Just when you thought the situation in the Middle East couldn’t get any more incendiary, the assassination of Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh has propelled regional tensions to a whole new level of bad.
Haniyeh was killed in a strike late on Tuesday in Tehran, the capital of Iran, where he had attended the inauguration ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. The assassination is without doubt the handiwork of – who else? – the state of Israel, although the Israeli government seems to have adopted a “no comment” policy for the moment.
One Israeli official, Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu, apparently couldn’t contain his exuberance, and took to X to proclaim: “This is the right way to clean the world of this filth … Haniyeh’s death makes the world a little better.”
In his social media post, Eliyahu also swore that there would be “no more imaginary peace/surrender agreements”, and that “the iron hand that will strike is the one that will bring peace and a little comfort and strengthen our ability to live in peace with those who desire peace”.
That’s a lot of usage of the word “peace” for folks who fundamentally don’t want, well, peace. To be sure, killing one of the main negotiators for a ceasefire deal in the Gaza Strip is a pretty good way to thwart any prospect of peace for the time being. READ MORE AT ALJAZEERA ENGLISH.