Hamas

Overview

Most profiles of Hamas read like they were frozen in 2024: the October 7 attacks, the Gaza war, and a leadership headed by Yahya Sinwar. The movement that exists in late 2026 looks different. In July 2026, Hamas’s Shura Council elected Khalil al-Hayya as head of its political bureau — defeating rival Khaled Mashaal by a single vote, 35 to 34, after a five-member council had run the group since Sinwar’s killing in 2024.¹ That razor-thin result exposed a movement unsure whether it wants to remain an armed spearhead or become a political party competing in Palestinian elections — and Hamas is now doing both at once, negotiating a ceasefire with Washington’s direct involvement while planning to contest November 2026 legislative elections.¹²

Hamas — the Islamic Resistance Movement, from the Arabic Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya — is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist military and sociopolitical movement that has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007. The United States designated it a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, and the European Union also classifies it as a terrorist organization, though others describe it as a resistance movement.³⁴

The single-vote election

The July 2026 vote was, by the account of the Jerusalem Post’s analysis, a dramatic internal contest coordinated by Hamas’s Shura Council. Al-Hayya stepped into the shoes of Sinwar, the last elected leader; the group had been managed by a five-member council since Sinwar’s killing by the IDF in 2024.¹ The one-vote margin over Mashaal carried outsized meaning: it laid bare a movement without internal consensus over its political future — whether it remains the spearhead of armed confrontation or transforms into a legitimate political party within Palestinian politics.¹

The contest also settled, for now, where the movement’s center of gravity sits. Al-Hayya’s victory re-anchored Gaza as the organization’s undisputed core, even though al-Hayya himself operates from outside the Strip. His win told operatives in the West Bank that decision-making stays centered in Gaza — a signal that may deepen frustration among West Bank cadres who bear the costs of arrests and counterterrorism operations while Gaza calls the shots.¹

Two schools of thought

The election surfaced two competing worldviews inside Hamas. The al-Hayya camp views the Tehran-led “Axis of Resistance” as an irreplaceable anchor for weaponry, funding, and strategic depth, treats Gaza as the primary battlefront, and holds to a rigid doctrine of armed resistance (muqawama) as the main tool for the movement’s goals — alongside a hostile stance toward the Palestinian Authority.¹ The Mashaal camp looked instead to the Sunni world, seeking political support, funding, and legitimacy from Qatar and Turkey, favoring diplomatic pragmatism and integration into the Palestinian political system and the broader Arab arena.¹

Geography mapped onto ideology: al-Hayya is a native Gazan from the Shejaia neighborhood, while Mashaal was born in Silwad in the Ramallah Governorate of the West Bank.¹ Mashaal had previously chaired the political bureau from 1996 until May 2017, when Ismail Haniyeh succeeded him.¹

Al-Hayya’s consolidated power

What makes al-Hayya’s tenure unusual is the concentration of authority in one person. He simultaneously holds three critical power centers: political leader as head of the bureau, chief negotiator managing the ceasefire, hostage, and prisoner portfolios, and financial conduit with direct and exclusive control over Hamas’s bank accounts and money flows managed in Qatar and Turkey.¹ That triple grip gives him real enforcement capacity over field commanders and the military wing in Gaza — the ability to enforce an agreement or stall one at will. But the narrow 35-34 mandate is a double-edged sword: any significant concession could face fierce resistance from the Mashaal camp or harder-line field elements.¹

Al-Hayya belongs to Hamas’s founding generation. He rose alongside the movement’s early ideological architects including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, took part in establishing some of its security apparatuses, was imprisoned in Israel three times, served in the Palestinian Legislative Council on Hamas’s behalf, headed its media office, and managed its Arab and Islamic relations portfolio.¹⁵ He was among Sinwar’s closest loyalists and confidants — serving as Sinwar’s political-diplomatic proxy outside the Strip, in full coordination with the military command on the ground. He left Gaza before the October 7, 2023 attack and was privy to the plan, with the goal of activating the political arm Sinwar would need in the aftermath.¹

The personal cost has been severe. Four of his children were killed by the IDF, including in the recent war: his son Hamza was killed in 2008, his eldest son Osama was bombed along with his wife and three children in 2014, another son Azzam was killed in an airstrike in Gaza City in May, and his son Hammam was killed in the 2025 Israeli strike in Doha that al-Hayya narrowly survived.¹⁵

Origins and ideology

Hamas grew out of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and emerged in 1987 in Gaza during the first Palestinian intifada. After the PLO entered a peace process with Israel that created the Palestinian Authority, Hamas positioned itself as the alternative to the secular Fatah movement — which leads the PLO — by attacking Israeli civilian and military targets. Its ideology fuses Palestinian nationalism with Islamic fundamentalism.³

It was formally established in December 1987 by Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, after activists had spent the late 1970s building charities, clinics, and schools in Gaza and the West Bank following Israel’s 1967 occupation of both territories.⁴ In 1988 Hamas declared that liberating Palestine from Israeli occupation was every Muslim’s religious duty, and its 1988 charter committed the group to Israel’s destruction and an Islamic state in all of historic Palestine, with antisemitic rhetoric.⁴³

The movement’s first attack came in 1989 — the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers — which led to Yassin’s arrest. He was released in 1997 in exchange for Mossad agents caught trying to assassinate Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshaal in Jordan.⁴ In 2017 the group publicly released a revised statement saying its conflict was with the “Zionist project” rather than Jews in general, and expressing willingness to accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza if it resulted from “national consensus” — while refusing to recognize Israel’s legitimacy. Observers differ on how much pragmatism that represented.³

From its inception, Hamas ran a social welfare network that built its popularity among Palestinians while also serving as a conduit for funding military operations. It has received material assistance and training from Iran and its allies, including Hezbollah. The U.S. State Department says Hamas has received funding, weapons, and training from Iran and raises funds in Persian Gulf countries; the Economist estimated in November 2023 that the group’s annual revenue exceeded $1 billion, with roughly $360 million in “taxes” on goods entering Gaza and about $750 million from foreign sources.³

From ballots to blockade

Hamas entered electoral politics in 2005 and won a landslide victory in the January 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections, defeating Fatah and leading a new PA cabinet. Israel, the United States, and the EU confined their interactions and funding to PA President Mahmoud Abbas.⁴³ The two parties could not govern together — Hamas favoring armed resistance, Fatah preferring negotiation — and in June 2007 Hamas forcibly seized the Gaza Strip in violent clashes, leaving Fatah in charge of the West Bank. Israel and Egypt then imposed severe restrictions on the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza.⁴³

Rounds of major Israel-Hamas conflict followed in 2008-2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021, each ending with little change to the status quo. The 2011 exchange for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit freed more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners — including Sinwar.³

October 7 and the decapitation of the leadership

On October 7, 2023, Hamas led a surprise assault on Israel that killed some 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, including 46 Americans, and took around 251 people hostage — an attack of unprecedented scope and lethality for the group.³ The ensuing war reshaped the region and the movement itself.

Israel’s retaliation systematically removed Hamas’s top leadership. In July 2024, Ismail Haniyeh — who chaired the politburo from Qatar — was killed in Iran, in a strike Israel may have been responsible for; that same month an Israeli strike in Gaza reportedly killed military leader Muhammad Deif. In October 2024, Israeli soldiers killed Haniyeh’s successor Yahya Sinwar, who had led Hamas in Gaza since 2017, had reportedly masterminded the October 7 assault with Deif, and had been the group’s key wartime decisionmaker.³ A five-member council, including al-Hayya as Sinwar’s former deputy for Gaza, ran the movement from 2024 until the July 2026 election.¹⁵

The negotiator’s Hamas

The most under-reported shift is how directly Hamas now deals with Washington. President Trump granted envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff permission to speak directly with Hamas — a departure from the longstanding U.S. policy of shunning a designated terrorist group. In October 2025, al-Hayya led a Hamas delegation in talks with the two envoys that, according to Reuters, helped clinch a ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages seized in 2023; the October 8 meeting was the most high-profile U.S.-Hamas encounter to date.⁵

Under al-Hayya, Hamas agreed in July 2026 to lay down its weapons under a Trump-backed plan linking disarmament to Israeli withdrawal from Gaza — while rejecting the word “disarmament” itself, saying it would hand weapons over for storage under a U.S.-backed Palestinian technocratic government. Israel rejected the plan, refusing to withdraw until Hamas is fully disarmed.⁵ In a subsequent meeting in El-Alamein, Egypt, Kushner pressed al-Hayya for clear, verifiable disarmament commitments; Hamas reiterated support for the initiative and urged mediators and Trump’s “Board of Peace” — whose members include former British prime minister Tony Blair, with Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt mediating — to press Israel on a roadmap and timeline.⁶

Meanwhile, Hamas is planning a return to the ballot box. In a September 27, 2026 interview with Al Araby TV, al-Hayya said Hamas would run as part of a coalition in November Palestinian Legislative Council elections while continuing “resistance” by all legitimate means — reportedly alongside Mohammed Dahlan’s Reform Democratic faction, with candidate lists already being prepared. He insisted the coalition would keep operating even if the vote is postponed: “We want to put our Palestinian house in order.”² The Jerusalem Post noted the tension with point 13 of Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which requires Hamas to accept no role — direct or indirect — in governing Gaza.²

And the movement’s internal democracy is strained. In September 2026, Hamas suspended its election for the leader of Gaza after a significant share of electors returned blank ballots in the first round of a run-off — reportedly a common expression of dissatisfaction with both candidates. The contest pits Ali al-Amoudi, released from Israeli prison in 2011 and a close Sinwar associate who led Hamas’s media division under him, against 68-year-old Nizar Awadallah of the founding generation, who narrowly lost to Sinwar in a 2021 leadership race after three rounds of voting and played a leading role in the Shalit prisoner deal.⁷

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not claim a current figure for Hamas’s fighting strength or tunnel network — estimates vary widely and date quickly. It does not take a position on whether the November 2026 PLC elections will actually take place; they are planned, not certain. Casualty figures are attributed to their sources rather than independently verified. The analysis of what the 35-34 vote means for Hamas’s future is the assessment of the cited analyst, not an established fact. This profile describes the organization as reported by the cited sources; characterizations of Hamas as “resistance” or as a terrorist organization are presented as the positions of those who hold them.

Footnotes

1. The Jerusalem Post (Jerusalem Report), “New Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya signals a Gaza-first strategy,” 2026-08-14. http://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/article-905160 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵

2. The Jerusalem Post, “Khalil al-Hayya: Hamas to run in Palestinian elections, continue ‘resistance’,” 2026-09-27. https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-909886 ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Congressional Research Service, “Hamas: Background, Current Status, and U.S. Policy” (IF12549). https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12549 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

4. Al Jazeera, “History Illustrated: The story of Hamas and its fight for Palestine,” 2023-10-11. https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/10/11/history-illustrated-the-story-of-hamas-and-its-fight-for-palestine ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

5. Outlook India, “Khalil Al-Hayya: The Hamas Leader At The Centre Of Gaza Ceasefire Talks,” 2026-08. https://www.outlookindia.com/international/khalil-al-hayya-the-hamas-leader-at-the-centre-of-gaza-ceasefire-talks ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

6. Pakistan Observer, “Kushner meets Hamas leader in Egypt as efforts to revive Gaza Plan continue.” https://pakobserver.net/kushner-meets-hamas-leader-in-egypt-as-efforts-to-revive-gaza-plan-continue/ ↩

7. i24NEWS, “Blank Ballots Deadlock Hamas Gaza Leadership Election,” 2026-09. https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/palestinian-territories/artc-blank-ballots-deadlock-hamas-gaza-leadership-election ↩