Khaled Mashaal, a senior Hamas political leader in exile, is expected to be chosen as the terror group’s leader to replace Ismail Haniyeh who was assassinated in Iran early this morning, Hamas sources tell the Reuters news agency, echoing reports and estimations cited by Hebrew media.
Senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya, who is based in Qatar and has headed Hamas negotiators in indirect Gaza truce talks with Israel, has also been a possibility for the leadership as he is a favorite of Iran and its allies in the region, the report says.
Mashaal, 68, was famously the target of a failed Israeli assassination attempt in 1997, when Israeli agents injected him with poison on a street outside his office in the Jordanian capital Amman. Jordan’s then-King Hussein threatened to hang the would-be killers and scrap the country’s peace treaty with Israel unless the antidote was handed over. Israel did so, and also agreed to free Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, only to assassinate him seven years later in Gaza.
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