Hamas sources say Doha-based committee to head terror group after Sinwar killed

By Agencies 21 October 2024, 11:16 pm

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Houthi supporters raise a poster of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who killed by Israeli troops in Gaza, during an anti-Israel rally in Sanaa, Yemen, October 18, 2024. (AP Photo/ Osamah Abdulrahman)

Two Hamas sources say the Palestinian terror group is moving toward appointing a Doha-based ruling committee rather than a single successor to its chief Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli troops last week.

“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 group tells 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 adds.

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 militant group in 2017, before rising to become the overall leader of Hamas after Haniyeh was assassinated in July.

The source says the committee is made up of representatives of West Bank, Gaza and the Palestinian diaspora, namely Khalil al-Hayya for Gaza, Zaher Jabarin for the West Bank and Khaled Meshaal 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 says that the Hamas leadership discussed a proposal that was made “internally” to appoint a political chief without announcing their name.

But, the source adds, the leaders preferred to rule through the committee.

Sinwar was killed by Israeli troops in southern Gaza on Wednesday, more than a year into the devastating war in the territory sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack that he orchestrated. The attack killed some 1,200 people and took another 251 hostages.