Hamas electoral process begins to elect leadership of group

Hamas internal electoral process has started to reorganize its leadership after several senior figures were killed by Israel during the war in Gaza, sources within the Palestinian resistance group said.

Sources said that two figures have emerged as frontrunners to be the head of the political bureau of the group, Khalil al-Hayya and Khaled Meshaal.

Hayya, 65, a Gaza native and Hamas’s chief negotiator in cease-fire talks, has held senior roles since 2006.

Meshaal, who led the Political Bureau from 2004 to 2017, has never lived in Gaza. He was born in the West Bank in 1956.

He joined Hamas in Kuwait and later lived in Jordan, Syria and Qatar. He oversaw Hamas’s evolution into a political-military hybrid entity.

He currently heads the movement’s exile office.

The vote is expected to take place in current month, and the electoral process is expected to be completed by the end of January.

Much of the group’s top leadership has been decimated during Israel’s genocidal war, which killed over 70,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

The war has also devastated the Gaza Strip, leaving its more than two million residents in dire humanitarian conditions.

The leadership renewal process includes the formation of a new 50-member Shura Council, a consultative body dominated by religious figures.

Its members are selected every four years by Hamas’ three branches: the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and the movement’s external leadership.

That council is responsible, every four years, for electing the 18-member political bureau and its chief, who serves as Hamas’s overall leader.

After Israel killed former Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July 2024, the group chose its then-Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar as his successor. He too was killed by Israeli forces in Rafah, three months after Haniyeh’s assassination.

Hamas then opted for an interim five-member leadership committee based in Qatar, postponing the appointment of a single leader until elections are held and given the risk of being targeted by Israel.