The successor to Ismail Haniyeh at the head of Hamas’s political wing will be Muhammad Ismail Darwish, the Saudi-based Al Arabiya news channel reports, citing unnamed sources.
Darwish, who lives in Qatar, will lead the group’s politburo until new elections are held, sources add.
Who is Darwish?
Mohammed Ismail Darwish”, known as “Abu Omar Hassan”, is the chairman of the movement’s Consultative Council. He will temporarily assume this role after the movement agreed to choose a provisional replacement, pending the election of a new leader.
Hamas, the group that runs the Gaza Strip, issued a statement on Saturday saying that it has initiated a broad consultation process to select a new leader of its movement following the assassination of its former leader Ismail Haniyeh.
According to the movement’s charter, the members of the Central Consultative Council, which comprises around 50 members, including members of the movement’s central political bureau, are those who elect the president.
Haniyeh was head of the movement’s political bureau until his assassination. His deputy, Saleh Al-Arouri, killed in an Israeli raid in Beirut in January, was in theory to replace him automatically. Al-Arouri’s post has remained vacant since his death.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that Israel killed Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh using a “short-range projectile” launched from outside of his accommodation in Tehran.
“This terrorist operation was carried out by firing a short-range projectile with a warhead of about 7 kilograms - causing a strong explosion - from outside the accommodation area,” the Guards said in a statement.
It added that Israel was “supported by the United States” in the attack.
Haniyeh was killed early Wednesday in the Iranian capital where he was attending the swearing-in of the new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
Iran and Hamas have vowed to retaliate.
The Guards repeated their insistence that Haniyeh would be avenged and that Israel would receive “a severe punishment at the appropriate time, place and manner.”
Israel, which has declined to comment on Haniyeh’s killing, had earlier struck a Hezbollah stronghold in south Beirut.
As if he knew his time had come, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s last words to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei before he was assassinated in Tehran were a Qurani verse about life, death, immortality and resilience.
“It is Allah who gives life and causes death. And Allah is all-aware of all actions ... ‘If a leader leaves, another will arise’,” Haniyeh said in Arabic. A few hours later he was killed in a suspected Israeli strike on his guesthouse.