In recent weeks, Israel has been on an assassination spree, killing several high-profile Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in quick succession. Yet there is reason to believe these killings, widely celebrated as a show of power now, will serve to embolden these groups and prove harmful to Israel’s security and the region’s stability in the long term.
The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran’s capital, Tehran, on Wednesday, for example, silenced a moderating voice in the Hamas leadership and likely pushed the group to assume an even harder, less compromising stance against Israel. The head of the group’s political wing, Haniyeh was widely seen as a pragmatic political operator. He had negotiated ceasefires in the past and was attempting to achieve another one before he was killed.
We have seen in the past how a high-level assassination can have a hardening effect on the group.
Twenty years ago, in March 2004, Israel assassinated Hamas’s ageing, wheelchair-bound founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, as he was leaving a mosque in Gaza City after dawn prayers. Under Yassin’s tutelage, Hamas was aligned with Saudi Arabia and had limited access to high-grade weaponry.
After Yassin’s killing, Khalid Meshal, a more hawkish figure, took control of Hamas and moved the group closer to Iran. Unlike the Saudis, Iran was willing to provide Hamas with rocket designs and other military technology. By the time Haniyeh took over the political leadership role from Meshal in 2017, Hamas was fully under Iranian influence and had built a formidable arsenal of high-grade weaponry.
The same thing happened when Israel targeted the leader of Hezbollah.
In 1992, Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Abbas al-Musawi, along with his wife and six-year-old son in southern Lebanon. The killings only hardened the group’s resolve. Al-Musawi’s successor, Hassan Nasrallah, proved to be much more charismatic, eloquent and effective. He increased the group’s power and regional influence significantly. Nasrallah was also responsible for the rise of Fuad Shukr, the Hezbollah commander who is believed to be responsible for obtaining the bulk of the group’s more advanced weapons, from precision-guided missiles to long-range rockets.
A day before Haniyeh’s killing in Tehran, Israel assassinated Shukr in Beirut. And on Thursday, it claimed to have killed Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif in an air raid on southern Gaza on July 13.
Looking at the unintended consequences of past assassinations, there is little reason to believe the killing of either military commander, or Haniyeh for that matter, would make these groups less formidable foes to Israel.
History shows every single Israeli assassination of a high-profile political or military operator, even after initially being hailed as a game-changing victory, eventually led to the killed leader being replaced by someone more determined, adept and hawkish.
Indeed, Israel’s counterterrorism strategy over the past 40 years, which has been highly dependent on assassinations, has proved to be a colossal strategic failure.
The 1992 assassination of al-Musawi, for example, was considered a strategic mistake on the part of Israel by many even before it happened. In his book Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, Ronen Bergman documents how even some Israeli military figures had opposed the assassination, believing “Hezbollah was not a one-man show, and Musawi was not the most extreme man in its leadership” and warning he “would be replaced, perhaps by someone more radical”.
Of course, they were right.
Under al-Musawi, Hezbollah was a small militia. Its most powerful weapon was suicide bombings, and it could not effectively repel the Israeli military from Lebanese territory. Once Nasrallah took over, he put Shukr in charge of stepping up the groups efforts, and staging sophisticated guerilla attacks, including rocket attacks, on Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. Shukr’s attacks compelled the Israelis to withdraw in 2000, marking their first loss against an Arab military force.
However, Israel did not learn its lesson about assassinations after the killing of al-Musawi led to Nasrallah’s rise to power. In 2003, it tried to assassinate Yassin and his then-assistant, Haniyeh. They narrowly escaped a building in Gaza City before it was destroyed by an Israeli air strike. A year later, Israel managed to kill Yassin, leading to the rise of Meshal, who pushed Hamas into an alliance with Iran, which proved disastrous for Israel.
It is not surprising – in fact, almost expected – that when Israel kills a political or military leader of Hezbollah or Hamas, he is replaced by a more hardline leader, seeking revenge, not compromise.
The history will likely repeat itself. Meshal is now expected to return to power as Haniyeh’s replacement. He is likely to be much less accommodating in his negotiations with the Israelis.
Israel’s assassinations often have adverse consequences beyond paving the way for more hardline leaders, and these most recent ones are no different.
By killing Haniyeh in Tehran, for example, Israel has prompted Iran to strike back.
In April, when Israel assassinated two Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps generals in Iran’s diplomatic facility in Damascus, Tehran retaliated by firing a salvo of 300 Iranian drones and ballistic and cruise missiles, the first state to strike Israel in the 21st century. Despite all the help it received from its powerful Western allies and Arab neighbours, at least five ballistic missiles breached Israel’s defences.
Israel has now struck a high profile target in Tehran in an open insult to Iran’s sovereignty. With this act, it also communicated its ability to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran is compelled to restore deterrence.
Furthermore, Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was touted as a leader who could pivot Iran towards the West. The assassination gave the hardliners in Iran sceptical of rapprochement a reason to undermine the new president’s vision a day after he was inaugurated.
Ultimately, with its high-profile assassinations, Israel has scored a symbolic victory but also encouraged its adversaries to assume more hawkish positions and set the region up for a wider war.
Over the past 40 years, Israel insisted on trying to debilitate nonstate actors staging attacks against its forces and people by assassinating their leaders rather than addressing the root causes of political violence, such as the occupation, apartheid, failure of governance, loss of hope, despair and anger among Palestinians. The aftermath of October 7 was another opportunity that Israel missed to change direction. Assassinations have served only to embolden, anger and make more determined Israel’s foes in the past, and they will continue to do so in the present.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
