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Khalil Ismail Al-Hayya

A The name Khalil Al-Hayya topped various social media sites and search engines, after news circulated about him taking over the leadership of the resistance movement Hamas after the martyrdom of its political bureau chief Yahya Al-Sinwar. Khalil al-Hayya was the most prominent candidate to head the position during the transitional period at least, especially since he is currently heading the negotiating delegation, which is being managed by regional and international mediators with Israel to stop the aggression on the Gaza Strip, which may increase his chances of assuming the position, especially since he holds the position of Sinwar’s deputy to the political bureau of the Hamas movement in Gaza. Al-Hayya is considered a favorite of Iran and its allies in the region. When Hamas announced 18 October 2024 the death of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya said, “Sinwar ascended, advancing, not retreating, engaging in the front lines and moving between combat positions,” adding, “We mourn the leader of the Battle of the Flood of Al-Aqsa and the head of the political bureau of Hamas, leader Yahya Sinwar.”

Al-Hayya adopted the first announcement of Hamas’s position after Sinwar in a significant gesture, saying: “Hamas will continue until the establishment of the Palestinian state on all Palestinian soil with Jerusalem as its capital,” stressing that “the prisoners will not return except by stopping the aggression and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.” Al-Hayya said in a speech 18 October 2024 “Yahya Sinwar continued his giving after leaving prison until his eyes were filled with the great flood,” noting that Sinwar was a continuation of the caravan of great martyrs following in the footsteps of the founding Sheikh of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin, stressing that the blood of the martyrs will continue to light our way and constitute an incentive for steadfastness and perseverance. Al-Hayya stressed that the martyrdom of the head of the political bureau of Hamas, and the leaders who preceded him, will only increase the strength and resilience of our movement.

Khalil Ismail Al-Hayya / Ibrahim Al-Hayyah (Abu Osama) is a Palestinian politician, leader and member of the Political Bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ) and its deputy chairman. Khalil al-Hayya, who had been representing HAMAS during indirect talks with Israel for a hostage-ceasefire deal, is considered well-connected to Iran. He is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council for the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, a member of the movement's political bureau, deputy head of the movement in the Gaza Strip, and head of the media office Hamas. He is married and has 6 children, two of whom were killed: Osama Al-Hayya and Hamza Al-Hayya. He was subjected to several assassination attempts, and as a result of these attempts, 19 members of his family were killed.

He held several responsibilities within the movement, including membership in its political bureau, deputy head of the movement in Gaza, and head of the movement’s office for Arab and Islamic relations. In February 2024, he led a Hamas delegation to Egypt to complete talks on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. He was born in 1960, obtained a PhD in Sunnah and Hadith Sciences. He joined the Islamic movement at the hands of the founder of the Hamas movement, the martyr Sheikh Ahmed Yassin , and he engaged in popular work, resistance, and political work.

Khalil Ismail Al-Hayya was born on November 5, 1960 in Gaza City, Palestine, to a conservative resistance family. He experienced the pain of the 1967 setback , and images of suffering were ingrained in his mind as a young child, as he witnessed the occupation army storming the family home and arresting members of the family, including his uncle. He studied primary school at Hattin School in Gaza, and preparatory school at Hashem bin Abd Manaf School. He obtained his high school diploma from Yaffa School, and earned a bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of Fundamentals of Religion at the Islamic University of Gaza in 1983.

He was sent on a scholarship to the University of Jordan and continued his studies there, where he obtained a master’s degree in Sunnah and Hadith Sciences in 1986. After more than a decade, he obtained a doctorate degree in the same specialization (Sunnah and Hadith Sciences) from the University of the Holy Qur’an and Islamic Sciences in Sudan in 1997. After graduating from the Islamic University of Gaza, he returned to it as a teaching assistant in the Faculty of Fundamentals of Religion in 1984. After completing his postgraduate studies, he was appointed Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, then Dean of Student Affairs at the same university in 2001.

His academic achievement qualified him to become a member of the Association of Palestinian Scholars, and in 2006 he was elected as a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council for Gaza on the Hamas “Change and Reform” list, and assumed the presidency of its bloc in the Council.

He showed signs of religiousness when he was 15 years old, and his meeting with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in March 1980 and his long association with him moved him from mere individual religiosity to engaging in organized group work, as he worked during his university days with the students of the Islamic Bloc. He was arrested twice, the first time in 1980 for a month and a half, and the second time in 1982 for a week, during which he was subjected to severe torture that nearly killed him. In early 1983, he joined the Islamic Movement (affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood) as part of a group of young people, including Ismail Haniyeh , Yahya Sinwar, and others.

He was involved in popular, union and advocacy work, and was an imam, preacher and preacher in mosques. He was also involved in organizational work and contributed to the security organization of the Gaza Strip to protect society from Zionist infiltrations in the period between 1984 and 1986. He also participated in the activities of the first Palestinian Intifada in 1987, and was part of the group that later founded the Hamas movement, which built its project on the liberation of the land, the return of the human being, and belief in joint national action.

During the first intifada, he was arrested for the third time in 1991 for a period of 3 years after his activity at the university and assuming organizational responsibilities in Gaza, including deputy chairman of the Islamic University Student Council in 1986 and deputy chairman of the Islamic Movement in the Gaza Strip. He was active in union work after joining the Islamic University of Gaza, and assumed the responsibility of Vice President of the Workers Union at the aforementioned university in 1998, then President of the same union in 2001.

He was elected as a member of the Hamas Political Bureau, and ran in the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 on the “Change and Reform” list for Gaza. He succeeded in winning membership in the Legislative Council, and the movement nominated him as head of its bloc in the Council. In 2007, he survived an assassination attempt after an Israeli air raid targeted his family’s office, killing 7 people: two of his brothers, 4 of his nephews, and one of his cousins. His son Hamza (a member of the Qassam Brigades) was killed on February 28, 2008 by a missile fired by an Israeli reconnaissance plane.

The occupation continued to pursue him and tried to assassinate him again on July 20, 2014, but he escaped once again when the house of his eldest son Osama was targeted in the Shuja'iyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza. The targeting resulted in the martyrdom of Osama, his wife, and three of his children, while Al-Hayah's wife and two of Osama's children survived because they were outside the house. Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported that the occupation forces launched an air strike on October 9, 2023, on Khalil Al-Hayya’s house in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood.

He was a strong presence in the Hamas delegation in the negotiations in Cairo after the war on Gaza in 2012 and 2014, as he was the head of the movement’s media office at the time, and his position within the movement was strengthened and he became the head of its office for Arab and Islamic relations.

In October 2022, he led a Hamas delegation with delegations of Palestinian factions to Damascus to meet with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a meeting that Al-Hayya described in a press conference at the time as “a historic meeting and a new, renewed start for joint Palestinian-Syrian action.” Hamas's chief representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan, Hamas arab relations chief Khalil al-Hayya, secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, Talal Naji, arrived for a press conference during a visit to the Syrian capital Damascus on October 19, 2022 for the first time since the Palestinian Islamist group severed ties with Syria a decade ago. Palestinian movement Hamas said it restored relations with the Damascus government after a visiting delegation held a "historic meeting" with President Bashar al-Assad in Syria's capital. The group, which controls the Gaza Strip, was one of Assad's closest allies but it left Syria in 2012 after condemning his government's brutal suppression of protests in March 2011, which triggered the country's descent into civil war.

He played a major role in the political and media battle that was launched against the Israeli occupation after Operation “ Al-Aqsa Flood ” on October 7, 2023, and managed the negotiations on the prisoners’ file. He appeared in a number of interviews and statements to Arab and international media outlets, defending the resistance and the people of Gaza, explaining the crimes of the Israeli occupation, explaining the positions of the Hamas movement regarding the negotiations on the humanitarian truce agreement and the exchange of prisoners, and seeking to stop the aggression of the occupation army.

On November 22, 2023, he headed a Hamas delegation to Lebanon to meet with Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah after announcing a prisoner exchange agreement between the movement and the Israeli occupation. He confirmed in early December 2023 that the Israeli occupation aims to push part of the Palestinian people towards Egypt in the next stage, and that the occupation is preparing to resume its crimes against Gaza, and he revealed a number of Israeli plans in this regard. On the 17th of the same month, he said, “Whoever thinks about what comes after Hamas is thinking of an illusion,” adding, “The Al-Aqsa flood came in response to the disregard for the Palestinian people and the turning away from their rights.”

On January 2, 2024, Israeli Channel 12 announced his assassination in a drone attack that targeted a building housing a Hamas office in the Beirut suburb, in which Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, and two leaders of the Qassam Brigades were killed. However, the movement confirmed at the time that Khalil al-Hayya was fine and outside Lebanon. On February 8, 2024, he led the movement's delegation to Cairo to complete talks on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Al-Hayya speaks with certainty about the near end of the Israeli occupation, and says in a press interview conducted with him about 6 months before Operation “Noah’s Flood”: “We are living in a promising phase, the phase of reviving the Palestinian cause once again in the regional and international scene after it was wanted to be forgotten.” He added, "The time for resolving the conflict with the occupation is approaching, and signs of the Zionist entity's weakness are becoming more apparent day by day...the worm is eating away at it from within."

He stresses that he does not only link this to the internal reality of the Israeli occupation, but also to “the Palestinian people’s belief, with all its factions and movements, in the justice of their cause, and the option of liberation after the absence of any horizon for a just political settlement, especially with an extremist right-wing government, and the resistance’s ability to curb the occupation, surprise it, and expose its brutal reality to the world.”

He strongly believes that there is no one in Israel who believes in the right of the Palestinian people to an independent entity and state with all the meanings of independence, and he believes with the same strength that the Palestinian people, with all its factions, are determined to continue on the path of liberation, the departure of the occupation, and the return of the settlers from where they came.

On August 6, 2024, Hamas announced that its Shura Council had unanimously chosen Yahya Sinwar as the new head of the movement, and Khalil al-Hayya as his deputy, following the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh on July 31 in the Iranian capital, Tehran. Haniyeh was at the head of a delegation from the movement to participate in the inauguration ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Peschikian .

On 06 October 2024 Khalil Al-Hayya stressed Hamas's firm position in confronting the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, saying, "There is no security or stability in the region unless the Palestinian people obtain their full rights." In a speech he gave on the eve of the first anniversary of the Battle of the Flood of Al-Aqsa , Al-Hayya stressed that what the Palestinian resistance rejected yesterday it will not accept today, and he added, "What the occupation failed to impose by force it will not take at the negotiating table."

The Hamas leader stressed that the "Al-Aqsa Flood" brought the Palestinian cause back to the forefront of global attention, and said, "We can say today with confidence that the Palestinian cause has become the first in the world." He stressed that the battle of October 7, 2023 "shattered the illusions that the enemy had drawn for itself" and revealed "the abject failure of the various components of its military and security system." He went on to confirm that the resistance was able, within a few hours, to "bring the occupying entity to its knees and neutralize the most important divisions of its army."

The Hamas leader praised the steadfastness of the people of the Gaza Strip in the face of the "harshest war of extermination" despite being subjected to "daily massacres." He also paid special tribute to the people of Gaza in various areas of the Strip , saying, "The greatest manifestation of the meanings of pride, patience and sacrifice was a characteristic and a trait from you."

Regarding the situation in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem , Al-Hayya pointed out that the resistance there continues despite the "settlement that tears apart its cities, villages and camps." He also praised the operations carried out by the resistance in the cities of the West Bank and inside the Green Line , considering them "the way to confront the permanent danger to our people and our cause."

On the regional level, the Hamas leader stressed that the Al-Aqsa flood had revived “the spirit of jihad in the nation and redirected its compass toward the real enemy.” Al-Hayya praised the role of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi group in Yemen, and the factions in Iraq, considering that their participation in the battle constituted a "real shift in the nature of the battle."

Al-Hayya stressed Hamas's readiness to reach an agreement that achieves "a complete and permanent cessation of aggression and a complete and comprehensive withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, along with reconstruction, ending the siege, and reaching a prisoner exchange deal," stressing Hamas' welcome to the implementation of Security Council Resolution No. 2735 on the cessation of aggression.

Referring to international legal developments, Al-Hayya pointed out that "for the first time in the history of the conflict since 1948, the enemy stands before international courts as a war criminal accused of genocide," and considered that this development has "removed the masks from the faces of the leaders of the occupation and shown the world the true nature of (this) entity." Al-Hayya reiterated the importance of Palestinian national unity, considering it "the only way and the big rock on which the occupation's conspiracies will be shattered." He also affirmed Hamas's commitment to working to rebuild Gaza "with the hands of its sons and the support of its brothers."

In the Haniyeh assassination incident, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard stated that Al-Hayya was with Haniyeh in the same building that was hit by a missile in Tehran, but was not in the same apartment at the time of the strike.

Hamas said 18 October 2024 it will not release hostages held in Gaza until the end of the war. "Those prisoners will not return to you before the end of the aggression on Gaza and the withdrawal from Gaza," Khalil Hayya, deputy leader of Hamas in Gaza and the group's chief negotiator, said. About 100 hostages are remaining in Gaza, at least 30 of whom Israel says are dead.