Haniya elected leader of Hamas
GAZA CITY: Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas elected ex-Gaza Strip chief Ismail Haniya as its new leader yesterday, days after revising its founding charter to ease its stance on Israel. Haniya, seen as a pragmatist within the movement, is expected to remain in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian enclave run by Hamas since 2007. His predecessor Khaled Meshaal lives in exile in Doha and had completed the maximum two terms in office. “The Hamas Shura Council on Saturday elected Ismail Haniya as head of the movement’s political bureau,” the group’s official website announced.
He beat Mussa Abu Marzuk and Mohamed Nazzal in a videoconference vote of the ruling council’s members in Gaza, the West Bank and outside the Palestinian territories. The 54-year-old with a salt-and-pepper beard takes charge of Hamas as it seeks to ease its international isolation while not marginalizing hardliners within the movement. On Monday, it unveiled a new policy document easing its stance on Israel after having long called for its destruction.
The document notably accepts the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza, the territories occupied by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967. It also says its struggle is not against Jews because of their religion but against Israel as an occupier. The original 1988 charter will not be dropped, just supplemented, in a move some analysts see as a way of maintaining the backing of hardliners.
“The new charter and Haniya’s election are two of the biggest events in recent years,” a European official based in Jerusalem told AFP yesterday, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The question is how is Hamas going to build on this momentum,” he said, speaking in English.
GAZA: Ismail Haniya, named yesterday as head of Hamas, is a charismatic leader from the Gaza streets who represents the more pragmatic wing of the Islamist movement. The 54-year-old with a salt-and-pepper beard takes charge as it seeks to ease its international isolation while not marginalizing hardliners within the movement. Labeled a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union, Hamas on Monday revised its charter to reflect a slightly more moderate stance, without however recognising Israel.
Haniya replaces Khaled Meshaal, who lives in Doha in exile and has completed the maximum two terms in office. Unlike Meshaal, Haniya will remain in the Gaza Strip, the small Palestinian enclave run by Hamas, hit by three wars with Israel since 2008 and under an Israeli blockade for 10 years. His modest home in the narrow alleys of Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp next to the Mediterranean Sea is under constant guard. Also known as Abu Abed, he was born in the same camp in 1963 to parents who fled when Israel was created in 1948. They had previously lived in Ashkelon (or Asqalan in Arabic), which is today part of Israel and just next to the border with the Gaza Strip.
Haniya, a father of 13, was educated at a UN-run refugee school, later earning an education degree from the Islamic University and becoming a university administrator. Hamas has frequently highlighted his modest background as a counterpoint to officials within president Mahmud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority who have been accused of being corrupt and too easily compliant with Israel or the United States. Haniya was jailed several times by Israel during the first intifada, or uprising, which erupted in 1987, and was deported to southern Lebanon in December 1992 along with hundreds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants.
Shock election win
He first rose to prominence as bureau chief under Hamas’s spiritual father Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the quadriplegic assassinated by Israel in 2004. He escaped assassination in September 2003 when an Israeli aircraft bombed a house where he and Yassin were meeting, yet Haniya was instrumental in securing a halt to Hamas attacks inside Israel since early 2005.The following year, he led Hamas to a shock legislative election victory over Abbas’s Fatah and became prime minister. The international community however refused to deal with any government in which Hamas participated until it renounced violence and recognized Israel and past peace agreements.
The resulting deadlock led to mounting friction between Hamas and Fatah which culminated in Hamas’s seizure of Gaza. In July 2006, Israel bombed Haniya’s office during a massive but unsuccessful operation to free a soldier held by gunmen including Hamas militants. Always dressed impeccably in Western-style suits and a sharp orator, Haniya has exemplified Hamas’s internal struggle between the traditional and the modern, between resistance against Israeli occupation and mainstream politics. An eloquent advocate of the right to resistance, his strongly held beliefs that a future Palestinian state should be governed by laws “inspired by sharia” Islamic law have provoked concern in the West.—AFP