gic co-founder and spiritual leader of Hamas? He was assassinated less than three months after he proposed a long-term truce with Israel “if a Palestinian state is established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” His successor, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, was assassinated less than three months after he made a similar truce offer to Israel. Then there was the Netanyahu government’s 2012 assassination of Jabari, who, as mentioned, was reviewing a “long-term mutual cease-fire” deal just “hours before he was killed,” according to Baskin. The parallels between 2012 and 2024, between the killings of Jabari and Haniyeh, are eery. “He was in line to die, not an angel and not a righteous man of peace,” Baskin said of Jabari shortly after his killing, “but his assassination also killed the possibility of achieving a truce and also the Egyptian mediators’ ability to function.” The same could be said of Haniyeh. Mainstream Western media outlets agree that the Hamas leader was – by Hamas standards – a “pragmatist”; a key figure in the ongoing negotiations to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and free the Israeli hostages. From Reuters: “For all the tough language in public, Arab diplomats and officials had viewed [Haniyeh] as relatively pragmatic compared with more hardline voices inside Gaza, where the military wing of Hamas planned the October 7 attack. While telling Israel’s military they would find themselves ‘drowning in the sands of Gaza,’ he and his predecessor as Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, had shuttled around the region for talks over a Qatari-brokered cease-fire deal with Israel that would include exchanging hostages for Palestinians in Israeli jails as well as more aid for Gaza.” From Sky News: “Haniyeh was the pragmatic face of Hamas. He was less hard-line and militaristic than Yahya Sinwar, who is the head of Hamas inside Gaza and is leading the battle. Haniyeh was the public face of Hamas’s diplomacy in Arab capitals. He was leading efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza.” This was the person that the far-right Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu chose to assassinate on Iranian soil on Wednesday. Why? Put simply, Netanyahu and his coalition of fascists and bigots do not want a deal to release the hostages. They prefer to continue the war, no matter the cost to Gaza’s civilians or to their own citizens still held inside of the enclave. Despite Joe Biden’s ludicrous claims to the contrary, it is Netanyahu who has been the biggest obstacle to a deal to free Israel’s hostages in Gaza. The former spokesperson for the hostages’ families says Netanyahu rejected a deal. Benny Gantz, a former member of Israel’s war cabinet, says Netanyahu blocked a deal. Israeli defense officials tell Haaretz that “Netanyahu systematically foiled the negotiations to free the hostages.” There is nothing new here. To misquote Winston Churchill, Israel has always preferred “war-war” over “jaw-jaw.” Israeli governments – especially those led by Netanyahu – have preferred having Hamas as the permanent enemy – or as an “asset,” to quote the current Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – rather than trying to do a permanent deal with Hamas. As the late Israeli journalist Pedatzur wrote, in his analysis of the disastrous Jabari assassination in 2012: “Our decision makers, including the defense minister and perhaps also Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, knew about Jabari’s role in advancing a permanent cease-fire agreement. … Thus the decision to kill Jabari shows that our decision makers decided a cease-fire would be undesirable for Israel at this time, and that attacking Hamas would be preferable.” Change the name ‘Jabari’ to ‘Haniyeh’ above, and those words could have been written today. 来源：加美财经lg...
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