Hamas on Tuesday named Yahya Sinwar as its new political bureau chairman, replacing Ismail Haneyya who was assassinated in Tehran last week.
The Hamas Movement announced in a terse statement that Sinwar, who was its leader in Gaza, would replace Haneyya as the supreme leader of the Movement.
Since 2017, Sinwar has served as the Movement’s leader in the Gaza Strip. He will now become leader of its political wing.
Sinwar, who was born in October 1962, has spent much of his life in Israeli jail – and after his third arrest in 1988 he was sentenced to four life terms in prison.
However, he was among 1,027 prisoners released by Israel in 2011 in exchange for an Israeli soldier held captive for over five years by Hamas.
He later returned to his position as a prominent leader in Hamas and was appointed head of the Movement’s political bureau in the Gaza Strip in 2017.