Veteran Hamas politician Khaled Meshaal has stepped in as interim politburo chief following the killing of Yahya Sinwar during Wednesday’s firefight in Gaza with Israeli forces. Mishaal (68) previously assumed this role in July and served until Sinwar took over in August following Israel’s assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
Meshaal joined Hamas in 1987 during the first Palestinian uprising or intifada; he founded the politburo in 1992 and became its chairman in 1996. He survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997 and assumed overall Hamas leadership after Israel assassinated co-founders Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi in 2004. Meshaal led Hamas to victory during the 2006 Palestinian legislative election and served out his term in office in 2017. Having visited Gaza and the West Bank as a teenager, Mashaal has spent the rest of his life in exile and is based in Qatar.
Hamas’s top leadership has been vested in political figures based in Gaza and abroad. Most have been systematically killed by Israel. Succession has generally been smooth. Meshaal and his deputy Khalil Hayya (63) are seen as favourites to fill the top job. Hayya succeeded Saleh al-Arouri, who was killed in January by an Israeli strike while visiting Lebanon’s Hizbullah in Beirut. There is speculation that Sinwar’s brother Mohammed (49) who now commands Hamas’s military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam brigades, could succeed but Hamas is expected to maintain the separation between politicians and paramilitaries.
[ Yahya Sinwar: what does Hamas leader’s death mean for ceasefire hopes?Opens in new window ]
This distinction was not observed by Sinwar, who was elected to head Gaza’s Hamas political bureau in 2017. Despite retaliatory Israeli assaults, he ordered attacks on Israeli posts and called for the firing of Hamas’s rockets into Israel. While engineering a harsh clampdown on dissent in Gaza, he developed a close working relationship with Mohammed Deif, who previously headed the Izzedine al-Qassem brigades. The two were regarded by Israel as the architects of the October 7th attack by Hamas, in which about 1,200 were killed and 251 abducted, according to Israel. Deif was killed by an Israeli air strike on a displaced camp in the Israel-designated al-Mawasi safe zone in July.
While Sinwar was a commanding charismatic figure who energised Hamas fighters in their battle with Israel, many Palestinians, including some in Hamas, questioned the wisdom and conduct of the October 7th operation, which precipitated Israel’s total war on Gaza. Some argue that ensuring Hamas paramilitaries remain under the control of the political leadership could serve as a check against such deadly and destructive adventures. Al-Jazeera’s Gaza reporter Hani Mahmoud said: “The way [his career] has been perceived, even by those who opposed Sinwar’s strategies, is that he was blessed with a warrior’s death, fighting oppression.”