‘If A Leader Leaves, Another Will Arise’: Slain Hamas Leader Haniyeh’s Last Words To Khamenei

Hours before his death, the assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s last words to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Ali Khamenei were a verse from the holy book of Muslims—Quran.

As per Reuters report, Haniyeh quoted a verse from Quran To Khamenei saying, "It is Allah who gives life and causes death. And Allah is all-aware of all actions ... 'If a leader leaves, another will arise'.”

After quoting a verse from Quran to Khamenei, Haniyeh was killed in a suspected Israeli strike on his guest house in Iran’s Tehran.

The comment, broadcast on television as Haniyeh addressed Khamenei, reflected deeply-held Islamist beliefs that shaped his life and approach to the Palestinians' conflict with Israel.

In a Reuters interview in Gaza in 1994, Haniyeh, who was buried in Qatar on Friday, said Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin had taught them that Palestinians can only recover their occupied homeland through "the purified arms of its men and their struggle."

No Muslim should die in his bed while "Palestine" remains occupied, he quoted Yassin as saying by Reuters in 1994.

For Palestinian supporters, Haniyeh and the rest of the Hamas leadership are fighters for liberation from Israeli occupation, keeping their cause alive when international diplomacy has failed them, the report mentioned.

He said he learnt from Sheikh Yassin "the love of Islam and sacrifice for this Islam and not to kneel down to tyrants and despots," the above report mentioned.

Haniyeh became the tough-talking face of the Palestinian group's international diplomacy as war raged back in Gaza, where three of his sons - Hazem, Amir and Mohammad - and four of his grandchildren were killed in an Israeli air strike in April. At least 60 other members of his extended family were also killed in the Gaza war, the report stated.

"The blood of my children is not more valuable than the blood of the children of the Palestinian people ... All the martyrs of Palestine are my children," he had reportedly said after their deaths.

"Through the blood of the martyrs and the pain of the injured, we create hope, we create the future, we create independence and freedom for our people,” he said. “We say to the occupation that this blood will only make us more steadfast in our principles and attachment to our land.”

Haniyeh after being appointed to the Hamas top job in 2017, moved between Turkey and Qatar's capital Doha, escaping the travel curbs of the blockaded Gaza Strip and enabling him to act as a negotiator in ceasefire talks or to speak with Hamas' ally Iran.

"All the agreements of normalisation that you (Arab states) signed with (Israel) will not end this conflict," Haniyeh declared shortly after Hamas fighters' Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel and took 250 as hostages.

Israel's response to the attack has been a military campaign that has killed around 40,000 people inside Gaza so far, and bombed much of the enclave into rubble, the report mentioned.