Khaled Meshaal, who survived a botched assassination attempt by Israeli agents in 1997, is likely to be picked as the new top leader of Hamas after the ‘assassination’ of Ismail Haniyeh. Israelis and several Western states have declared the Iran-backed Hamas, which has directed suicide bombings in Israel and fought frequent wars against it, as a terrorist group.
As per a report by the news agency Reuters, senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya, who is based in Qatar and has headed Hamas negotiators in indirect Gaza truce talks with Israel, has also been a possibility for the leadership as he is a favourite of Iran and its allies in the region.
Haniyeh was killed on Wednesday, apparently by Israel, in Tehran, where he went to attend the swearing-in of Iran's new President Masoud Pezeshkian, with Iran and Hamas vowing retribution against Israel.
Who Is Khaled Meshaal
Meshaal became known around the world in 1997 after Israeli agents injected him with poison in a botched assassination attempt on a street outside his office in the Jordanian capital Amman. According to a report by news agency Reuters, the hit against a key figure of the Palestinian militant group-- ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu-- so enraged Jordan's then-King Hussein that he spoke of hanging the would-be killers and scrapping Jordan's peace treaty with Israel unless the antidote was handed over.
Israel succumbed to the pressure and handed the antidote, and also agreed to free Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, only to assassinate him seven years later in Gaza.
Quoting Hamas sources, Reuters reported that Meshaal is expected to be chosen as the top leader of the group to replace Ismail Haniyeh. However, as per the report, the name of Khalil al-Hayya is also being proposed for the organisation's top post as Meshaal's relations with Iran have been strained due to his past support for the Sunni Muslim-led revolt in 2011 against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Meshaal, 68, became Hamas' political leader in exile the year before Israel tried to eliminate him-- a post that enabled him to represent the Palestinian Islamist group at meetings with foreign governments around the world, unhindered by tight Israeli travel restrictions that affected other Hamas officials.
Meshaal has been a central figure at the top of Hamas since the late 1990s, though he has worked mostly from the relative safety of exile as Israel plotted to assassinate other prominent Hamas figures based in the Gaza Strip. After the wheelchair-bound Yassin was killed in a March 2004 airstrike, Israel assassinated his successor Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantissi in Gaza a month later, and Meshaal assumed the overall leadership of Hamas.
Like other Hamas leaders, Meshaal has grappled with the critical issue of whether to adopt a more pragmatic approach to Israel in pursuit of Palestinian statehood - Hamas' 1988 charter calls for Israel's destruction - or keep fighting.
He rejects the idea of a permanent peace deal with Israel but has said that Hamas, which in the 1990s and 2000s sent suicide bombers into Israel, could accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem as a temporary solution in return for a long-term ceasefire.
The October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas-led militants from Gaza, which killed 1,200 people and led to the kidnapping of over 250 people, according to Israeli tallies, made the militant group's priorities clear.
For Palestinian supporters, Meshaal and the rest of the Hamas leadership are fighters for liberation from Israeli occupation, keeping their cause alive when international diplomacy has failed them. Israel has assassinated or tried to kill several Hamas leaders and operatives since the group was founded in 1987 during the first Palestinian uprising against the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.