Israel has a long history of assassination operations across borders
Israel has pursued its enemies from afar for decades, targeting Hamas leaders not only in the Palestinian territories but much farther afield.
The killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran early Wednesday likely adds to the list. Hamas has described the death of Haniyeh, the head of its political wing, as an assassination. The group, along with Iran, blamed Israel for the killing and vowed retaliation - raising fears that the Middle East could be plunged into further chaos.
The Israel Defense Forces and the Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment on Haniyeh’s death in Tehran, and Israel has not claimed responsibility.
Israel does sometimes confirm its role in targeted killings. The Israeli military said this week that it had killed Fuad Shukr, whom it called Hezbollah’s most “senior military commander,” in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on 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 targeted 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.
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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 Washington Post previously reported.
Ayyash was believed to be responsible for introducing suicide bombings as a terrorism weapon against Israel, the New York Times reported in 1996, adding that Israel considered him the mastermind behind terrorist attacks since 1992 that had claimed at least 60 lives and wounded hundreds.
While nobody claimed responsibility for Ayyash’s killing, Israeli state radio first reported his death, citing “informed Israeli sources.”
Ayyash’s killing sparked a string of fatal bus bombings in Israel.
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Khaled Meshal, 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, moving to Kuwait and then in 1991 to Jordan, where he was an active member of Hamas. He became the chief of Hamas’s political bureau in 1996, as reported by The Post.
One year later, while on a street in Amman, the Jordanian capital, Meshal was injected in the ear with a lethal poison by the Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence agency, in an operation approved by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Meshal survived, after 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 Palestinian 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.
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Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, 2004
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed in an Israeli helicopter strike in Gaza City in March 2004.
Yassin, a wheelchair-bound Palestinian cleric, was among those who established 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 Jordan’s King Hussein struck a deal with Israel.
Following Yassin’s death, Rantisi was named his successor, though Rantisi was killed in an Israeli airstrike less than a month later.
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Abdel Aziz Rantisi, 2004
Abdel Aziz Rantisi had been the top Hamas leader inside the Gaza Strip for barely 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.
Rantisi had taken the helm after Yassin’s assassination that March. Formerly a pediatrician, Rantisi was known for his lack of compromise with Israel and could mobilize tens of thousands of Palestinians into the streets within hours.
The missiles had come three days after President George W. Bush met with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and vowed to wipe out Palestinian terrorism, 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,” 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.”
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Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, 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 on Jan. 19 and was found dead within a day, suggesting that his movements were being tracked.