Who was Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh?

Hamas’s top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in Iran on Wednesday, Iran and the Palestinian militant group said.

Both blamed Israel for the assassination, and Iran’s supreme leader has vowed revenge .

Here’s what to know about Hamas’s political chief.

Haniyeh was born in 1963 in Gaza’s Shati refugee camp, according to Hamas’s media office. His parents were displaced from their village near the city now known as Ashkelon in Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

While studying Arabic literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, Haniyeh became involved in Islamic politics. He graduated in 1987 as the first intifada , a mass uprising against Israeli occupation, broke out and Hamas was founded.

Haniyeh was arrested by Israeli authorities for participating in the uprising and was deported to Lebanon, along with hundreds of other Hamas members, upon his release in 1992. He returned to Gaza the following year and was appointed dean of his former university.

In 1997, Haniyeh became the assistant to Hamas co-founder Ahmed Yassin. The two were the target of an assassination attempt by Israel in 2003, and Yassin and his successor were killed by the Israeli military the following year.

Haniyeh was appointed to a new collective leadership after the death of Yassin and briefly served as Palestinian Authority prime minister after Hamas won legislative elections in 2006. He led Hamas in Gaza until 2017, when he was elected to lead Hamas’s political bureau.

Haniyeh traveled internationally as the public face of Hamas and worked to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza.

The United States designated him a terrorist in 2018, citing his “close links with Hamas’s military wing.”

The International Criminal Court also filed applications for arrest warrants against him in May for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, and torture, since Oct. 7.

Haniyeh was a key leader in ceasefire negotiations with Israel over the war in Gaza, with some viewing him as a more pragmatic figure than Hamas’s other leaders.

He said in May that Hamas was “still keen” to come to an agreement if Israel withdrew from Gaza and fighting in the region ended permanently, according to CNN.

He was also in contact with mediators in Qatar and Egypt as recently as early this month, the Associated Press reported .

The two countries said Haniyeh’s death has jeopardized the possibility of a Gaza ceasefire.

“How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani wrote on X on Wednesday.

Egypt’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the killing “undercuts the strenuous efforts by Egypt and its partners to stop the war in the Gaza Strip and put an end to the human suffering of the Palestinian people.”

The U.S. has denied involvement in Haniyeh’s assassination, and Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack.

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Hamas’s military wing said in a statement that the political leader’s death would “take the battle to new dimensions and have major repercussions.”

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said it was Iran’s “duty” to take revenge.