Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’ chief negotiator, is one of the key players in ongoing talks in Cairo aimed at achieving a ceasefire in Gaza. Still “wanted” by Israel, this radical close to Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the founder of the Palestinian Islamic movement, was assassinated in 2004, having escaped several assassination attempts and spent three years in an Israeli prison. Portrait.
Although unknown to the general public, Khalil al-Haya is a leading figure in Hamas. The Palestinian Islamist movement’s chief negotiator, he has been playing a leading role as head of the delegation that has been in talks for several weeks with Egyptian, Qatari and American representatives to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
It has acted as a mediator in open warfare between Hamas and the Jewish state since the Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, according to Israel’s count. According to a recent report by Hamas’ health ministry, more than 30,700 people have been killed in the Palestinian Territory since the start of the Israeli response ordered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
From religion to politics
Nicknamed Abu Osama, Khalil al-Hayya knows every corner of the Gaza Strip, where he was born in 1960. Prominently conservative and deeply religious, he quickly turned to Islamic studies. After receiving his first degree in theology from the University of Gaza in 1983, he continued his Koranic and Sharia studies in Jordan (he earned a doctorate in Islamic sciences from the University of Khartoum in Sudan a decade later, in 1997).
In parallel with his religious studies, in the 1980s he met the spiritual leader and founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin (killed by an Israeli strike in 2004). After being nurtured by the teachings of this local religious figure, he gains entry into his intimate circle.
It was therefore logical that he entered the political arena in 1987, joining the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) founded by his mentor. He became a central figure and held several positions, including deputy leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Since 2017, in the shadow of Ismail Haniyeh and his successor, Yahya Sinauer, as head of the movement in the Palestinian enclave.
In 2006, Khalil al-Hayya was elected deputy for Gaza, during Palestinian legislative elections won by Hamas, before the Palestinian movement’s coup, which took control of the Gaza Strip by force.
Target of assassination attempts
Like all members of Hamas, especially members of the movement’s political bureau, Khalil al-Hayya automatically becomes a target for Israel. And this literally, because he escaped several targeted assassination attempts.
The first time, in 2007, was when his home was targeted by an Israeli strike that killed two of his brothers and six other members of his family. Khalil al-Hayya was not present in the building. In 2014, while the Israeli military was conducting Operation Protective Edge, another Israeli attempt to evict him from the home failed, with Hamas cadres evacuating his home for fear of being targeted.
He lost two of his sons in separate attacks, which were always carried out by the Israeli army. One of them was killed in 2008 while leading a squad that fired rockets at towns in the Jewish state.
At the time, during the funeral of his son, Khalil al-Hayya, he said, “This is the tenth member of my family to receive the honor of martyrdom.” “It is part of our people’s destiny and, God willing, our people will achieve victory.
Like Yahya Sinouar, accused by Israel of masterminding the October 7 attacks, Khalil al-Haiya spent several years in an Israeli prison. He was detained for three years for his political activism during the 1990s.
Head of Shadow Diplomacy
In addition to Sheikh Ahmad Yassin’s sponsorship, this particular history with the Israeli enemy helped legitimize his political rise, in the eyes of his movement and its supporters. Khalil al-Hayya, in charge of Arab and Islamic relations for Hamas and head of its media office, becomes indispensable when it comes to negotiations with the Islamist movement.
A form of Hamas diplomacy, he is the one who often appears on the front lines when it comes to secret negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah during inter-Palestinian relations efforts.
He also became a face of Hamas on the regional scene. It is he, for example, who is going to Damascus in October 2022 to broker a reconciliation between Hamas and the Syrian regime, with which relations have broken since President Bashar al-Assad’s campaign of repression against the opposition since 2011.
Although considered by Tel Aviv as the most radical, Khalil al-Haya also participates in indirect discussions with Israel, such as the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011 or ending various ceasefires in Gaza, such as in 2014.
Narrow room for maneuver
The October 7 attack – which Khalil al-Hayya justified as “the hatred suffered by the Palestinian people, the denial of their rights, the attack on their holy sites and an attempt to end their issue” – pushed him forward once more. At the forefront, mediators are trying to secure a ceasefire agreement before Ramadan.
In particular, they are demanding a compromise on a six-week ceasefire involving the release of hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, as well as the entry of increased amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza, where the population is at risk of famine.
But despite his certain influence in the movement, his “expertise” in the media war between Israel and Hamas, and the relationships established over several decades with regional actors through negotiations, Khalil al-Hayya remains tight-lipped.
Since October 7, events have clearly shown that the final decision rests with his superior in Gaza, Yahya Sinouar, who holds the fate of the hostages in his hands, one of the main points of the negotiations.
