By Mohammad MansourMonday July 20, 2026
Hamas has selected Khalil al-Hayya to lead its political bureau, elevating a veteran negotiator and longtime Gaza figure after a closely contested internal vote.
Monday’s decision comes after Israel killed his predecessor, Yahya Sinwar, in the Gaza Strip in 2024. Sinwar had assumed the role earlier that year following Israel’s assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh. Al-Hayya also survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Qatar last year.
The appointment followed a run-off election in the movement’s General Shura Council between al-Hayya and former political chief Khaled Meshaal. Neither contender had won the necessary majority of 50 percent plus one in the initial round of voting.
The choice of al-Hayya, previously Hamas’s exiled Gaza leader, follows the group’s 2021 internal framework, which says senior leadership must represent its principal geographic constituencies: Gaza, the occupied West Bank and the diaspora.
Having served on a five-member interim leadership council formed in late 2024 to oversee wartime governance, al-Hayya will complete the current electoral term, which runs until 2027.
Academic roots and early activism
Al-Hayya was born in Gaza City on November 5, 1960, and raised in a conservative family whose experience of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and the Israeli occupation left a lasting mark. As a child, he witnessed military raids on his family’s home in Gaza and saw relatives arrested, experiences that shaped his political outlook.
A meeting in March 1980 with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas’s founder, proved decisive in drawing him into organised activism. He went on to pursue Islamic studies, earning a bachelor’s degree at the Islamic University of Gaza in 1983, a master’s degree from the University of Jordan in 1986 and a doctorate in hadith sciences in Sudan in 1997.
He later became dean of student affairs at the Islamic University of Gaza and joined the Palestinian Scholars Association. As a founding Hamas member in 1987, al-Hayya was repeatedly jailed by Israeli forces during the first Intifada, the Palestinian uprising of the late 1980s, and endured severe torture while detained.
His formal entry into elected politics came in 2006, when he won a Palestinian Legislative Council seat and headed the Hamas parliamentary bloc.
Chief negotiator and diplomat
During the past two decades, al-Hayya has occupied several pivotal posts within Hamas, serving as deputy leader in Gaza and as head of the group’s Arab and Islamic relations office.
He became an important figure in Hamas diplomacy, leading delegations in ceasefire negotiations after Israel’s wars on Gaza in 2012 and 2014.
After the Israeli genocidal war began in October 2023, al-Hayya took on the role of Hamas’s chief negotiator in indirect talks over ceasefires and captive exchanges, mediated by Qatar and Egypt.
Working mainly from Qatar, which started hosting Hamas’s political bureau in 2012 following what Qatari officials described as requests from the United States, enabled him to work around the Gaza blockade and direct diplomatic contacts across the region. His political activity included heading a Hamas delegation to Lebanon in November 2023 for a meeting with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. He also survived a drone attack in Beirut in January 2024 that killed Saleh al-Arouri, Hamas’s deputy political chief.
Surviving assassinations
Repeated Israeli attempts on al-Hayya’s life have accompanied profound personal losses. An Israeli air raid on his family home in May 2007 killed seven relatives, including two of his brothers.
His son Hamza, who belonged to the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, was killed by a drone strike in 2008.
In Israel’s 2014 war, an attack killed al-Hayya’s eldest son, Osama, along with Osama’s wife and three of their children. Al-Hayya survived an Israeli strike on a residential compound in Doha, Qatar’s capital, in September 2025. The attack killed his son Humam, his office director Jihad Labad, three bodyguards and a Qatari security officer.
Earlier this year, another son, Azzam, died from injuries suffered in an Israeli air raid in May in the Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City.
Wartime election
Despite losing several family members in successive conflicts, al-Hayya remained at the heart of Hamas’s political bureau. His election as the movement’s overall leader comes nearly three years into Israel’s latest war, which has killed more than 73,000 people.
Palestinian political analyst Abdullah Aqrabawi said Hamas’s decision to hold a formal election while military operations continue demonstrated the group’s “deep-seated institutionalism”.
“Rather than resorting to swift appointments or consensus decrees … the group has chosen a voting process,” Aqrabawi said, adding that the competitive contest reflected healthy internal debate over Hamas’s strategic path.
Hamas rules give the General Shura Council sole authority to elect the political bureau’s head, rather than allowing a direct vote by its grassroots membership.
“In times of crisis, pre-existing emergency procedures and backup plans automatically trigger secondary administrative and leadership layers to assume control,” Palestinian political analyst Wissam Afifa said.
