Khalil Al Hayya has been elected head of Hamas's political bureau, succeeding Yahya Sinwar, the movement has announced.
The Palestinian group said Mr Al Hayya was chosen to lead the bureau following the death of Mr Sinwar, whom Hamas described as a “martyred leader”.
Mr Sinwar was believed to have masterminded the October 7 attack on Israel in 2023, when about 1,200 people in southern Israel were killed and another 250 abducted. He was killed in Gaza in 2024 after a months-long manhunt by the Israeli military.
Mr Sinwar took over the leadership of Hamas after Ismail Haniyeh was killed in a suspected Israeli attack on an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse in Tehran on July 31, 2024.
Mr Al Hayya is part of a five-man leadership council that has led Hamas since Mr Sinwar was killed and is a veteran member of the group. Hailing from the Gaza Strip, he has lost several close relatives, including his eldest son, to Israeli strikes on the Palestinian territory.
Mr Al Hayya was at the heart of ceasefire negotiations during the Gaza war that followed the October 7 attack. He has been widely seen as the group's most influential figure abroad since Mr Haniyeh was killed. He led Hamas's negotiating team in recent talks in Egypt and Qatar to push forward US President Donald Trump's peace plan that brought about a ceasefire in October last year.
He survived an Israeli air strike on Hamas's office in Doha last year in which five members of the group, including another of his sons and a Qatari officer, were killed.
Like Mr Sinwar, Mr Al Hayya – also known as Abu Ousama – was imprisoned by Israel for three years in the early 1990s. He survived several assassination attempts attributed to Israel, one of which killed nearly 30 of his relatives, including his wife and three of his children.
A founder of Hamas in the 1980s and a disciple of the group’s late spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Mr Al Hayya earned a doctorate in Islamic studies from a Sudanese university in 1997.
Hamas's regional allies and senior members of the group congratulated Mr Al Hayya on his election.
Senior member Khaled Meshaal, who had also coveted the post, congratulated Mr Al Hayya on his election through what he described as a democratic internal process, saying he and all members would support the new leadership and work alongside it.
Lebanon's Hezbollah hailed Mr Al Hayya's election as a sign that Hamas remained “strong and united” despite Israeli efforts to weaken the Palestinian movement through the killing of its leaders.
Hezbollah, like Hamas, is part of the Axis of Resistance, an Iranian-backed alliance of militant groups that includes Yemen's Houthi rebels and others within Iraq's paramilitary Popular Mobilisation Forces.
Hamas said Mr Al Hayya received a congratulatory phone call from Turkey's intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin, who reaffirmed Ankara's support for the Palestinian people and their rights.
Ismail Qaani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, congratulated Mr Al Hayya and Hamas members, praising the movement as part of what he called the “Islamic resistance”.
