Hamas ‘set to be led by ruling committee out of Doha’

Hamas sources say the militant group won’t be ruled by an individual at least until new elections are held next March.

Supporters of Yemen's Houthis rally over the death of Yahya Sinwar. Picture: AFP.

Hamas is moving towards appointing a Doha-based ruling committee rather than a single successor to its assassinated chief Yahya Sinwar, sources have told AFP.

“The Hamas leadership’s approach is not to appoint a successor to the late chief, the martyr Yahya Sinwar, until their next elections,” a well-informed source said.

Sinwar was killed last week in an encounter with Israeli Defence Forces, with his last moments caught on video by a drone that entered the building in which he was hiding.

The Hamas elections are scheduled for March “if conditions permit”, sources 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 added.

The committee was formed to facilitate decision-making in view of 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.

Before his death, he told the group that in the event he was killed, Hamas should be ruled by a committee, the Wall St Journal reports.

Khalil al-Hayya, Sinwar’s deputy and the group’s most senior official outside Gaza, is a strong candidate to take over in March, but in the meantime will serve on the committee, sources told the BBC.

Al-Hayya is a lead negotiator for Hamas in ceasefire talks between the group and Israel. He will be joined on the committee by Zaher Jabarin, who represents Hamas for the West Bank and Khaled Meshaal for Palestinians abroad. Meshaal is another strong contender for eventual leadership and is seen as a moderate.

The committee 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 authorised 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.

AFP