Nour Mahd Ali Abuaisha and Rania Abushamala
20 July 2026•Update: 20 July 2026
The Palestinian resistance group Hamas elected senior official Khalil al-Hayya as head of its political bureau on Monday, succeeding Yahya Sinwar.
Israeli forces killed Sinwar in the southern city of Rafah in October 2024 amid Tel Aviv’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
Hayya subsequently assumed Hamas’ leadership in Gaza, having previously served as Sinwar’s deputy. He led the group’s delegations in indirect negotiations with Israel to reach a ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal with Israel.
Born in 1960, Hayya earned a doctorate in the Prophetic Sunnah and Hadith Sciences from Sudan’s University of the Holy Quran in 1997.
He was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council as a representative of Gaza City in 2006 and later held several senior positions within Hamas.
In the group’s 2021 internal elections, he became the head of its Arab and Islamic Relations Office and subsequently emerged as one of its most prominent political figures in Gaza.
Major negotiator
Hayya gained prominence during the Gaza war. He headed Hamas’ negotiating delegation in talks mediated by Egypt, Qatar, the US and Türkiye.
During the negotiations, he insisted on ending the Israeli war, securing Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, concluding a prisoner exchange, reopening border crossings, allowing aid into the enclave and beginning reconstruction.
Under his leadership, Hamas signaled readiness to hand over Gaza’s administration to a Palestinian committee of independent professionals and accept the deployment of UN forces to separate the parties and monitor a ceasefire.
In October 2025, Hayya said that Hamas would hand over its weapons to a Palestinian state if Israel ended its occupation and allowed the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Hayya has survived several Israeli assassination attempts.
An Israeli strike targeting his family home in eastern Gaza City on May 20, 2007, killed eight relatives, including several of his brothers and their children.
His son Hamza, a field commander with Hamas’ armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, was killed during clashes with the Israeli army east of Gaza City in 2008.
On Sept. 9, 2025, Hayya and other Hamas officials survived an Israeli assassination attempt targeting the group’s negotiating delegation in the Qatari capital, Doha. His son Hamam, his office director Jihad Lubbad, three guards and a Qatari security officer were killed in that attack.
He has called for Israeli leaders to face international prosecution and advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state and the return of refugees, while supporting negotiations to consolidate the ceasefire and end the war in Gaza.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians and injured over 173,000 since October 2023, according to Palestinian figures, while around 90% of the enclave’s civilian infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed.
