Haniyeh's assassination is the latest act in a spiral of lawlessness

Negotiations to end the war between Israel and Hamas have gone on and off for months with no obvious resolution in sight. On Wednesday morning, Hamas’s outward-facing leader, its political chief Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in a missile strike on a private residence in Tehran. The attack was presumably carried out by Israel.

Earlier that day, Israel also struck Beirut to eliminate Fouad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander. Unlike the case with Mr Haniyeh, the Israelis publicly acknowledged responsibility for Mr Shukr’s assassination.

Reacting to Mr Haniyeh’s death, Qatar’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman, asked in a post on X: “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?”

Such questions are warranted. More than 100 Israeli hostages taken by Hamas during its murderous rampage in Israel on October 7 are thought to remain in the Gaza Strip. Mr Haniyeh’s death may please the hawkish wings of the Israeli government and populace who have been disappointed with the aimlessness of Israel’s Gaza campaign, but its declared goal in both the war and the peace talks – securing the release of those hostages – has just become much harder.

Freezing the cycle of violence and rejection of the rule of law in the Middle East that extends beyond October 7 and into current events has become harder, too. Mr Haniyeh and Mr Shukr may have styled themselves as resistance fighters, but Hamas and Hezbollah are themselves threats to rule of law and nation-state sovereignty. Both have frequently targeted civilians and operate from the shadows with no clear commitment to peace.

But Israel, which claims membership in the international community of nations, has hardly shown such commitment either. Even apart from its decades-long occupation of Palestine, which is one of the longest-running violations of international law in history, the country routinely opts for covert assassinations over earnest peace talks.

Israeli officials have made no secret that Mr Shukr’s targeting was an act of revenge for his alleged participation in an attack over the weekend on a town in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Mr Haniyeh’s death, given he had no military function and was helping lead ceasefire negotiations, appears even more cold-blooded. Three of his sons and four of his grandchildren were killed in an even more ruthless Israeli strike earlier this year. Since the start of its campaign in Gaza, Israel has conducted illegal assassination operations in Palestine, Iran, Syria and Lebanon. In the latter two countries, many experts say, it is waging an unofficial, but still full-blown war against its foes.

Israel claims it has no choice but to defend itself outside the bounds of the law – its enemies, it argues, do the same. Of course, in the eyes of those who resist Israeli oppression, the argument is flipped. Everyone uses everyone else’s law-breaking as an excuse for their own, and the end result is a breakdown of the rules-based order.

The international community must make it clear that such a path is neither tolerable nor sustainable.