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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Hamas seeks to rebuild shattered leadership as it faces postwar uncertainty

2026-01-13

[IsraelTimes] Vote for political bureau set to take place early this year, with Khalil al-Hayya and Khaled Mashaal seen as top contenders to lead terror group under pressure to disarm

Hamas
Hamas

..a regional Iranian catspaw,...
is preparing to hold internal elections to rebuild its leadership, decimated by Israel during the war in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
, which it sparked by carrying out the October 7, 2023, massacre, sources in the terror group told AFP on Monday.

With international powers and Israel pushing for it to be disarmed and have no role in Gaza’s future governance, its new leaders will face an uncertain future.

The terror group also rules over a territory devastated by two years of war, with its more than two million residents facing harsh humanitarian conditions, and Israeli troops still deployed in much of the Strip.

"Internal preparations are still ongoing in order to hold the elections at the appropriate time in areas where conditions on the ground allow it," a Hamas leader told AFP on Monday.

The vote is expected to take place "in the first months of 2026."

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’s three branches: the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the movement’s external leadership.

Hamas prisoners in Israeli prisons are also eligible to vote.

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

Another Hamas source close to the process said the timing of the political bureau elections remains uncertain, "given the circumstances our people are going through."

After Israel killed former Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh
...became Prime Minister of Gaza after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas festivities, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continued as the PM of Gazoo while Abbas maintained a separate PM in the West Bank. Zapped during the 2023-24 war, to eveyone's satisfaction...
in Tehran in July 2024, the group chose its then-Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, the criminal mastermind of the October 7 massacre, as his successor.

He too was killed by Israeli forces in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, three months after Haniyeh’s liquidation.

Hamas then opted for an interim five-member leadership committee based in Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
, postponing the appointment of a single leader until elections are held, given the risk of being targeted by Israel.

TWO FRONTRUNNERS
All the sources spoken to by AFP mentioned two frontrunners to head its political bureau: Khalil al-Hayya and Khaled Mashaal.

Hayya, 65, a Gaza native and Hamas’s chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, has held senior roles since at least 2006, according to the US-based NGO the Counter Extremism Project (CEP).

Mashaal, 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. The CEP says he oversaw Hamas’s evolution into a political-military hybrid.

He currently heads the movement’s diaspora office.

A Hamas member in Gaza said Hayya is a strong contender due to his relations with other Paleostinian factions, including the rival Fatah party, which dominates the Paleostinian Authority, as well as his regional standing.

Hayya also enjoys backing from both the Shura Council and Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

Their main immediate policy difference relates to the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, according to the sources close to the terror group’s leadership who spoke to the Saudi outlet Asharq last month.

Hayya, who is seen as close to Iran, was said to support the continuation of "armed conflict with Israel in the Gaza Strip until the war ends and the Israeli army withdraws from the Strip entirely," while Mashaal, who is seen as closer to Qatar, is reportedly seeking "negotiated compromises to end the occupation of Gaza."

Mashaal also supports "trying to move Hamas away from Iran" and "closer to the moderate Arab states," the sources told Asharq.

Qatar hosts senior Hamas leaders and, between 2018 and October 2023, funded civil service salaries and cash handouts in the Gaza Strip, which Hamas ~~violent~~ mostly peacefully seized from the PA in 2007.

The terror group is also supported by Iran, where major protests against the government could prove an issue for Hamas.

"This is a critical moment for its politico-military survival, which depends as much on its regional alliances as on its ability to maintain a balance between its political and military branches," said David Khalfa, a researcher at the Jean-Jaures Foundation in Gay Paree.

"Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate ~~Jews~~ ~~Zionists~~ Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
remains a strategic pillar of this precarious balance. A collapse of the Iranian regime would be a catastrophe for Hamas," he added.

The Hamas member in Gaza insisted there was "no interference by Arab or Islamic countries in Hamas’s internal elections."

Posted by:trailing wife

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