The Israel Defense Forces and Israeli Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment on Haniyeh’s death in Tehran and has not claimed responsibility.
Israel does sometimes confirm its role in targeted killings. The Israeli military said this week it had killed Fuad Shukr, whom it called Hezbollah’s most “senior military commander,” in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut Tuesday. Israel’s military said the attack on Shukr was retaliation for a deadly rocket strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday.
But often the country has refused to confirm its role in the targeting killings across borders, preferring a “strategic ambiguity” that allows a veil of deniability.
Here are some of the other significant plots to kill Hamas leaders that have been linked to Israel.
Yahya Ayyash, 1996
Yahya Ayyash, the chief bombmaker for Hamas, was killed by answering a rigged cellular phone in Gaza in 1996. Nicknamed “The Engineer,” Ayyash was likely targeted by Israeli agents, The Post previously reported.
Ayyash was believed to be responsible for introducing suicide bombings as a terror weapon against Israel, the New York Times reported in 1996, adding that Israel considered him the mastermind behind terror attacks since 1992 that claimed at least 60 lives and wounded hundreds.
While nobody claimed responsibility for Ayyash’s killing, Israeli state radio reported his death citing “informed Israeli sources.”
Ayyash’s killing sparked a string of fatal bus bombings in Israel.
Khaled Meshal in 1997
Khaled Meshal, a Hamas leader who grew up in the West Bank, survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997.
Meshal left the West Bank after the Israeli takeover in 1967, and moved to Kuwait, and then Jordan in 1991, where he was an active member of Hamas. He became the chief of Hamas’s political bureau in 1996, as reported by The Washington Post.
One year later, while on a street in Amman, Meshal was injected in the ear with a lethal poison by Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence agency, in an operation approved by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Meshal survived — Jordan’s King Hussein arrested the agents responsible and threatened to break a newly minted peace accord with Israel if it did not provide the poison’s antidote. The agents were later released in exchange for an apology for the botched assassination and the release of 20 other prisoners.
The Hamas leader continued to live in Jordan until 1999, when the group was banned by the King; then he moved to Qatar, then Syria, and back to Qatar. Meshal became the group’s top political leader in 2004 after Israel assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Hamas’s political leader in Gaza, Abdel Aziz Rantisi.
Meshal remains a senior figure in Hamas.
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, 2004
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed in an Israeli helicopter strike in Gaza City in 2004.
Yassin, a wheelchair-bound Palestinian cleric, was among those who formed Hamas in 1987.
Yassin spent years of his life in an Israeli prison. In 1983 he was arrested by Israeli forces for allegedly forming an underground organization and possessing weapons. He was released two years later as part of a prisoner swap, according to Al Jazeera.
In 1989, he was arrested again and sentenced to 40 years in prison, charged with inciting violence and ordering the killing of an Israeli soldier. He was released in 1997 after King Hussein of Jordan struck a deal with Israel.
Following Yassin’s death, Abdel Aziz Rantisi was named as his successor, though Rantisi was killed in an Israeli airstrike less than a month later.
Abdel Aziz Rantisi in 2004
Abdel Aziz Rantisi had hardly been the top Hamas leader inside the Gaza Strip for a month when an Israeli helicopter fired two missiles on his white Subaru sedan in the streets of Gaza and assassinated him alongside two bodyguards in April 2004. He was 54.
Rantisi had taken the helm after Sheikh Yassin’s assassination in March. Formerly a pediatrician, Rantisi was known for his lack of compromise with Israel and could mobilize tens of of thousands of Palestinians into the streets within hours.
The missiles had come three days after former president George W. Bush met with former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and vowed “to wipe out Palestinian terrorism, which they see as a prerequisite to establishing an independent Palestinian state,” according to a Post story from 2004.
Israel defended the assassination.
“We are preventing terrorist attacks, and part of the prevention is to go after terrorists like Rantisi,” said Gideon Meir, deputy director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. “Anyone who will replace him and will continue this business of terrorism against Israel is a legitimate target.”
Rantisi was taken to al-Shifa Hospital, where he died.
“Israel will regret this — revenge is coming,” Ismail Haniyeh told reporters at the hospital at the time. “This blood will not be wasted … The battle will not weaken our determination or break our will.”
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in 2010
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas operative, was assassinated in a hotel room in Dubai in January 2010. Hamas officials accused Israel of the killing and vowed revenge.
Israeli officials, in keeping with standard policy on such allegations, did not comment, The Post reported at the time.
Mabhouh was one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, and was widely known for his involvement in the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989, The Post reported.
Citing medical reports supplied to the family, Mabhouh’s brother said the documents indicated that Mabhouh had been subjected to electric shocks and strangulation.
Dubai’s official media office did not mention a cause of death but quoted police and security officials who said Mabhouh entered the country Jan. 19 and was found dead within a day, suggesting that his movements were being tracked.
Cate Brown, Susannah George and Mohamad El Chamaa contributed to this report.
