Hamas Elects Khalil al-Hayya as New Political Bureau Chief
GAZA – The Palestinian group Hamas has announced the election of Khalil al-Hayya as the new head of its political bureau. Al-Hayya’s election on Monday follows the martyrdom of the previous leader, Yahya Sinwar, who was killed in an Israeli military attack in the Gaza Strip in 2024.
Sinwar had previously taken over the position after political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated by Israel in the same year. Al-Hayya himself survived an assassination attempt by Israel in Qatar last year.
According to Al Jazeera, his appointment came after a second-round vote by the movement’s General Shura Council, in which he faced former political chief Khaled Meshaal, after both candidates failed to secure the required majority of 50 per cent plus one vote in the previous round of voting.
The election of al-Hayya — who previously led the group’s Gaza regional leadership whilst in exile — is in line with Hamas’s internal framework of 2021. This framework requires the top leadership position to reflect the movement’s main geographical sectors, namely Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and the diaspora.
Al-Hayya, who was part of a five-member interim leadership council formed in late 2024 to manage the movement’s affairs during wartime, will now serve until the remainder of the current term ends in 2027.
Born in Gaza City on 5 November 1960, al-Hayya grew up in a conservative family profoundly affected by the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and the Israeli occupation that followed. His experiences of witnessing military raids on his family home in Gaza and the arrest of his relatives during childhood shaped his early political consciousness.
In March 1980, a pivotal meeting with Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin drew him into organised activism.
Al-Hayya pursued a deep Islamic education; he earned a bachelor’s degree from the Islamic University of Gaza in 1983, a master’s degree from the University of Jordan in 1986, and a doctorate in hadith studies from Sudan in 1997.
He later served as dean of student affairs at the Islamic University of Gaza and joined the Association of Palestinian Scholars. As one of Hamas’s founders in 1987, al-Hayya was repeatedly imprisoned by Israeli forces during the Palestinian uprising known as the First Intifada in the late 1980s, and suffered severe torture during his detention.