The burial of the leader of Hamas will take place in Qatar today. Ismail Haniyaas Iran and its allies prepare their response to Israel, raising fears of a dangerous spillover of the crisis in the Middle East.

Haniya lived for years in exile in Dohawhere members of his family had also been transferred.

After the official funeral ceremony with thousands of people yesterday in Tehran, prayers will be offered at the Imam Mohammad bin Abdel Wahab Mosque, the largest in the capital of the emirate, Doha. Hamas called today to be a “day of rage”, after the burial of the head of its Politburo, to have “anger marches from every mosque” after the Friday prayer is over.

Ismail Haniya, his movement said, will be buried in a cemetery in Lusail, in the north of the Qatari capital, with citizens and leaders “of the Arab and Islamic world” present.

Turkey declared national mourning on the day of his burial a day of national mourning.

Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah blamed Israel for the assassination. The Israeli armed forces said for their part that the “single” strike outside the territory they carried out last night was the one that killed Fuad Soukra top Hezbollah official, in a southern suburb of Beirut.

Dead by a bomb hidden for two months

A New York Times report, citing five Middle Eastern officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Ismail Haniya was killed when a bomb that had been hidden for nearly two months in the residence where he lived, although in theory the building is heavily guarded by the Revolutionary Guards, as it is part of their huge complex in a wealthy district in the northern part of the Iranian capital.

Declaring that reprisals are “inevitable”, o Hassan Nasrallah said that “Israel does not know what red lines it crossed” during Fuad Shukr’s funeral.

In the evening, the movement announced that fired dozens of Katyusha rockets at northern Israel.

Hezbollah has been exchanging fire daily with the Israeli army on the Lebanon-Israel border since the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by the Palestinian movement’s unprecedented incursion into southern Israel on October 7.

The attacks in Tehran and Beirut heighten the concern about the risk of conflagration throughout the Middle East, between Israel and its allies, mainly the USA, on the one hand, and Iran and its allied forces in Lebanon, on the other. in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured yesterday that Israel has a “very high level” of preparation for any scenario, “defensive or offensive,” according to his office.

During their telephone conversation, US President Joe Biden “reaffirmed his commitment to Israel’s security in the face of all threats from Iran, including its affiliated terrorist organizations Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis,” the White House said in a statement. .

A few hours later, Mr. Biden said he was “very concerned” about the escalation of tensions in the Middle East and judged that the killing of the Hamas leader does not help to “settle” the situation.

Yesterday, thousands of mourners, carrying Palestinian flags or portraits of Ismail Haniya, attended his funeral, which was marked by calls for revenge.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has threatened Israel with “severe punishment,” chanted a prayer for the dead in front of the coffins of Ismail Haniya and his bodyguards, draped in Palestinian flags.

The Ansar Allah movement, better known by the surname of the family of its leaders, the Houthis, announced yesterday that there would be a “military response” to the “dangerous escalation” in which it proceeded against Israel.

According to a separate New York Times report, cited by three unnamed Iranian officials, Ayatollah Khamenei, during an emergency meeting of the Supreme National Security Council yesterday Wednesday, ordered direct strikes on Israel in retaliation for his assassination Ismail Haniya.

Qatar has hosted Hamas’ political office under an agreement with the US since 2012, after the Palestinian Islamist movement’s offices in Damascus were closed.

Ismail Haniya played a key role in negotiating a cease-fire deal in the Gaza Strip, talking to Qatari mediators, who have now publicly expressed doubts about whether it makes sense to continue the venture after his assassination.

The international community urged calm and continued efforts to declare a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Several analysts estimate that the retaliation by Iran and its allies will be measured in order to avoid further escalation.

“Iran and Hezbollah do not want to play Netanyahu’s game,” to give him “the pretexts he needs to drag the US into war,” said Hezbollah expert Amal Saad.

Israel’s political and military leadership has vowed to wipe out Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, which the US and EU have designated as a terrorist organization after an October attack in southern Israel that killed 1,197. people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data. Of the 251 people abducted that day, 111 are still being held hostage in the Gaza Strip, but 39 are believed to be dead, according to the Israeli military.

The Israeli military’s large-scale operations have since killed at least 39,480 people in the Gaza Strip, most of them civilians, according to the latest figures from the Gaza Strip Health Ministry.