Sinwar's death may restore a less pro-Iranian figure as head of Hamas

Khaled Meshaal led Hamas's exit from Syria and sought to keep channels with Arab allies of Washington open

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian meets senior Hamas figure Khaled Meshaal in Doha on October 2. Reuters

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The killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has revived the political chances of a longtime former head of the group, who was relegated to secondary roles as the group became more aligned with Iran over the past decade.

The name Khaled Meshaal, a former physics teacher who led Hamas for more than two decades until 2017, is being circulated as the strongest contender to replace Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza on Wednesday, two and a half months after Israel assassinated his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.

The possible re-emergence of Mr Meshaal could challenge Tehran’s influence on Hamas, although military commanders close to Iran hold sway in Gaza, such as Sinwar's brother Mohammad. Throughout his career, Mr Meshaal, who resides in Qatar, pushed to maintain relations with Arab countries allied to the US, even as Hamas drifted more towards Iran.

Hamas is not known to have started any process to replace Sinwar and there might be other contenders to the leadership, with Iran still exerting significant influence on the group. But it was Sinwar who advocated the most for ties to Iran's hardline clerical leadership, as well as with secular Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, one of their most important allies in the Middle East.

Known as Abu Al Walid, Mr Meshaal oversaw Hamas’s exit from Syria in 2012 to Qatar and Turkey, a year after Syrian authorities violently suppressed the revolt against Mr Assad's rule and bombed Palestinian camps whose inhabitants had joined the protest movement.

Although Hamas is Sunni, Sinwar saw the Syrian regime, dominated by the Alawite minority sect of the president, as constituting strategic depth for Hamas, despite the lack of contiguous territory between Gaza and Syria.

Figures within Hamas in line with Sinwar's thinking are still powerful and could end up sidelining Mr Meshaal, repeating the scenario of when he sought to succeed Haniyeh but failed. Mr Meshaal de facto lost the last leadership race of Hamas when Sinwar replaced Haniyeh in August this year.

Khaled Meshal attended the funeral of Ismail Haniyeh in Lusail, Qatar, on August 2, 2024. Reuters

Hazem Ayyad, a leading Jordanian political researcher specialising in Palestinian affairs, said two other figures also have chances to succeed Sinwar.

Khalil Al Hayya, who is like Mr Meshaal, a Hamas Politburo member, and Mohammad Darwish, head of the Shura Council, a body representing the constituency and financial backers of Hamas inside the occupied Palestinian territories and abroad.

In 2022, Mr Hayya met Mr Assad in Damascus, marking a restoration of ties between Hamas and the regime. Mr Ayyad said he believes Mr Meshal has higher chances than Mr Hayya because he is a more well-known and established figure. Mr Darwish is a strong contender, he added, but might not choose to run. Both men are viewed as better options by Iran, he said.

“It is better for Hamas to resort to a collective leadership to keep the internal and external balances,” Mr Ayyad told The National.

In media interviews over the past decade, Mr Meshaal had sought to justify Hamas’s reliance on Iran in the context of lack of support from Arab countries, and not because of any perceived ideological proximity to Tehran.

Israeli agents tried to assassinate him in Amman in 1997 with poison. Only the intervention of King Hussein, who demanded that the Israelis hand over the antidote, saved Mr Meshaal's life. Jordan and Israel signed a 1994 peace treaty that obliges both countries to prevent threats to each other's security.

When King Hussein died in February 1999, Mr Meshaal attended his funeral, saying that despite the political differences, he owed the late monarch his life. Later that year, Jordanian authorities expelled him and the rest of the Hamas leadership, citing unspecified security dangers posed by the group.

In 2021, Jordanian authorities allowed Mr Meshaal and Haniyeh to visit Amman to participate in the funeral of a Hamas founder who had died of natural causes in Jordan. Haniyeh was the more senior of the two, but the large crowd at the funeral, who were mostly of Palestinian origin, showed as much adulation towards Mr Meshaal.

“Abu Al Walid, Abu Al Walid," they shouted until he got into the car and left the mosque.

The nickname derives from to Khaled Ibin Al Walid, the Arab commander who ushered the spread of Islam outside Arabia after winning the Battle of Yarmouk, near the Golan Heights, in the seventh century.

Israeli firepower, and the hardline stance of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, may have robbed Hamas of the victory it has sought since its attack on Israel on October 7. But if Sinwar's death results in a negotiated settlement, as the US and other western countries hope, Mr Meshaal would be among the experienced figures left in Hamas to rescue what is left of the group.