Hamas will be run by a ruling committee, with no leader to succeed Sinwar

File photo of Khaled Meshaal, who is on the Hamas ruling committee | Photo: Reuters

Two Hamas sources said the Palestinian militant group was moving toward appointing a Doha-based governing committee rather than a sole successor to its chief. Yahya Sinwarwho was killed by Israeli troops last week.

“The approach of the Hamas leadership is not to appoint a successor to the late leader, the martyr Yahya Sinwar, until their next elections,” scheduled for March, “if conditions allow,” said a well-informed source in the group AFP.

A five-member committee that was formed in August following the assassination of the political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran “will take over the leadership of the group,” the source added.

The committee was formed to facilitate decision-making in view of the difficulty of communicating with Sinwar in Gaza before his death.

Sinwar succeeded Haniya

Sinwar was named the group’s Gaza chief in 2017 before rising to become Hamas’s overall leader after Haniya was killed in July.

The source said the committee consists of representatives of the two Palestinian territories and the diaspora, namely Khalil al-Haya 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 has never been identified for security reasons.

All current committee members are based in Qatar.

According to the source, the committee was tasked with “managing the movement during the war and emergency as well as its future plans.”

He added that he was authorized to “take strategic decisions”.

Another source in the group said the Hamas leadership had discussed a proposal made “internally” to appoint a political chief, without naming him.

But, the source added, leaders prefer to rule through the committee.

Sinwar was killed by Israeli forces in southern Gaza on Wednesday, more than a year after the devastating war in the territory sparked by an October 7 attack by Hamas.