Hamas says Khalil al-Hayya elected as group's new chief

Hamas announced Monday that it had elected Khalil al-Hayya, the group’s lead negotiator in indirect ceasefire talks with Israel, as the new head of its political bureau.

“The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) announces the election of brother mujahid Khalil al-Hayya as head of the movement’s political bureau, succeeding the martyred leader Yahya al-Sinwar,” Hamas said in a statement.

Sinwar, whom Israel accused of being one of the principal architects of the October 7, 2023, attacks, was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza a year later.

Since his death, Hamas has been led by a five-member leadership council headed by long-time senior official Mohammed Darwish.

Born in 1960, Hayya survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Doha last year, though one of his sons was killed in the strike.

Hayya defeated former Hamas chief and veteran leader Khaled Meshaal in the leadership contest.

“Khalil al-Hayya was elected by an overwhelming majority,” a senior Hamas official told AFP, adding that he is expected to formally assume the role next week.

“The political bureau will meet in Istanbul within days to form committees and begin restructuring Hamas’s leadership bodies.”

The official said the current five-member leadership council will be dissolved, with its members submitting their resignations to the group’s Shura Council.

“The election process was conducted through a highly complex and secretive mechanism because of the difficult security situation and the occupation’s assassination of several political and military leaders,” a source in Hamas said.

Representatives of Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, also declared their “full support” to Hayya.

Hailing from the Gaza Strip, Hayya has lost several close relatives, including his eldest son, to Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip, and is a veteran member of the group.

Regarded as having good ties with Iran, he has been closely involved in the group’s efforts to broker several truces with Israel, playing a key role in ending a 2014 conflict and again in attempts to secure an end to the current Gaza conflict.

Hayya has been part of Hamas since it was set up in 1987. In the early 1980s, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement from which Hamas emerged, sources say.

In Gaza, he was detained several times by Israel.

In 2007, an Israeli air strike hit his family home in Gaza City’s Sejaiyeh quarter, killing several of his relatives, and during the 2014 fighting between Hamas and Israel, the house of Hayya’s eldest son, Osama, was bombed, killing him, his wife and three of their children.

Hayya was not there during the attacks. He left Gaza several years ago, serving as a Hamas point person for ties with the Arab and Islamic worlds and basing himself in Qatar for the role. ...