Bicom - Home

Palestinian Figures

Send to a friend

Browse selected biographies:

Ismail Haniyeh

ismail haniyeh

Ismail Haniyeh

TBC

(Born 1962)

Ismail Haniyeh headed Palestinian militant group Hamas' national list of candidates in the January 2006 elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), in which Hamas were the surprise victors.

Haniyeh rose to prominence as a close associate of Hamas's spiritual leader, the late Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, whose office he ran. In December 2005, Haniyeh was elected to head the Hamas list, which in January 2006 won the PLC elections.

On 16 February 2006, Hamas nominated Haniyeh for Palestinian Prime Minister, and was formally presented as such to Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on 20 February.

After the election results had been announced, Mr Haniyeh said he would meet Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to start consultations on "a political partnership" and the make-up of a new government.

Background

Haniyeh was born in 1962 in the Shati refugee camp to the west of Gaza City.

He studied Arabic literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he became involved in the Islamist movement. Haniyeh graduated in 1987, just as the first intifada against Israel erupted in Gaza. He was detained by the Israeli authorities for participating in protests soon afterwards, though his prison sentence was short. In 1988, with Hamas coming to the fore in Gaza, he was again detained, but this time imprisoned for six months. The next year, Haniyeh was arrested yet again and sentenced to three years in prison.

Academic

Following his release in 1992, Israel deported Haniyeh along with senior Hamas leaders Abdel-Aziz al-Rantisi and Mahmoud a-Zahhar and over 400 other activists to south Lebanon. They spent more than a year camped at Marj al-Zahour, where the Islamist group received unprecedented media exposure and became known throughout the world. Haniyeh returned to Gaza in December 1993 and was appointed dean of the Islamic University. After Israel released Sheikh Yassin from prison in 1997, Haniyeh was appointed his assistant. The two men's close relationship led to Haniyeh gaining increasing prominence within the movement and he became the group's representative to the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas Leader

With his high profile, however, came the threat of Israel's policy of eliminating Hamas' military and political leaders. In September 2003, Haniyeh and Sheikh Yassin were slightly injured in an Israeli air strike on an apartment block in Gaza City. The two men left the building seconds before the bomb struck, after hearing the approaching Israeli aircraft. Only six months later, Sheikh Yassin was killed by Israeli helicopter gunships as he left a mosque after dawn prayers. When Sheikh Yassin's successor in Gaza, Abdel-Aziz al-Rantisi, was killed by Israel in April 2004, Hamas decided to keep the name of its new leader in Gaza secret. But Palestinian sources said Haniyeh was appointed to the group's "collective leadership" with Mahmoud a-Zahhar and Sayyid al-Siyam. Although a-Zahar is thought to be the most senior of those leaders, Haniyeh was chosen to lead Hamas's campaign for the January election.

(Source: Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S))

Share with: