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Israeli officials have not so far claimed responsibility for the
killing of Haniyeh, who had been in Tehran for the inauguration
of the new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, and there has
been no official comment from the government.
But few doubted that Haniyeh, the public face of Hamas who took
the top job in 2017, was the latest in a string of Hamas leaders
to have been killed by Israel.
"We woke up this morning to a tragedy for the Palestinian
people," said Fawzi Nassar, a resident of the southern city of
Hebron.
"He is not the first one they assassinated - there were many
leaders in the past like Shiekh Ahmed Yassin and others, but
that will not affect our steadfastness," he said, referring to
the founder of Hamas who was killed by an Israeli helicopter
gunship in 2004.
Palestinian factions called for a day of protest and a general
strike in the West Bank and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,
whose Fatah faction is a political rival to Hamas, condemned the
killing, which Fatah called a "heinous and cowardly act".
Although the West Bank is under the nominal leadership of the
Palestinian Authority, run by Fatah, opinion polls show support
for Hamas is strong.
"His assassination will not affect the party because the party
is not a new one," said Suheil Nasrelddin, a resident of Hebron.
"They have a lot of leaders, even the youngest child is a
leader."
The West Bank has been in turmoil since the Oct. 7 attack on
Israel which sparked Israel's invasion of Gaza, with regular
raids by Israeli forces in cities across the area.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, many of them armed
militants but also many stone-throwing youths or unarmed
protesters and uninvolved civilians.
"The Israeli crime of assassinating Ismael Haniyeh, the leader
of Hamas, will not break the Palestinian resistance or the
Palestinian people's determination to achieve our freedom," said
Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian politician who heads the Union
Of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees.
"Of course it will escalate the situation," he said. "And this
is what Netanyahu wants, he knows that the end of this war is
the end of his political career."
(Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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