News of Hamas leader’s death caused “shock” Ismail Hniya, in the Palestinian territories.
This morning, Palestinian movements in the occupied West Bank called for a joint declaration for a general strike in protest against the “assassination of the great national leader Ismail Haniya”.
In Ramallah, officials abandoned their ministry offices following the appeal, AFP reporters found.
Shops were closed and employees walked off the job in many cities in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
Cultural organizations said in statements they issued that they would remain closed.
Assassination of Ismail Haniya: Why Now and Why in Iran – Israel’s Message
Residents’ reactions
“Like thunder, something incredible,” says Wael Qudayh, a resident of the Gaza Strip.
The announcement of the “assassination” in Tehran of Ismail Haniya, the leader of Hamas that exercises power in Gaza, caused shock in the Palestinian territories.
“The news came as a shock to us when we woke up,” the 35-year-old resident added, hours after Hamas announced this morning the death of the head of its political office, who was killed in an Israeli strike in Tehran, where he had gone to attend the inauguration of Iran’s new president.
“The news surprised me because (Ismail) Haniya is the head of the negotiations,” said Ahmed Weyshah, another Gaza resident, referring to the indirect talks between Hamas and Israel in an effort to end the war in the tiny Palestinian enclave that erupted after the bloody October 7 attack by Hamas on Israeli soil.
“As the head of the Hamas movement, he is the one who leads the negotiations on behalf of the movement. I did not expect that a member of the negotiating team would be assassinated by the Israeli occupation,” Weshah added.
Youssef Said notes, for his part, that “Qatar was able to protect Haniya (since the start of the Gaza war about 10 months ago), but Iran was unable to protect it for just a few hours with all the intelligence agencies, army, its force and weapons,” says this resident of the Gaza Strip.
Haniya lives in Qatar, a Gulf country that has hosted Hamas’ political office with the blessing of the United States since 2012, after the Palestinian Islamist movement closed its office in Damascus, Syria.
For Palestinians AFP spoke to, Haniya died a “martyr” because of the way he was killed.
“This is what all Palestinians … hope to witness, defending their land, their people and their sacred values,” said Mohammad Farwana, 38, from Khan Younis, a town in the southern Gaza Strip where Israeli troops this week ended a massive ground operation that caused hundreds of deaths, according to the Gaza Civil Defense agency, and displaced tens of thousands of people inside the enclave.
“Khaniya gave children and grandchildren” (to the Palestinian cause) Farwana added, referring to the ten members of Haniya’s family who were killed in June during an airstrike on the al-Sati refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
The announcement of Haniya’s death also provoked strong reactions in the occupied West Bank, a Palestinian territory governed in part by the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, the strongman of Fatah, the rival movement of Hamas.
For Hosham Abdel Razek, “the assassination of Ismail Haniya in Iran proves that we, the Palestinian people, have no protector, that our blood is cheap and that the Arab and Islamic nation has sold us to the United States and Israel,” he says. A 12-year-old man, an employee of a private company.
AMP Source
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