Who is Khalil al-Hayya, the new leader of Hamas who has replaced Sinwar?

On 9 September last year, he survived an assassination attempt orchestrated by Israel against him in Doha, in which one of his sons was killed. And today Khalil al-Hayya has been chosen by Hamas as the new leader of its political bureau, winning the internal election in a run-off against the former political leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal. He thus becomes the successor to Yahya al-Sinwar, considered the mastermind behind the 7 October massacre. Since his killing in an Israeli raid on Gaza City, Hamas had been led by a steering committee chaired by Mohammed Darwish, a long-serving senior official. Deputy Chairman of Hamas’s Political Bureau until October 2024, al-Hayya served on Hamas’s Executive Committee and the Palestinian Legislative Council as a representative of Gaza City following Sinwar’s death. Al-Hayya also led indirect negotiations with Israel on a ceasefire and prisoner exchange, and emerged as one of the movement’s most influential figures following the killing of Sinwar and the former head of the Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh.

Born on 5 November 1960 in the Gaza Strip, during the Egyptian occupation, al-Hayya is known by the nom de guerre Abu Osama. He holds a PhD in Sunnah and Hadith Studies from the University of the Holy Qur’an and Islamic Sciences in Sudan, as well as bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Islamic Studies from universities in Jordan and Gaza. He spent three years in prison in Israel in the early 1990s, before returning to Hamas, where he rose through the ranks of the group over a period of more than thirty years.

He survived several assassination attempts by Israel. In 2007, a targeted Israeli air raid killed seven members of his family, but he survived as he was not at the scene of the attack. During Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza, another Israeli attack targeted al-Hayya and killed his son Osama, his wife and children, along with 19 other relatives, after their home in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City was bombed.

On 9 September 2025, al-Hayya survived an Israeli air strike on a residential complex in Doha, which was targeting senior Hamas officials.

His son Hammam was killed in the Israeli attack. A close associate of Sinwar, according to the New York Times, he had discussed the details of the 7 October attack during a secret meeting in July 2023. Following the massacre, al-Hayya had said that the operation had been ‘necessary to change the entire equation and not merely to seek a confrontation. ‘We have managed to put the Palestinian issue back on the table, and Hamas’s objective is not to administer Gaza and provide water and electricity, but, precisely, to refocus attention on the Palestinian cause.’ In 2024, al-Hayya also stated that Hamas would accept a ceasefire and lay down its arms if an independent Palestinian state were established within the pre-1967 borders and ‘Jerusalem were to be the capital’.