The Last Words Of Hamas Leader Haniyeh: If A Leader Goes, Other Leaders Will Appear

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. (Wikimedia Commons/council.gov.ru)

JAKARTA - As if he knew the time had come, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh's last words to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Ali Khamenei before he was killed in Tehran were verses of the Koran on life, death, greed, and resilience.

"God is the one who gives life and death. And Allah knows all his actions... 'If a leader leaves, then other leaders will emerge'," Haniyeh said in Arabic.

Hours later he was killed in an alleged Israeli attack on his guesthouse.

The statement, broadcast on television as Haniyeh spoke to Khamenei, reflects the very strong Islamic beliefs that shape life and its approach to the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

Diag was inspired by the late founder of Hamas Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who taught the holy struggle (jihad) against Israel in the 1980s.

Israel jailed and killed Yassin in 2004, but Hamas grew into a strong military force.

In an interview with Reuters in Gaza in 1994, Haniyeh, said Yassin had taught them Palestinians could only restore their occupied homeland through the purification hands of its people and their struggles.

No Muslim may die in his bed while Palestine is still occupied, he quoted Yassin as saying.

For Palestinian supporters, Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders are freedom fighters from Israeli occupation, keeping their struggle alive when international diplomacy fails.

Haniyeh admitted that he learned from Syekh Yassin about 'love for Islam and sacrifice for the sake of Islam and not subject to tyrannicals and tyrannicals.'

He became a strong figure in the Palestinian group's international diplomacy when the war raged in Gaza, in which his three sons Hazem, Amir and Mohammad and four grandchildren died in Israeli airstrikes in April.

At least 60 of his extended family members also died in the Gaza war.

"My children's blood is no more valuable than the blood of the children of the Palestinian people... All the martyrs in Palestine are my children," he said after their death.

Through the blood of the martyrs and the suffering of those who are injured, we created hope, we created a future, we created independence and freedom for our people," he said.

"We told the occupation that this blood would only make us even better. We adhere to our principles and our attachment to our land," said Haniyeh.