An Israeli attack kills a dozen relatives of Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in Gaza

A dozen relatives of the top leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniya, died in the early hours of this Tuesday in an Israeli attack on Gaza, according to Palestinian sources whose data agree with those offered by the family and medical sources to the Reuters agency. In April, Israel had already killed three children and several grandchildren of the head of the fundamentalist group. In addition, at least 14 other people have lost their lives in bombings on two schools of the UN refugee agency (UNRWA), according to the same sources.

The bombing of one of the homes of the Haniya clan took place in the Shati refugee camp, in the capital, Gaza City. The Israeli army has explained that the operation took place on a building used to house hostages and used by “terrorists” who participated in the October 7 attack. Among those killed in the attack is Zahar Haniya, sister of the leader of the fundamentalists. Some of the bodies were still under the rubble late Tuesday morning.

In an almost daily trickle, Israel announces the elimination of Hamas officials and often links them to the October attack that opened the spigot of the current war. But the main leader of the group in the Strip, Yahia Sinwar, whom he accuses of being ideologically responsible for that carnage, remains the most wanted man as the ninth month of fighting progresses. Haniya, for his part, has been in exile in Qatar for years, from where he undertakes different negotiating missions to try to achieve a ceasefire.

On April 10, an Israeli bombing of the same Shati refugee camp killed at least three of Haniya’s children and three grandchildren. It was Israel’s biggest blow to the Hamas leadership in the Strip during the current conflict. The leader of the group then defended the role of his family as martyrs (died for the Palestinian cause) after an attack that the Israeli secret services justified because his children were part of the military network of the fundamentalist group. The head of Hamas assured in any case that the attack was not going to change his demand to Israel for a permanent ceasefire in the negotiations that are still taking place today for a possible truce in Gaza.

Hamas as an “idea”

The head of the Israeli National Security Council, Tzachi Hanegbi, one of the men closest to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has assured that “it is possible to make Hamas disappear as an idea” beyond eliminating the Palestinian group on a political and military level. according to words collected by the newspaper Haaretz. To do this, he added, an alternative institution is necessary that takes power and “wants to live shoulder to shoulder with Israel without dedicating its entire life to trying to kill Israelis.”

The lack of a plan that foresees who will take the reins of the Strip after the war is one of the accusations that have been leveled against Netanyahu all these months. Hanegbi affirms that they are discussing with the United States an alternative in which, in addition to Washington, European and Arab countries would participate, according to Haaretz.

Hanegbi’s statements come after last week’s controversy, in which the army’s main spokesman, Daniel Hagari, claimed the opposite. “To tell people that there will be no terrorism in Gaza, that there will be no military operations, that there will not be a single rocket, that there will not be a single armed man, is lying. There will be terrorism in Gaza. Hamas is an idea,” he commented during a television interview that was almost immediately refuted by Netanyahu.

Annihilating Hamas is one of the pillars on which Israel bases its military reaction to the massacre of some 1,200 people in Israel that members of that group carried out on October 7, when the current war that has already caused more than 37,000 dead in Gaza. Hagari does not deny that the military is trying, as Netanyahu demands, to eliminate those enemy political and military capabilities. But, at the same time, the military spokesperson recognizes that Hamas is more than that, it is a thought, an ideology that is also gaining followers under the current war situation, according to polls among the Palestinian population.

Israeli troops continue to pound the Palestinian enclave from north to south. The bombings are not only taking place in Rafah, the southernmost area of ​​the territory, next to the border with Egypt, but also in the center and the north, where Gaza City is located, where the attacks took place in the early hours of Tuesday. . In recent days, the large city of the Strip has suffered one of the most lethal waves of bombings in recent weeks against points that the army identifies as “Hamas military infrastructure” targets.

Follow all the international information onFacebook andxor inour weekly newsletter.

_