Ismail Haniyeh
The political leader of the terrorist group Hamas is called Ismail Haniyeh, 60, and lives in Qatar. Haniyeh is also often in Turkey, where he meets with President Erdogan, and in Iran for meetings with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The 60-year-old is the one who most often addresses the world in the name of Hamas.
– It is a balancing act he makes when he makes his statements. He pretends that he is standing in front of Jerusalem but he is somewhere else and people in Gaza know that. Some feel that “it will be easy for him to stand there and call on us to sacrifice our lives when he doesn’t even risk his own”, explains TV4 Nyheternas Middle East correspondent Terese Cristiansson.
– He is very difficult to reach and of course a main figure within Hamas for a very, very long time.
Mohammed “The Guest” Deif
The person believed to be the group’s military leader is called Mohammed Deif, which is Arabic for “guest”. It is said that the man, who is either 57 or 58 years old, lives in different places every night. He is seen as the leader of the Al-Kassam Brigades.
– The reason why he is called this is that he is like a ghost. He is very high on Israel’s list to find, says Terese Cristiansson.
– He is probably, together with a man named Issa, the mastermind behind the October 7 attack that Hamas carried out when at least 1,200 people died inside Israel, she continues.
Deif was arrested by Israel in the early 2000s but managed to escape and has been missing ever since.
Khaled Meshal
Khaled Meshal, 67, is one of the terrorist group’s founders and creators and, like Isamil Haniyeh, is most likely also in Qatar.
Meshal is regarded by the outside world as an important leader of Hamas, both symbolically and politically, and is high on the list of people Israel wants to reach, according to Cristiansson.
– They tried to poison him in Jordan in the 80s. Mossad is said to have been there and sprayed him in the open, which became a very big deal.
Yahya Sinwar
The person seen as Hamas’s political leader inside Gaza is Yahya Sinwar, 60. In early November, Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant claimed that the IDF had surrounded Sinwar, who was reportedly in a bunker at the time, and that they would soon capture him.
Since then, no information about Sinwar has reached the outside world.
The political leader was arrested for a very long time by Israel and served a four-time life sentence in Israeli prison. In 2011, however, an exchange was made between an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, and around a thousand Palestinian prisoners. Sinwar was one of those allowed to return to Gaza.
– He is now very, very important. He is the leader of Hamas in Gaza, says Terese Cristiansson.