Khalil al-Hayya: The Gaza negotiator who will now lead Hamas

For months, veteran Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya spearheaded the group's indirect ceasefire negotiations with arch-foe Israel in an effort to halt the war in Gaza.

On Monday, the Palestinian Islamist movement named him as its new chief, favouring him over longtime leader Khaled Meshaal.

"Khalil al-Hayya was elected by an overwhelming majority," a senior Hamas official told AFP, adding that he is expected to formally assume the role next week.

"The election process was conducted through a highly complex and secretive mechanism because of the difficult security situation and the occupation's assassination of several political and military leaders," another source in Hamas said.

A former official from the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the founders of Hamas, Hayya is viewed as a moderate, and will replace slain leader Yahya Sinwar.

Along with Meshaal, he survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Doha in September 2025 that left several dead, including one of his sons and his chief of staff.

The Qatari capital serves as an informal base for Hamas, from which it can cultivate ties with the Arab and Islamic world.

From Qatar and Turkey, the tall and bearded Hayya will lead Hamas, including in Gaza, where the movement still controls large swathes of the territory along with a security apparatus comprising thousands of fighters.

Hayya is known to have good relations with Lebanon's Hezbollah, with Arab countries such as Qatar, Egypt and Algeria, as well as with Iran, his movement's main financial and military backer, a Hamas official close to him told AFP.

- Pragmatic and conservative -

The official highlighted Hayya's pragmatic and conversative temperament.

"He doesn't get carried away easily, and is respected by all members of the political bureau as well as by military commanders," the official said.

Hayya was raised in a religious and conservative family in Gaza, before studying at the territory's Islamic University.

He then completed a master's degree in Jordan, followed by a doctorate in Islamic law in Sudan.

Hayya spent three years in Israeli prisons in the late 1990s and survived two other assassination attempts, in 2007 and in 2014.

Hayya, who has repeatedly stressed the importance of armed struggle, lost several family members in Israeli military operations, including one that targeted his house in the northern Gaza Strip in 2007, leaving his wife and three of his children dead.

In 2006, Hayya headed Hamas's parliamentary bloc, which had just won elections. The subsequent months of political and administrative discord marked the beginning of the schism between the Islamist movement and Fatah, the party of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

Hayya's predecessor Sinwar, whom Israel accused of being one of the principal architects of the October 7, 2023 attack, was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza a year later.

Since his death, Hamas has been led by a five-member leadership council headed by senior official Mohammed Darwish.

A senior Hamas official told AFP that the council would be dissolved, with its members submitting their resignations to the group's Shura Council.

"The political bureau will meet in Istanbul within days to form committees and begin restructuring Hamas's leadership bodies," the official said.

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