Hamas Chooses New Leader. Who Will Lead the Movement? There Are Two Favorites

Haniyeh has headed Hamas's political bureau since 2017, following Mashal's predecessor from 2004-17. The head of the 15-person bureau, which is based in Qataris also the political leader of the movement. However, many analysts point out that the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip currently has more power. Yahya Sinwar.

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Hamas has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007. Since October 7, 2023, when the organization brutally invaded Israel There is a bloody war going on there.

The Hamas political bureau is appointed by the Shura Council, which includes Hamas representatives from the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the diaspora and imprisoned members of the movement. The Shura Council members remain anonymous and a physical meeting of the entire body is impossible due to the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, which will complicate the process, the Associated Press noted.

According to Reuters, Mashal is the favorite in the race. Unlike Haniye, who was betting on an alliance with IranHezbollah which he supports and the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, Mashal has better contacts with Turkey and Qatar, the AP added.

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Born in 1956 in the West Bank, Mashal spent only his childhood in the Palestinian territories and lived in exile for many years.

He gained fame after surviving an Israeli attack in the capital in 1997. Jordan Amman. Israeli agents sprayed him with a deadly poison, but some of them were captured by the Jordanians. Jordan's King Hussein ibn Talal demanded that Israel provide the antidote in exchange for the agents' lives. Israel bowed to pressure, which saved Mashal and made him a symbolic and influential figure of the Palestinian resistance movement – the Daily Telegraph recalled.

Mashal stepped down as Hamas’s political leader in 2017 after friction with the movement’s leadership in the Gaza Strip. The backdrop was Mashal’s efforts to reconcile with Hamas’s main Palestinian rival, the secular Fatah, which governs the Palestinian Authority that co-administers the West Bank.

The second serious candidate for the new leader of Hamas is Khalil al-Hayya, an influential official of the movement close to the late Haniyeh, Reuters assessed. Hayya also has much better contacts than Mashal with Sinwar, on whose decision depends Hamas's further action in the war with Israel in the Gaza Strip.

The new Hamas leader will have to decide whether to continue the war, which in practice would turn the group into an underground guerrilla warfare, or try to agree to a political compromise, which is unlikely at this stage, the AP news agency said.

Sinwar will have the final say on the stalled ceasefire negotiations, the Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday.

The British newspaper quoted an anonymous Israeli negotiator as saying that eliminating Haniye could prompt Hamas to accept the offer sooner, as the attack clearly showed that “time is not on the movement's side.”

With the recent rise in tensions in the Middle East, the attention of world public opinion is increasingly shifting from the war in Gaza to the threat to Israel posed by Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah.