For Netanyahu, killing of Hamas chief a war prize with uncertain consequences

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to benefit domestically from the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, but the escalation it could spark may reverse the win, experts said.

On Wednesday, the Islamist Palestinian movement and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards announced that Haniyeh, 61, had been killed in Tehran in an Israeli air strike.

Israel has not commented on it.

"It's a tactical, not a strategic victory (for Netanyahu), he scored points but that could change very quickly", Asher Cohen, a political science professor at Israel's Bar Ilan university, told AFP.

Abboud Hamayel, a Palestinian analyst at Birzeit University, also felt the killing served a political rather than a strategic purpose.

"Israel's current policy of assassination serves more as a mechanism to galvanize its own society rather than genuinely altering the political or military stance of its adversaries", Hamayel he wrote on X Wednesday.

On Tuesday, just hours before Haniyeh's death, the Israeli military said its fighter jets "eliminated" Hezbollah military commander Fouad Shukur in the Beirut area, accusing him of being responsible for a rocket strike on the annexed Golan Heights over the weekend. His body was found Wednesday under rubble.

- 'War prize' -

"Netanyahu needed a war prize since the beginning", of the conflict in Gaza sparked by Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, Agnes Levallois of the Mediterranean and Middle East Research and Study Institute, told AFP.

With support for Israel in the war in Gaza on the decline, "voices calling for Israel to end its offensive in Gaza are getting louder, and a big operation like last night's allows Netanyahu to be back in control", Levallois said.

Mairav Zonszein, an analyst for the International Crisis Group, said Haniyeh's killing would not affect Netanyahu's political standing in the long term.

"Even if many Israelis are happy about the assassination ... I don't think that it changes the fact that most of the public still want him out", Zonszein said.

But Zonszein did not rule out that the killings, combined with the Israeli parliament currently in recess, "could come together to build a victory narrative and a political survival for Netanyahu".

- Ceasefire talks -

Haniyeh's death could also derail the negotiation process for a ceasefire in Gaza, which the late Hamas chief oversaw as the movement's political chief.

Months of negotiations mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States between Hamas and Israel have failed to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Of the 251 hostages taken on October 7, 111 are still held in Gaza, including 39 the Israeli military have confirmed dead.

"Taking Haniyeh out now, it is difficult to see how that will produce anything other than further radicalization within the movement", said Hugh Lovatt, an analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Haniyeh did "represent a more moderate and pragmatic current within Hamas", he said.

"At the very least, it will mean that a ceasefire deal with Israel is now totally off of the table," Lovatt added.

Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said Haniyeh's killing takes the war with Israel to "new levels", warning of "enormous consequences for the entire region".

- International relations -

Cohen of Bar Ilan University said Haniyeh's killing would not jeopardize Israel's international relations, "because there is no humanitarian stake, no civilians were killed, just terrorist chiefs".

Zonszein said that while the move could easily backfire, expanding the war in Gaza with a more direct confrontation with Iran it could force some countries to come to Israel's help.

In this way, Haniyeh's killing would "rally together the U.S. and others to help (militarily) the way they did in April when Iran attacked Israel," she told AFP.