Assassinating Hamas leaders scores points but is unlikely to produce victory

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The killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is about more than Israel’s targeting of the group’s officials whenever and wherever an opportunity arises.

Mr. Haniyeh was known as a ‘pragmatist’ and a ‘moderate’ within Hamas. His killing was as much about achieving Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas militarily and politically as it was about quashing any chance that a post-war Hamas would potentially be more accepting of a two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Construction company owner Danny Makhlouf recalls employing Mr. Haniyeh as a construction worker at 16 in 1978 and taking him into his family in Ashkelon, from where Mr. Haniyeh’s parents fled to Gaza in 1963.