Khalil Al-Hayya in his office in Gaza in late April 2021 (French)

A Palestinian politician, leader and member of the political bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and head of its office for Arab and Islamic relations. He was born in 1960. He obtained a doctorate in Sunnah and Hadith sciences.

He joined the Islamic movement at the hands of the founder of Hamas, the martyr Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and participated in popular work, resistance, and political work.

In February 2024, he led a Hamas delegation to Egypt to complete talks regarding a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Birth and upbringing

Khalil Ismail Al-Hayya was born on November 5, 1960 in Gaza City, Palestine, into a conservative resistance family. He endured the pain of the 1967 setback, and images of suffering were deeply rooted in his mind as a young child, as he watched the occupation army storm the family home and arrest members of the family, including his uncle.

Study and scientific training

He studied primary school at Hittin School in Gaza, middle school at Hashim bin Abd Manaf School, obtained high school from Jaffa School, and obtained a bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of Fundamentals of Religion at the Islamic University of Gaza in 1983.

He received a scholarship to the University of Jordan and continued his studies there, where he obtained a master’s degree in Sunnah and Hadith Sciences in 1986. After more than a decade, he obtained a doctorate in the same specialty (Sunnah and Hadith Sciences) from the University of the Holy Qur’an and Islamic Sciences in Sudan in 1997.

Jobs and responsibilities

After graduating from the Islamic University of Gaza, he returned as a lecturer at the Faculty of Fundamentals of Religion in 1984, and after completing his graduate studies, he was appointed Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, then Dean of Student Affairs at the same university in 2001.

His academic achievement qualified him to become a member of the Association of Palestine Scholars, and in 2006 he was elected as a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council representing Gaza on the “Change and Reform” list of the Hamas movement, and he assumed the presidency of its bloc in the Council.

He assumed multiple responsibilities within the movement, including membership in its political bureau, deputy head of the movement in Gaza, and head of the movement’s office for Arab and Islamic relations.

Khalil Al-Hayya during the visit of delegations from Palestinian factions to Syria in 2022 (French)

Struggling and political experience

He appeared to be religious when he was 15 years old, and his meeting with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in March 1980 and his prolonged sitting with him moved him from mere individual religiosity to engaging in organized group work, as he worked during his university days with the students of the Islamic Bloc.

He was arrested twice, the first in 1980 for a month and a half, and the second in 1982 for a week, during which he was subjected to severe torture in which he nearly died.

In early 1983, he joined the Islamic Movement (affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood) as part of a group of young men, including Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar, and others.

He engaged in popular, trade union and advocacy work. He was an imam, preacher and preacher in mosques. He also engaged in organizational work and contributed to the security organization of the Gaza Strip to protect society from Zionist infiltrations in the period between 1984 and 1986.

He also participated in the activities of the first Palestinian Intifada in 1987, and was part of the group that later founded the Hamas movement, which built its project on liberating the land, the return of humanity, and belief in joint national action.

During the first intifada, he was arrested for the third time in 1991 for 3 years after being active at the university and assuming organizational responsibilities in Gaza, including acting president of the Islamic University Student Council in 1986 and vice president of the Islamic Movement in the Gaza Strip.

He was active in union work after joining the Islamic University of Gaza, and assumed the responsibility of vice president of the workers union at the aforementioned university in 1998, then president of the same union in 2001.

He was elected a member of the political bureau of the Hamas movement, and ran in the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 on the “Change and Reform” list representing Gaza. He succeeded in obtaining membership in the Legislative Council, and the movement nominated him as head of its bloc in the council.

In 2007, he survived an assassination attempt after an Israeli occupation air raid targeted his family’s office, killing 7 individuals, two of his brothers, 4 of his nephews, and one of his cousins.

His son Hamza (a member of the Al-Qassam Brigades) was martyred on February 28, 2008, by a missile fired by an Israeli reconnaissance plane.

The occupation continued to pursue him and tried to assassinate him again on July 20, 2014, but he survived again when he targeted the house of his eldest son, Osama, in the Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza. The targeting resulted in the martyrdom of Osama, his wife, and 3 of his sons, while Al-Haya’s wife and two of Osama’s sons survived because they were outside. the house.

Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper published that the occupation aircraft launched an air strike on October 9, 2023, on the house of Khalil Al-Hayya in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood.

Living is a negotiator

He was strongly present within the Hamas delegation in the negotiations in Cairo after the war on Gaza in 2012 and 2014, as he was the head of the movement’s media office at that time. His position within the movement was strengthened and he became the head of its office for Arab and Islamic relations.

In October 2022, he led the Hamas delegation with the delegations of the Palestinian factions to Damascus to meet with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a meeting about which Al-Hayya said in a press conference at the time, “A historic meeting and a new, renewed beginning for joint Palestinian-Syrian action.”

Khalil Al-Hayya speaking at a speech festival in Gaza in March 2008 (Reuters)

He played a major role in the political and media battle that was launched against the Israeli occupation after the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation on October 7, 2023, and managed the negotiations regarding the prisoners’ file.

He appeared in a number of dialogues and statements to Arab and international media, defending the resistance and the people of Gaza, explaining the crimes of the Israeli occupation, and explaining the positions of the Hamas movement regarding the negotiations regarding the humanitarian truce agreement and prisoner exchange, and seeking to stop the aggression of the occupation army.

On November 22, 2023, he headed a Hamas delegation to Lebanon to meet with Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah after announcing a prisoner exchange agreement between the movement and the Israeli occupation.

He confirmed at the beginning of December 2023 that the Israeli occupation aims to push a portion of the Palestinian people towards Egypt in the next stage, and that the occupation is preparing to resume its crimes against Gaza, and revealed a number of Israeli plans in this regard.

He said on the 17th of the same month, “Anyone who thinks about what comes after Hamas is thinking about an illusion,” adding, “The Al-Aqsa flood came in response to the disdain for the Palestinian people and the turning away of their rights.”

On January 2, 2024, the Israeli Channel 12 announced his assassination in a drone attack that targeted a building containing a Hamas office in the Beirut suburb, in which Saleh Al-Arouri, deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, and two leaders of the Al-Qassam Brigades, were martyred. However, the movement confirmed at the time that Khalil Al-Hayya was fine, and he Outside Lebanon.

On February 8, 2024, he led the movement’s delegation to Cairo to complete talks regarding a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

The horizon of conflict with the occupation

Al-Hayya speaks with certainty about the approaching end of the Israeli occupation, and said in a press interview conducted with him about 6 months before the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation, “We are living in a promising phase, the phase of reviving the Palestinian issue again in the regional and international scene after I wanted it to be forgotten.”

He added, "The time for resolving the conflict with the occupation is approaching, and signs of the weakness of the Zionist entity are revealing day by day...the weevil is eating away at it from within."

He stresses that he links this not only to the internal reality of the Israeli occupation, but also to “the belief of the Palestinian people, with all its factions and movements, in the justice of their cause, and the option of liberation after the absence of any horizon for a just political settlement, especially with an extremist right-wing government, and the resistance’s possession of the ability to restrain the occupation, surprise it, and expose its brutal truth to the world.” .

He believes strongly that there is no one in Israel who believes in the right of the Palestinian people to an independent entity and state with all meanings of independence, and he believes with the same force that the Palestinian people, with all their factions, are determined to continue on the path of liberation, the departure of the occupation, and the return of the settlers to where they came from.

Source: Al Jazeera