gaza City, according to relatives.
The deadly strike came as talks in Cairo for a temporary ceasefire and hostage release deal drag on without signs of a breakthrough. Talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar have been ongoing since Sunday.
Hamas said on Tuesday it was studying an Israeli ceasefire proposal but that it was “intransigent” and met none of the Palestinian demands.
“Our demands are clear and specific and we will not make concessions on them. The enemy will be delusional if it thinks that targeting my sons, at the climax of the negotiations and before the movement sends its response, will push Hamas to change its position,” Haniyeh said.
The war broke out with Hamas’ October 7 attack against Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.
Palestinian militants also took about 250 hostages, 129 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli army says are dead.
In the seventh month of a war in which Israel’s air and ground offensive has devastated Gaza, Hamas wants an end to Israeli military operations and a withdrawal from the enclave, and permission for displaced Palestinians to return home.
More than 33,400 Palestinians have been killed in the relentless fighting, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says most of the dead are women and children. Israel says it has killed some 12,000 militants, without providing evidence.
A framework being circulated would halt fighting for six weeks and see the exchange of about 40 hostages for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
US President Joe Biden said Hamas “needs to move” on the latest truce proposal.
Israel’s main international ally the United States has also been ramping up pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a truce, increase the amount of aid flowing into the besieged Gaza Strip and abandon plans to invade the southern city of Rafah.
Appointed to the militant group’s top job in 2017, Haniyeh has moved between Turkey and Qatar’s capital Doha, avoiding Israeli-imposed travel restrictions in blockaded Gaza and enabling him to act as a negotiator in the latest ceasefire negotiations or communicate with Hamas’ main ally Iran.
Israel regards the entire Hamas leadership as terrorists, accusing Haniyeh and other leaders of continuing to “pull the strings of the Hamas terror organisation”.
But how much Haniyeh knew about the October 7 cross-border attack on Israel by Gaza-based militants beforehand is not clear.
The attack plan, drawn up by the Hamas military council in Gaza, was such a closely guarded secret that some Hamas officials abroad seemed shocked by its timing and scale.
Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
