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After a tightly contested internal leadership vote, the Palestinian militant and political movement Hamas has chosen veteran negotiator Khalil al-Hayya to lead its political bureau, placing a seasoned diplomatic figure at the helm of the organization at a moment of unprecedented crisis for Gaza and escalating regional conflict.

The election result was formally announced this Monday, following a runoff vote that capped a months-long leadership selection process. According to Walid Al Omari, Al Jazeera Arabic’s Palestine bureau chief, Hayya secured a narrow victory, earning 35 votes to beat out former Hamas political bureau chief and ex-external leader Khaled Meshaal, who collected 34 votes. The leadership contest was first launched in May, when the first round of voting failed to produce a clear winner, extending the process for months.

Hayya, who currently resides in Qatar, succeeds Yahya Sinwar, who took over the top role temporarily after Israel assassinated former Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July 2024. Sinwar was himself killed by Israeli forces during combat operations in Rafah just three months after assuming the position. In the intervening period, Hamas has been governed by a five-member interim council chaired by Mohammed Darwish, head of the movement’s Shura Council, which oversaw day-to-day political operations and mediated ceasefire negotiations with Israel.

Hayya’s election restores a singular, permanent leadership structure for Hamas, and stands as a testament to the movement’s resilience amid Israel’s sustained campaign to eliminate its top leadership through targeted assassinations. In September 2025, Israel attempted to assassinate Hayya alongside the entire Palestinian negotiating delegation based in Qatar, in what was widely seen as an effort to derail ongoing ceasefire talks. The brazen attack drew widespread global condemnation, with many international observers labeling it a blatant act of “gangster behaviour”.

Over the more than two years of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, Hayya has emerged as one of Hamas’s most prominent and recognizable public faces. He has led the movement’s negotiating delegation through all major rounds of talks focused on ceasefire agreements, hostage-prisoner exchanges, and the long-term political future of the Gaza Strip. This high-stakes role has placed him at the center of regional diplomatic efforts brokered by Qatar, Egypt, Turkey and other key Middle Eastern powers.

Born in Gaza City on November 5, 1960, Hayya grew up in the occupied Palestinian territories after Israel seized control of Gaza in the 1967 Six-Day War. He pursued a background in Islamic scholarship, earning a doctorate in Hadith sciences after graduating from the Faculty of Islamic Theology at Gaza’s Islamic University — an institution that has since been destroyed by Israeli bombardment. His political journey began in 1980, when he met Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and over the subsequent four decades, he steadily rose through the movement’s ranks. He has previously served on Hamas’s political bureau, acted as deputy leader for the movement’s Gaza branch, and led the organization’s outreach efforts to Arab and Muslim nations. In 2006, Palestinian voters elected Hayya to the Palestinian Legislative Council, where he went on to lead Hamas’s parliamentary bloc following the historic first national elections.

Throughout his decades of political engagement, Hayya has repeatedly faced targeting by Israeli forces: he was detained multiple times, including a prolonged prison sentence in 1991, and has survived numerous assassination attempts. The personal cost of his leadership has been steep, with Israel killing four of his sons and multiple other members of his extended family over the years. Osama, Osama’s wife, and three of their grandchildren were killed in an Israeli bombing of their home during the 2014 Gaza war. Hamza, a member of Hamas’s armed wing, died in an Israeli missile strike east of Gaza City. Hammam was killed in the September 2025 Israeli airstrike on Hamas negotiators in Doha that targeted Hayya himself. Most recently, Azzam was killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza in May 2026, an attack that also killed one other person and wounded nine. Hayya’s only surviving son, Ezzedine, was injured in an Israeli strike on Gaza City’s Tuffah neighborhood in April 2025, and one of Hayya’s grandchildren was killed in an Israeli attack on a Gaza City school that same month. A 2007 assassination attempt on Hayya killed seven of his extended family members, including two brothers, four nephews, and a cousin.

Hayya takes control of Hamas at a defining crossroads for the movement, the people of Gaza, and the broader Palestinian national struggle. Today, Gaza lies in ruins, with over 60 percent of the enclave under Israeli military occupation, and Israeli forces carry out almost daily attacks despite a ceasefire agreement that Hamas accepted and Israel has repeatedly violated. The Israeli government has openly stated its goal to ethnically cleanse the besieged population of Gaza and expand its military operations across the occupied West Bank. For now, Palestinians across the territories and the global diaspora are watching closely to see what direction Hayya will steer the movement, and what his leadership will mean for their decades-long struggle for self-determination.

A key clarification has emerged in the unfolding disciplinary case against International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, with the head of the court’s governing Assembly of States Parties (ASP) confirming last week that no retaliation allegations against Khan have been formally upheld by the ASP’s executive bureau.

In a 17 July letter, Finnish diplomat and ASP President Paivi Kaukoranta made clear that the 21-member executive bureau failed to secure the supermajority vote required to validate any finding of retaliation misconduct. The claims were originally brought forward by two members of Khan’s own office during a UN-led independent probe launched in November 2024, when Kaukoranta made the decision to outsource the full investigation into multiple allegations against Khan to the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).

Alongside three separate retaliation claims, the investigation also included an allegation of sexual misconduct brought by a female staff member, which had already been opened and closed twice previously after the complainant refused to cooperate with internal ICC proceedings. Both the complainant and Khan ultimately cooperated with the OIOS probe, with Khan repeatedly denying all allegations of wrongdoing from the outset.

Over 12 months, UN investigators collected and assessed evidence to present to a specially appointed panel of judges, which was tasked with evaluating the claims against the strict legal standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The OIOS submitted its 150-page final report, accompanied by more than 5,000 pages of supporting evidence, to the judge panel in December 2025. Investigators ultimately dismissed one retaliation claim outright, concluding that the actions in question were a legitimate response to documented work performance concerns, not retaliation.

The panel of judges spent nearly three months reviewing the UN investigation’s findings before issuing a unanimous conclusion in March 2026: the evidence presented in the probe did not meet the threshold to confirm any misconduct or breach of duty under ICC rules. However, just weeks after the panel cleared Khan, a simple majority of bureau members backed a controversial motion to disregard the judges’ independent findings, opening the door to claims that the process had been politicized.

Two months later, after granting Khan and the complainants a final opportunity to submit additional testimony, the bureau voted to suspend Khan formally and referred the full case to the full ASP plenary for a final vote. Redacted versions of the OIOS report, the judge panel’s findings, and all related submissions have been distributed to the 125 ASP member states, ahead of a high-stakes plenary vote at UN Headquarters in New York this Friday that will decide Khan’s future as chief prosecutor.

The bureau’s 8 June 2026 confidential decision did find that evidence proved beyond reasonable doubt Khan had engaged in a sexual relationship with the complainant, arguing the power dynamic between the office head and a subordinate made the relationship inherently inappropriate. Notably, however, the bureau explicitly declined to uphold any findings on the retaliation claims, a detail Kaukoranta’s recent letter confirms aligns with earlier reporting from Middle East Eye (MEE).

Following the bureau’s decision, some member states pushed to reopen the retaliation claim question and called for a formal clear statement from the ASP leadership, prompting Kaukoranta’s official clarification this week. In her letter, she explained the bureau’s inability to reach a conclusion on the claims from the two whistleblowers, identified only as W06 and W10, stemmed from deep division among members that left the body short of the required two-thirds majority for substantive findings.

“As the Prosecutor benefits from the presumption of innocence, the legal effect of the Bureau’s statement is that no misconduct in relation to the allegations of W06 and W10 has been established against the Prosecutor,” Kaukoranta wrote. She added that the bureau had chosen not to refer the retaliation claims to the full ASP plenary, and the matter is now officially closed, with the two complainants already notified of the decision on the bureau’s behalf.

The Friday vote comes amid widespread criticism of the bureau’s handling of the investigation, with prominent global figures already speaking out against the process. Last Saturday, former European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell publicly accused the ASP of preparing a politically motivated vote to oust Khan, rather than honoring the independent judicial findings that cleared him of most wrongdoing.

Borrell argued that the efforts to remove Khan form part of a broader coordinated offensive against the ICC, pointing to existing U.S. sanctions and threats targeting Khan and other court officials that were imposed after the prosecutor announced plans to seek arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders over alleged war crimes in Gaza in May 2024.

A high-stakes controversy has erupted at the International Criminal Court (ICC) after a veteran former United Nations investigations chief publicly condemned the ICC’s governing bureau for suspending Prosecutor Karim Khan over misconduct claims, calling the action a coordinated, unfair “stitch-up” that undermines fundamental principles of justice. \n\nBen Swanson, who previously served as UN Assistant Secretary-General and deputy head of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) — and previously led OIOS’ Investigations Division — has submitted four successive expert opinions to the 21-member bureau of the ICC’s Assembly of States Parties (ASP) over the past year. All four opinions, commissioned by Khan’s legal defense team, criticize the procedural irregularities that have marred the misconduct probe and the bureau’s subsequent handling of the case. \n\nSwanson’s most recent submission, dated June 28 and obtained by Middle East Eye via independent sources, directly challenges the bureau’s June 8 decision to suspend Khan, which came after a majority of bureau members ruled he had committed \”serious misconduct.\” Critically, this ruling directly contradicts the unanimous finding of a three-judge independent panel appointed by the bureau itself, which concluded in March that the evidence collected by the UN-led investigation did not prove misconduct or breach of duty under ICC rules. \n\nAfter reviewing both the judges’ panel report and the bureau’s final decision, Swanson wrote, \”I am of the opinion that the Prosecutor is the victim of a massive ‘stitch-up’ and given what has happened since the release of the Panel’s Report I doubt whether justice will be done or seen to be done.\” \n\nSwanson accuses the bureau of adopting a \”dystopian method\” of justice and pursuing an \”activist agenda\” to remove Khan from office. After the independent judicial process the bureau established failed to deliver the outcome it sought, he argues, the bureau usurped both judicial and fact-finding roles to reach its desired conclusion. \”It is clear that an activist agenda is being pursued to remove the Prosecutor from his post, at all costs, by the weaponisation of such scant evidence that may exist, by ignoring the wealth of countervailing evidence available to the Bureau and by failing to take account of the wisdom of three international Judges,\” he added. \n\nThe 125-member ASP, which consists of diplomatic representatives from ICC member states, is set to vote on Khan’s future at UN Headquarters in New York this Friday, bringing the months-long dispute to a decisive head. \n\nThe misconduct process was launched in November 2024, when ASP President Paivi Kaukoranta authorized the probe and outsourced investigative work to OIOS, after the complainant who brought allegations against Khan refused to cooperate with the ICC’s internal investigative body. The probe centered on four allegations: a claim of \”unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature\” and abuse of authority from a female staff member in Khan’s office, plus three separate allegations of retaliation against other office employees. Khan has repeatedly denied all claims of misconduct or breach of duty. \n\nThe bureau’s ruling did not find Khan responsible for any of the three retaliation claims. Instead, the confidential decision obtained by MEE states the bureau found \”the evidence establishes beyond reasonable doubt\” that Khan had a sexual relationship with the complainant, and argued that \”in the context of that power imbalance a sexual relationship could never be appropriate.\” The bureau concluded this conduct amounted to improper use of ICC authority against the complainant. \n\nThis finding marks a significant shift from the original allegations: Khan denies any sexual relationship occurred, while the complainant’s original claim centered on non-consensual sexual conduct. In her first public interview on the case with CNN last week, the complainant reaffirmed her non-consensual conduct allegation. Swanson argues the bureau’s reframing of the claim creates a new allegation that was never part of the original investigation, and was never proven. \”What is charged reads as if the Prosecutor and [the complainant] have indulged in an inappropriate, consensual, workplace romance. That was not what was alleged and in any case has not been proven either,\” he wrote. \n\nAnother core point of criticism from Swanson is the bureau’s decision to conduct its own independent credibility assessment of witnesses and evidence, after both OIOS and the three-judge panel declined to confirm the credibility of the complainant and her evidence. Swanson notes that after the panel issued its report, the bureau had four legitimate procedural options: close the case, request OIOS conduct additional investigation to address open questions, restart the probe from scratch, or launch a formal adjudicated process that would allow for cross-examination of witnesses to properly establish credibility. \n\nKhan’s legal team formally requested an adjudicated process in a letter to the ASP president dated July 30, 2025, but the bureau rejected all such requests, including a demand for an adjudicative hearing before the judicial panel. Swanson argues that by disregarding the panel’s unanimous finding and conducting its own unilateral credibility assessment to reach a finding of serious misconduct, the bureau violated basic procedural fairness. \n\n\”The Bureau in determining credibility did not act with the same legal restraint as the Panel, declaring themselves unrestricted, and by using semantic gymnastics promptly used the same material as was available to the Judges, with the addition of more submissions from the Prosecutor and [the complainant], although they discounted the latter’s, to enable them to make credibility assessments,\” Swanson wrote. He added that the bureau also failed to assess the credibility of evidence itself, a step he says is just as or more important than assessing the credibility of the witness presenting it, and that the bureau applied a blatantly biased standard: it framed the complainant and all her testimony as credible, while dismissing every statement, evidence and testimony from Khan and other witnesses that contradicted her account. \n\nSwanson concluded that the bureau’s finding is \”unsafe and should not be relied upon as a proper basis for disciplinary action,\” and urged ICC member states to give \”decisive weight\” to the three-judge panel’s unanimous conclusion when they vote on July 24. \n\nSwanson is not alone in raising concerns about the legality and integrity of the bureau’s process. Earlier this month, MEE reported that Sir James Eadie KC, the United Kingdom’s First Treasury Counsel, had submitted a private legal opinion to the ASP president last November warning that granting the bureau authority to make a final finding of misconduct was illegal under ICC rules. Eadie argued that any proper process must be judicial in nature, requiring an oral hearing before a panel of judges to test allegations and confirm facts beyond reasonable doubt. \n\n\”It is entirely inappropriate for the determinative function to be undertaken by executive or political bodies,\” Eadie wrote. He added that the approach proposed by the ASP president — which treated OIOS’ investigative findings as fact without an adjudicated process, and only allowed the prosecutor to participate in a limited hearing before the bureau — threatens the core independence and institutional integrity of the ICC.