Doha-based committee to lead Hamas amid war, in wake of Sinwar’s death — report
Board established after Haniyeh’s assassination in July set to govern terror group at least through March, amid ‘war and exceptional circumstances,’ Hamas sources tell AFP
The Hamas terror group is moving towards appointing a Doha-based ruling committee, two sources said earlier this week, rather than choosing a single successor to previous leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip last Wednesday.
“The Hamas leadership’s approach is not to appoint a successor to the late chief, the martyr Yahya Sinwar, until their next elections” scheduled for March “if conditions permit,” a well-informed source from the Palestinian group told AFP.
A five-member committee that was formed in August following the assassination of political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran “will take over the leadership of the group,” the source said.
The committee was formed to facilitate decision-making given the difficulty of communicating with Sinwar in Gaza before his death.
Sinwar was named the Gaza chief of the terror group in 2017, before rising to become the overall leader of Hamas after Haniyeh, who led its Doha-based political wing, was assassinated in July in an attack widely blamed on Israel.
Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7, 2023 terror onslaught in southern Israel, was killed by Israeli troops last Wednesday in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a year into the war sparked by the invasion, slaughter, and mass abduction carried out by Hamas which left some 1,200 dead and 251 kidnapped to Gaza.
According to the Hamas source, the Doha-based ruling committee is made up of representatives of the two Palestinian territories and the diaspora, namely Khalil al-Haya for Gaza, Zaher Jabarin for the West Bank, and Khaled Mashaal for Palestinians abroad.
It also includes the head of Hamas’s Shura advisory council Mohammed Darwish and the secretary of the political bureau, who is never identified for security reasons.
All current members of the committee are based in Qatar.
According to the source, the committee is tasked with “governing the movement during the war and exceptional circumstances, as well as its future plans.”
He added that it is authorized to “make strategic decisions.”
Another source from the group said that the Hamas leadership discussed a proposal that was made “internally” to appoint a political chief without announcing their name.
But, the source added, the leaders preferred to rule through the committee.
A successor to Sinwar will face the challenge of guiding policy regarding internationally mediated talks for a ceasefire in exchange for the release of hostages. The US and Israel accused Sinwar of deliberately shying away from reaching an agreement on a truce, refusing to compromise on hardline demands that were unacceptable to Israel.
In a video statement Friday, Khalil al-Hayya, deputy leader of Hamas’s Qatar-based politburo, said Israel would come to regret killing Sinwar, adding that his “martyrdom” would only strengthen the terror group.
The hostages “will not return… unless the aggression against our people in Gaza stops,” the senior Hamas official said.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
