Hamas Gaza Chief Yahya Al-Sinwar, Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh and senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya arrive at the Rafah border crossing in the southern Gaza Strip on Sept 19, 2017 leader based in Qatar, who has been the tough-talking face of the Palestinian group's international diplomacy as war has raged back in Gaza , where three of his sons were killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Haniyeh was appointed to the Hamas top job in 2017. He has moved between Turkey and Qatar's capital Doha, escaping the travel curbs of the blockaded Gaza Strip and enabling him to act as a negotiator in ceasefire talks or to talk to Hamas' ally Iran. Haniyeh denied Israeli assertions that his sons were fighters for the group and said"the interests of the Palestinian people are placed ahead of everything" when asked if their killing would impact truce talks.
Israel regards the entire Hamas leadership as terrorists, accusing Haniyeh, Meshaal and others of continuing to"pull the strings of the Hamas terror organisation." During the decade in which Haniyeh was Hamas' top leader in Gaza, Israel accused his leadership team of helping to divert humanitarian aid to the group's military wing. Hamas denied it.When he left Gaza in 2017, Haniyeh was succeeded by Yahya Sinwar, a hardliner who spent more than two decades in Israeli prisons and whom Haniyeh had welcomed back to Gaza in 2011 after a prisoner exchange.
Haniyeh became a protégé of Hamas' founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, who like Haniyeh's family, was a refugee from the village of Al Jura near Ashkelon. In 1994, he told Reuters that Yassin was a model for young Palestinians, saying:"We learned from him; love of Islam and sacrifice for this Islam and not to kneel down to these tyrants and despots."
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