By TIA GOLDENBERG, JACK JEFFERY and WAFAA SHURAFA (Associated Press)
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Three sons of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh were killed Wednesday in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, relatives and official Hamas media said, with Haniyeh accusing Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.”
Haniyeh confirmed the deaths Wednesday in an interview with the Al Jazeera satellite channel, saying his sons “were martyred on the road to liberating Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army.
“The criminal enemy is driven by the spirit of revenge and murder and does not value any standards or laws,” he said in the phone interview.
Ismail Haniyeh lives in exile in Qatar, where Al Jazeera is based.
He said the killings would not pressure Hamas into softening its positions. The two sides have been involved in months of cease-fire talks. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.
“The enemy believes that by targeting the families of the leaders, it will push them to give up the demands of our people,” he said. “Anyone who believes that targeting my sons will push Hamas to change its position is delusional.”
Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV station said Hazem, Ameer and Mohammed Haniyeh were killed with family members in the strike near the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. Ismail Haniyeh is originally from Shati.
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The brothers were traveling with family members in a single vehicle targeted by an Israeli drone, Al-Aqsa TV said. It said a total of six people were killed, including a daughter of Hazem Haniyeh, and a son and daughter of Ameer.
The strike comes as international mediators have been trying to broker a new cease-fire agreement. It was not immediately clear what effect the strike would have on those talks.
Earlier, Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz claimed Hamas has been defeated militarily, although he also said Israel will fight against it for years to come.
“From a military point of view, Hamas is defeated. Its fighters are eliminated or in hiding” and its capabilities “crippled,” Gantz said in a statement to the media in Sderot.
But, he added: “Fighting against Hamas will take time. Boys who are now in middle school will still fight in the Gaza Strip.”
Gantz reiterated the Israeli’s government commitment to go into Rafah, the city in the far southern tip of the Gaza Strip where more than half the territory’s population is now sheltering. “Wherever there are terrorist targets – the IDF will be there,” he said.
The strike came as Palestinians in Gaza marked a muted Eid al-Fitr holiday ending the holy fasting month of Ramadan, visiting the graves of loved ones killed in the war. In the Jabaliya refugee camp near Gaza City, people sat quietly by graves surrounded by buildings destroyed by Israel’s offensive in response to the deadly Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
Separately, U.S. President Joe Biden called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza a mistake and called for his government to flood the beleaguered territory with aid, ramping up pressure on Israel to reach a cease-fire and widening a rift between the staunch allies.
Biden has been an outspoken supporter of Israel’s war against Hamas. But in recent weeks his patience with Netanyahu has appeared to wane and his administration has taken a more stern line with Israel, rattling the countries’ decades-old alliance and deepening Israel’s international isolation over the war.
The most serious disagreement has been over Israel’s plans for an offensive in the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah. The rift was worsened by an Israeli airstrike last week on an aid convoy that killed seven workers with the World Central Kitchen charity, most of them foreigners. Israel said the deaths were unintentional but Biden was outraged.
Biden’s latest comments, made in an interview that aired late Tuesday and recorded two days after the WCK strike, highlight the differences between Israel and the U.S. over humanitarian aid to people in Gaza, where the war has led to warnings of imminent famine for more than a million people.
“What he’s doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach,” Biden told Spanish-language broadcaster Univision when asked if Netanyahu was prioritizing his political survival over Israel’s interest.
Israel halted aid deliveries to Gaza in the early days of the war, but under U.S. pressure has slowly increased trucks allowed to enter the territory. Still, aid groups say supplies are not reaching desperate people quickly enough, blaming Israeli restrictions and noting that thousands of trucks are waiting to enter Gaza. Countries have attempted less efficient ways to deliver aid including airdrops and by sea.
Israel says its has opened up more entry points for trucks to enter and reach especially hard-hit areas like northern Gaza, an early target of Israel in the war. Israel also accuses aid groups of being too slow to deliver aid once it’s inside Gaza.
Aid groups say logistical issues and the precarious security situation — underscored by the WCK strike — complicate deliveries.
Israel and Hamas are engaged in talks meant to bring about a cease-fire in exchange for the release of hostages captured by Hamas and others on Oct. 7. But the sides remain far apart on key issues, including the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza. Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet met late Tuesday to discuss the hostage negotiations but did not appear to make any decisions.
Netanyahu has vowed to achieve “total victory,” pledging to destroy Hamas’ military and governing capabilities to prevent a repeat of the Oct. 7 attacks and to return the hostages. He says that victory must include an offensive in Rafah, which Israel says is Hamas’ last major stronghold, but more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are currently seeking shelter there.
Six months into the war, Israel is growing ever more isolated, with even its closest partner increasingly vocal about its discontent in the war’s direction and longtime trading partners like Turkey taking potentially painful economic steps to express dismay.
Netanyahu, who is on trial for alleged corruption, is under pressure to decide on a postwar vision for Gaza. But critics say he is delaying because he doesn’t want to anger his ultranationalist governing partners, who support resettling the Gaza Strip, which Israel withdrew from in 2005 and an idea Netanyahu has ruled out.
Netanyahu’s governing partners also oppose making significant concessions to Hamas and have threatened to exit the government — a step that would cause the ruling coalition to collapse and trigger new elections.
Israel launched the war in response to Hamas’ cross-border assault, where terrorists killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 people hostage, according to Israeli authorities.
More than 33,400 Palestinians have been killed in the relentless fighting, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says most of the dead are women and children. Israel says it has killed some 12,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
The war has ignited a humanitarian catastrophe. Most of the territory’s population has been displaced and with vast swaths of Gaza’s urban landscape leveled in the fighting, many areas are uninhabitable.
Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah and Jeffery reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
