As a prominent member of the movement that became Hamas in the late 1980s, Ismail Haniyeh is widely considered the group’s overall leader.
He was imprisoned in 1989 as part of the Israeli response to the first Palestinian uprising and then spent time in the “no man’s land” between Israel and Lebanon in 1992.
Once back in Gaza, in 1997 he was put in charge of the office of Ahmed Yassin – one of the Hamas founders and its spiritual leader – who was killed in an Israeli helicopter attack in 2004.
This increased his influence, and he was eventually elected Palestinian prime minister by its president and the leader of rival group Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas, when Hamas won the most seats in the 2006 elections.
A year later, however, fighting broke out between Hamas and Fatah, ultimately ousting Fatah from Gaza and separating the Palestinian territories between the Hamas-controlled strip and Palestinian Authority-run West Bank.
This made Mr Haniyeh “de facto leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip” between 2007 and 2017, according to Dr Abdul Bashid Shaikh, lecturer in Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Leeds.
He remained as such until he was succeeded by Yahya Sinwar.
He then moved to Qatar to become head of the political bureau.
He “chooses to be based in Doha as he is approaching his 70s now… and as a result [acts as] a political interlocutor between Hamas, Qatar, Iran and other international powers,” Dr Shaikh adds.
