Daijiworld Media Network - Gaza
Gaza, Feb 23: A senior official of Hamas said on Sunday that the movement is in the final phase of selecting a new leader, with Khaled Meshaal and Khalil al-Hayya competing for the top post.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said Hamas has completed the formation of a new Shura Council comprising more than 80 members, along with a new 18-member political bureau.
“The movement has completed its internal elections in the three regions and has reached the final stage of selecting the head of the political bureau,” the official said.
A second Hamas source confirmed that the leadership race is now between Meshaal and Hayya.
The elections come amid continued conflict following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza. Since then, Israeli forces have killed several top leaders of the group, including former chiefs Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar.
Members of the Shura Council are elected every four years by representatives from Hamas’s branches in the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and the movement’s external leadership. Hamas prisoners in Israeli jails are also eligible to vote. The council then elects the political bureau, which selects the head of the movement.
A third source said the new leader will serve for only one year as part of a transitional arrangement. Thousands of members reportedly participated in the voting process, aimed at renewing internal legitimacy and filling leadership vacancies.
The incoming chief will face mounting international pressure, led by the United States and Israel, for Hamas to disarm, even as the group’s armed wing — the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades — is believed to oppose such a move. Hamas has said it could surrender its weapons to a Palestinian authority in Gaza under specific conditions.
Hayya, 65, a Gaza native and Hamas’s chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, has held senior roles in the movement since at least 2006. Meshaal, who headed the political bureau from 2004 to 2017, was born in the West Bank and has lived in Kuwait, Jordan, Syria and Qatar. He currently leads the movement’s diaspora office.
Following the killing of Haniyeh in Tehran in July 2024 and the subsequent death of Sinwar in Rafah, Hamas formed an interim five-member leadership committee based in Qatar, postponing the appointment of a single chief due to security concerns.