A senior Hamas official instructed AFP on Sunday that the Palestinian liberation motion was within the ultimate section of choosing a brand new chief, with two distinguished figures competing for the place.
Hamas just lately accomplished the formation of a brand new Shura Council of greater than 80 members, a consultative physique largely composed of non secular students, in addition to a brand new 18-member political bureau, the official stated.
For the reason that struggle in Gaza started after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 assault on Israel, Israeli forces have killed a number of of the motion’s leaders, together with two former chiefs.
“The motion has accomplished its inside elections within the three areas and has reached the ultimate stage of choosing the pinnacle of the political bureau,” the official stated, talking on situation of anonymity as he was not approved to talk publicly.
He added that the race for the group’s management was now between Khaled Meshaal and Khalil al-Hayya.
A second Hamas supply confirmed the event.
Regardless of a US-brokered ceasefire that entered its second section final month, violence has continued in Gaza.
Members of the council are elected each 4 years by representatives from Hamas’s three branches: the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Financial institution and the motion’s exterior management.
Hamas prisoners in Israeli jails are additionally eligible to vote.
The council subsequently elects the political bureau, which in flip selects the pinnacle of the motion.
‘Renew inside legitimacy’
A 3rd Hamas supply stated the brand new chief will serve for less than “one 12 months… a transitional interval”.
1000’s of Hamas members voted to decide on the council and the political bureau, the supply added, with out specifying how the vote was carried out.
“The first objective of the method was to resume inside legitimacy and fill management vacancies,” the supply added.
The brand new chief might want to navigate between worldwide calls, led by america and Israel, for the group to disarm, and resistance to that demand from its armed wing, which fought Israeli forces in Gaza.
Hamas, nevertheless, stated it might give up its weapons to a Palestinian authority in Gaza underneath sure circumstances.
Each Meshaal and Hayya have years of expertise throughout the motion.
Hayya, 65, a Gaza native and Hamas’s chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, has held senior roles since at the least 2006, in keeping with the US-based NGO.
Meshaal, who led the political bureau from 2004 to 2017, has by no means lived in Gaza. He was born within the West Financial institution in 1956.
He joined Hamas in Kuwait and later lived in Jordan, Syria and Qatar. The CEP says he oversaw Hamas’s evolution right into a political-military hybrid.
He presently heads the motion’s diaspora workplace.
Final month, a Hamas supply instructed AFP that Hayya loved backing from the group’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades.
After Israel killed former Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July 2024, the group selected its then-Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar as his successor.
He too was killed by Israeli forces within the southern Gaza metropolis of Rafah, three months after Haniyeh’s assassination.
Hamas then opted for an interim five-member management committee based mostly in Qatar, suspending the appointment of a single chief till elections, given the chance of the brand new chief being focused by Israel.
