Meshal oversees all communications with important stakeholders involved in the negotiations for the release of Israeli hostages and terrorist prisoners.
Khaled Meshal has taken over as acting head of the Palestinian group Hamas. This came after Israel announced on 17 October that it had liquidated the group's former leader, Yahya Sinuar, the private Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International (LBCI) television channel reported.
Meshaal controls all communications with important stakeholders involved in the negotiations for the release of Israeli hostages and terrorist prisoners.
The Hamas leadership informed Turkish, Qatari and Egyptian officials of the death of its political bureau chief, Yahya Sinuar, during the operation in Tell al-Sultan. Hamas stressed that after his assassination, negotiations for a prisoner exchange and an end to the war would become more difficult and complicated.
According to LBCI, Sinuar's assassination and its implications for negotiations and a possible ceasefire were discussed by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.
Since 2012, Meshaal has resided in luxury accommodations in Doha, the capital of Qatar. His last statement was made in Malaysia on 7 October 2024 in a speech on the first anniversary of the Gaza war.
In it, Meshaal called on Muslims to wage jihad with their weapons and lives and to open additional fronts against Israel.
Meshaal noted that the losses suffered by the "Palestinian people," including the tens of thousands of dead, are only "tactical," while "the losses inflicted on the enemy are strategic."
In 2006, the new head of Hamas published an article in the Los Angeles Times entitled "We will never recognize a Zionist state on our soil." This happened just after Hamas won the elections in Gaza.
"Our message to Israelis is this: we are not fighting you because you belong to a particular faith or culture. Jews have been living in the Muslim world for 13 centuries in peace and harmony; in our religion they are the 'People of the Book' who have a covenant from God and his messenger Muhammad (PBUH) to be respected and protected.
Our conflict with you is not religious, but political. We don't have a problem with the Jews who didn't attack us - our problem is with those who came to our land, imposed themselves on us by force, destroyed our society and drove our people away," Meshal wrote in the article in question.
"We will never recognize the right of any power to take our land and deprive us of our national rights. We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Zionist state established on our soil to atone for someone's sins or solve someone's problem.
But if you are prepared to accept the principle of a long-term truce, we are prepared to negotiate the terms. Hamas extends a hand of peace to those who are truly interested in a peace based on justice," the Palestinian leader wrote.
Unlike Sinuar - the ascetic mass murderer who remained hidden in Gaza - Meshaal is known for the luxurious life he enjoyed in Qatar alongside senior Hamas chiefs Ismail Haniyeh and Musa Abu Marzook. According to various reports, the three had around $11 billion at their disposal.
All this suggests that Meshaal's appointment will not be very popular at home among the people of the Gaza Strip. The other potential successor, Sinuar's brother Mohammed Sinuar, has been accused of pedophilia. | BGNES
