Behind the scenes of the election of the new Hamas chairman

Last week, under the watchful eye of the world media, Hamas’s top leaders traveled to Qatar to elect a new political leader for their group.

Delegates from across the Middle East flocked here after nearly a year of fighting between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip.

Some arrived shocked because they had woken up just days earlier to the news that the group’s former political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, had been killed in an explosion in Tehran allegedly carried out by Israel.

Haniyeh, who had overseen his group’s negotiators in talks with Israel, played a key role within Hamas, balancing the militant wing’s desire to take the fight to Israel with calls in some quarters for a settlement and an end to the conflict.

It was clear that his position had to be filled quickly.

At the funeral ceremony in Doha, Hamas leaders stood shoulder to shoulder in a huge white tent decorated with carpets and fancy chairs and pictures of Ismail Haniyeh. Hundreds of people gathered to pay their last respects to the movement’s late leader and his bodyguard.

The scene was more than a memorial – it signaled the end of an era and the beginning of a new, more extreme phase.

It was not the first time I had witnessed Hamas’ top officials meeting after an unexpected funeral to elect a new leader. I had already witnessed this meeting in 2004, after Israel assassinated the group’s founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin – the meeting took place in his home in Gaza. Less than a month later, Israel killed his successor, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi.

But this time, the discussions behind the scenes reflected the magnitude of the crisis and the challenges they face.

On October 7 last year, Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages in Gaza. Since then, Israel’s military retaliation has killed more than 39,600 people and injured tens of thousands more, according to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry. More than half of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed and almost the entire population has been displaced. Resistance to Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, is growing. The group itself has suffered heavy losses.

In addition, the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh on July 31 in Tehran – a place he had always considered a safe haven – was a real shock for the organization.

Hamas believes Haniyeh was killed by an anti-personnel missile while he was browsing on his mobile phone. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have said a projectile with a 7-kilogram warhead was used. Some Western media reports say he was killed by a bomb that had been planted in the room earlier.

At Haniyeh’s funeral ceremony in Doha, a man in his mid-60s with white hair and a short beard stood in a corner, away from the spotlight.

“Watch him closely,” a Hamas media official told me. Who was he? “He is the shady man Abu Omar Hassan,” he said.

Abu Omar Hassan, or Mohamed Hassan Darwish, is head of the Supreme Shura Council, Hamas’s main advisory body. According to Hamas’ constitution, he was in the best position to be the organization’s interim head until elections scheduled for next March.

“He is the man of great missions,” I was told.

After the mourning ceremony was over, the real work began for these leaders. For two days, the movement’s veteran faces and shady characters met in Doha, where Hamas’ political office has been located since 2012, to elect a new leader.

They chose Yahya Sinwar, who has led the group in Gaza since 2017. This choice may surprise many, but anyone who has followed his career since Israel released him in 2011 as part of the exchange for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit knew that it was entirely possible that he would one day lead Hamas.

No Hamas political leader has ever been closer to the group’s armed wing. His brother Mohammed leads Hamas’s largest military battalion, while Mohammed Deif – the elusive Hamas veteran who led the armed wing for two decades until Israel said it had killed him last month – was his neighbor, friend and classmate. The two grew up together in Gaza’s sprawling Khan Younis refugee camp.

Despite all this, many consider his appointment as the top Hamas soldier to be madness. Israel’s security authorities believe that Sinwar planned and carried out the attack on southern Israel, and he is at the top of their wanted list.

“Not everyone in the Hamas leadership agreed with the decision,” a senior Hamas official told me. “Some leaders expressed their concerns, others pushed for a more moderate candidate. But in the end he got the majority of votes.”

Another Hamas official who attended the meetings said the movement was unable to select the powerful shadow agent Abu Omar Hassan because he was little known to the public and unknown outside the movement, whereas Yahya Sinwar had gained worldwide notoriety through the October 7 attack.

“Sinwar has become a household name after October 7 and is very popular in the Arab and Islamic world,” the official said. “He has close ties to the Iran-backed resistance axis and his appointment in the midst of the war sends a message of challenge to Israel.”

The “Axis of Resistance” is a network of armed groups supported by Iran. Other members, such as Lebanon-based Hezbollah, also pose a threat to Israel.

Many Arab and some Western politicians urged Hamas not to appoint Sinwar as leader because of his connection to the October 7 attacks. He and the organization he now leads are ostracized as terrorists by many Western governments.

“One of the reasons we voted for him is because we want to honor him as the mastermind of the attacks,” the official said. “October 7 belongs to him, so he deserves to lead the movement.”

Ten months after the attack, all attempts to agree a ceasefire have failed. According to BBC information, the two main mediators – Qatar and Egypt – are working on a new ceasefire proposal.

Leaked information suggests that the plan is based on convincing Iran not to respond militarily to Haniyeh’s assassination on Israeli territory in return for Israel ending its war in Gaza and withdrawing its troops from the Philadelphia Corridor.

The Philadelphia Corridor is a buffer zone, in some places only about 100 m wide, that runs along the Gaza side of the 13 km long border with Egypt. Gaza’s only other land border is with Israel itself.

A Palestinian official familiar with the ceasefire negotiations told me in Doha: “Egyptian intelligence has already sent a team to Doha and meetings are taking place to work out an action plan based on sparing the region a possible Iranian response … in exchange for a ceasefire.”

Now the conflict is only getting louder because Sinwar, Hamas’s most extreme leader, will lead the group for the next five years – if he survives the war.