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By Vered Weiss, World Israel News
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was reportedly killed because he was a major obstacle to securing a hostage release deal.
Haniyeh died on Wednesday after an explosive device that had been reportedly planted months ago was controlled and remotely detonated in an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp boarding house where Haniyeh was staying in Tehran.
Although many are worried that Haniyeh’s assassination may be an obstacle to a hostage release deal, according to one source, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the killing of Haniyeh because he believed it would remove a significant impediment to a hostage release agreement.
Although Haniyeh is sometimes portrayed as a “moderate” by global media, the source said he was a hardliner who kept an agreement from being made.
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“Haniyeh presented a pragmatic face to the mediators, but internally inside Hamas led a hard line,” the source said.
Former IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus told CNN that he didn’t believe the assassination would impede the return of the hostages.
“There are still 115 hostages held by Hamas, and it is Hamas that is refusing to agree to a ceasefire.”
He added, “It is the same Ismail Haniyeh who is being represented in the global media as a modern-day Muslim Mahatma Gandhi who was a deal maker. No, this is a terrorist who is one of the architects and enablers of the October 7th massacre.”
“He was not someone who was busy doing positive things. He is one of the reasons there still isn’t a hostage deal because he and Yahya Sinwar have been refusing to hand over the hostages, surrender, and stop the fighting,” Conricus explained.
“If they would have decided that enough is enough… and let’s return Israeli hostage, but they decided not to,” he said.
“The assassination of Haniyeh … may drive home a message to Yahya Sinwar and what remains of Hamas’s leadership that there is only one way. Either go the way of Haniyeh and Deif, who aren’t going to be terrorizing anyone anymore, or you do a deal,” he concluded.
