GAZA CITY: Ties between Palestinian rivals Fatah, a secular party, and the Islamist Hamas have been tense for a decade, at times erupting into deadly conflict.
Hamas controls the narrow Mediterranean Gaza enclave of the Palestinian territories, while Fatah is based in larger landlocked West Bank.
With Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah due in the Gaza Strip on Monday, here is a look at the relationship between the groups.
Hamas takes part for the first time in 2006 in legislative elections for the Palestinian National Authority and beats out Fatah, which has been in control for 10 years.
A unity government is installed with Hamas taking key posts.
Simmering tensions between the two erupt into bloody clashes early 2007.
After a week of violence in Gaza in June, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas fires the unity government and declares a state of emergency in the territory.
But Hamas routs forces loyal to Fatah and takes control of the strip, a move Abbas calls a coup.
In April 2011, Fatah and Hamas say they have reached an understanding to create an interim government of independents to prepare for elections.
Implementation of the deal is repeatedly delayed, however.
The rivals strike a prisoner-exchange accord in January 2012. The following month they agree that Abbas should lead an interim government, but the decision is disputed within Hamas and never applied.
In April 2014, the Fatah-dominated Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hamas finally agree on a unity government.
It is sworn in on June 2 but fails to exercise authority over Gaza where Abbas charges Hamas has set up a parallel administration to his own internationally recognized government.
In July-August 2014, though, the parties show a united response after Israel launches a 50-day blitz against Gaza in response to rocket fire.
The unity government falls apart months later.
In a stark revision of its founding charter, Hamas eases its stance on Israel in May 2017, after having long called for its destruction.
The Islamist group also pronounces that its struggle is not against Jews but against Israel as an occupier, and accepts the idea of a Palestinian state in territories occupied by Israel.
Hamas — considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union — is seen as seeking to ease its international isolation while not marginalizing hard-liners within its ranks.
However, tensions remain between the rivals over the creation by Hamas months earlier of an “administrative committee” seen as a rival Palestinian government.
Abbas puts the squeeze on Hamas including by cutting electricity supplies to Gaza.
Under pressure, Hamas agrees on September 17 to the dissolution of the committee and says it is ready for talks on a new unity government and elections.
It calls on the Palestinian Authority government “to come to Gaza to exercise its functions and carry out its duties immediately.”
Fatah and Hamas: a decade of strained relations
Fatah and Hamas: a decade of strained relations
Hamas to hold leadership elections in coming months: sources
- A Hamas member in Gaza said Hayya is a strong contender due to his relations with other Palestinian factions, including rival Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, as well as his regional standing
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Hamas is preparing to hold internal elections to rebuild its leadership following Israel’s killing of several of the group’s top figures during the war in Gaza, sources in the movement said on Monday.
“Internal preparations are still ongoing in order to hold the elections at the appropriate time in areas where conditions on the ground allow it,” a Hamas leader told AFP.
The vote is expected to take place “in the first months of 2026.”
Much of the group’s top leadership has been decimated during the war, which was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel in October 2023.
The war has also devastated the Gaza Strip, leaving its more than two million residents in dire humanitarian conditions.
The leadership renewal process includes the formation of a new 50-member Shoura Council, a consultative body dominated by religious figures.
Its members are selected every four years by Hamas’ three branches: the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and the movement’s external leadership.
Hamas prisoners in Israeli prisons are also eligible to vote.
During previous elections, held before the war, members across Gaza and the West Bank used to gather at different locations including mosques to choose the Shoura Council.
That council is responsible, every four years, for electing the 18-member political bureau and its chief, who serves as Hamas’s overall leader.
Another Hamas source close to the process said the timing of the political bureau elections remains uncertain “given the circumstances our people are going through.”
After Israel killed former Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July 2024, the group chose its then-Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar as his successor.
Israel accused Sinwar of masterminding the October 7 attack.
He too was killed by Israeli forces in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, three months after Haniyeh’s assassination.
Hamas then opted for an interim five-member leadership committee based in Qatar, postponing the appointment of a single leader until elections are held and given the risk of being targeted by Israel.
According to sources, two figures have now emerged as frontrunners to be the head of the political bureau: Khalil Al-Hayya and Khaled Meshaal.
Hayya, 65, a Gaza native and Hamas’s chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, has held senior roles since at least 2006, according to the US-based NGO the Counter-Extremism Project (CEP).
Meshaal, who led the Political Bureau from 2004 to 2017, has never lived in Gaza. He was born in the West Bank in 1956.
He joined Hamas in Kuwait and later lived in Jordan, Syria and Qatar. The CEP says he oversaw Hamas’s evolution into a political-military hybrid.
He currently heads the movement’s diaspora office.
A Hamas member in Gaza said Hayya is a strong contender due to his relations with other Palestinian factions, including rival Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, as well as his regional standing.
Hayya also enjoys backing from both the Shoura Council and Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades.
Another source said other potential candidates include West Bank Hamas leader Zaher Jabarin and Shoura Council head Nizar Awadallah.
