File photo showing exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal alongside Ismail Haniyeh and Izzat el Rishq in the Gaza Strip on December 10, 2012. (Credit: Said Khatib/AFP)
Before the death of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a strike in Tehran on Wednesday, the Palestinian Islamist movement blamed Israel for other attacks targeting some of its senior leaders.
Here are some of the main cases over the last thirty years.
1996: Ayash in Gaza, telephone bomb
On January 5, 1996, Yehya Ayash, the prolific Hamas bomb maker nicknamed "the engineer," was killed in Gaza by the explosion of a booby-trapped cell phone attributed to the Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service.
1997: Attempted poisoning of Meshaal in Amman
On Sept. 25, 1997, almost ten years after the inception of Hamas, one of its founding members, Khaled Meshaal, escaped an assassination attempt in Amman by Mossad (Israeli foreign intelligence) agents, who injected him with poison.
Having fallen into a coma, the head of the Hamas political bureau is saved by King Hussein of Jordan, who demands that Israel provide the antidote in exchange for the release of the perpetrators of the attack.
A prisoner exchange followed, resulting in the release of Hamas's spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin.
2002: A bomb on a building in Gaza kills Shehadeh
Salah Shehadeh, leader of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, was killed in a strike on Gaza on July 22, 2002. Fifteen civilians, including his wife, their daughter and eight other children, died in an operation by the Israeli air force, which dropped a bomb on a building.
2003: Shanab's car targeted in Gaza
Ismail Abu Shanab, one of the co-founders and main political leaders of Hamas, was killed on Aug. 22, 2003 by Israeli missiles fired at his car in Gaza.
2004: Strike on Sheikh Yassin in Gaza
Seven months later, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin died on March 22, 2004, during an Israeli helicopter strike in Gaza, as he was leaving a mosque.
2004: Rantissi shot down
Less than a month later, his successor at the head of the movement, Abdel Aziz Rantissi, was in turn killed by an Israeli strike, followed in September by a car bomb attack killing a Hamas leader, Ezzeddine Sheikh Khalil. Israel "unofficially" acknowledges being behind this latest operation.
2009: Rayan killed in Gaza offensive
While Hamas had taken control of the Gaza Strip two years earlier, the leader of the most radical wing of the Islamist movement, Nizar Rayan, was killed on Jan. 1, 2009, along with his four wives, ten of his 12 children and two neighbors, in a raid during the offensive against the Gaza Strip.
Fifteen days later, another Hamas leader, Said Siam, died in another strike.
2010: Al-Mabhouh dies in a Dubai hotel
One of the founders of Hamas's armed wing, Mahmoud Abdel Raouf Al-Mabhouh, was found dead on Jan. 20, 2010 in a hotel room in Dubai. The movement blames Israel.
2012: 'Targeted elimination' of Jaabari in Gaza
On Nov. 14, 2012, Operation Pillar of Defense against armed groups in Gaza began with the "targeted elimination" of Hamas's military operations chief, Ahmad Jaabari, in an airstrike targeting a car in Gaza City.
2014: Three commanders killed in Rafah
On Aug. 21, 2014, Israel killed in an airstrike three commanders of the armed wing of Hamas in Rafah, including Mohammad Abu Shamala and Raed al-Atar, who were then on its "list of the five most wanted Hamas terrorists in Gaza."
2024: Al-Arouri, Hamas second-in-command, killed in Beirut
Almost three months after the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by the unprecedented attack by Hamas in Israel on Oct. 7, the second-in-command of the Palestinian Islamist movement, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed on Jan. 2, 2024 in a strike attributed to Israel in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, and Mohammad Deif, head of the Islamist movement's military wing, remain among the Israeli army's designated targets. After a strike in mid-July on the al-Mawassi camp in the southern Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said it had indications that it had succeeded in eliminating Mohammad Deif there. Hamas has never confirmed these allegations.
This article originally appeared in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.