Haniyeh re-elected as chief of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas

Ismail Haniyeh has been re-elected as chief of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, officers stated on Sunday, cementing his management of the group which guidelines the Gaza Strip and has fought a number of violent conflicts with Israel.
Haniyeh, Hamas chief since 2017, has managed the group’s political actions in Gaza, the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the diaspora largely from outdoors Gaza, splitting his time between Turkey and Qatar for the previous two years.
He directed Hamas in an 11-day battle with Israel in May that left over 250 in Gaza and 13 in Israel useless. An Egyptian-mediated ceasefire has principally held since.
“Brother Ismail Haniyeh was re-elected as the head of the movement’s political office for a second time,” one Palestinian official advised Reuters following an inside election by occasion members. His time period will final 4 years.
Aged 58, Haniyeh was the right-hand man to Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in Gaza, earlier than the wheelchair-bound cleric was assassinated in 2004.
Haniyeh led Hamas’ entry into politics in 2006, once they had been shock victors in Palestinian parliamentary elections, defeating a divided Fatah occasion led by President Mahmoud Abbas.
He turned prime minister shortly after the January 2006 victory, however Hamas – which is deemed a terrorist organisation by the United States, Israel and the European Union – was shunned by the worldwide group.

Following a short civil warfare, Hamas seized Gaza from the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, which has restricted self-rule within the Israeli-occupied West Bank, in 2007. Israel has led a blockade of Gaza since then, citing threats from Hamas.
Haniyeh’s victory caps inside elections that additionally noticed the group’s Gaza chief, Yehya Al-Sinwar, win a second time period in March. Further votes had been delayed by May’s upsurge in violence.