Hamas Leader Meets Kushner Again

PHOTO CAPTION: Hamas officials, Khalil Al-Hayya and Osama Hamdan, attend a press conference in Beirut, Lebanon, November 21, 2023. REUTERS/Esa Alexander

Aug. 17 — Khalil Al-Hayya, the Hamas leader who met U.S. envoy Jared Kushner in Cairo on Sunday, emerged as a pivotal figure in the Palestinian militant group during the Gaza war as Israel killed many of its other senior leaders.

Named Hamas’ overall leader in July, Hayya narrowly escaped assassination in a 2025 Israeli airstrike in Qatar that killed his son and aides. His Cairo meeting with Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, was their second encounter and reflected an unusual period of direct U.S. engagement with Hamas, which Washington designates as a terrorist organization.

In October 2025, Hayya led a Hamas delegation in negotiations with Kushner and U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff that helped secure an agreement leading to a ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages seized during the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. The talks marked a departure from Washington’s longstanding policy of avoiding direct engagement with Hamas.

Hayya had previously served on a five-member council that ran Hamas beginning in 2024 after Israel killed Yahya Al-Sinwar, one of the masterminds of the Oct. 7 attacks that triggered the Gaza war.

Under Hayya’s leadership, Hamas agreed in July to lay down its weapons under a Trump-backed plan tying that step to an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Hamas rejects describing the arrangement as “disarmament,” saying instead that its weapons would be handed over for storage under the control of a U.S.-backed Palestinian technocratic government.

Israel has rejected the plan and says it will not withdraw from Gaza until Hamas is fully disarmed. The proposal also calls for the reconstruction of Gaza.

A veteran Hamas figure

Born in the Gaza Strip in 1960, Hayya joined the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement from which Hamas emerged in 1987. He holds a doctorate in Islamic Studies and rose through Hamas alongside figures including Sinwar, for whom he served as deputy in Gaza, and Ismail Haniyeh, another former Hamas leader who was assassinated by Israel in Tehran in 2024.

Hayya has survived several Israeli strikes that killed members of his family. In 2007, an Israeli airstrike hit his family home in Gaza City’s Shejaia neighborhood, killing several relatives while Hayya was away. His son Hamza was killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza in 2008.

During the 2014 war between Hamas and Israel, the home of Hayya’s eldest son, Osama, was bombed, killing Osama, his wife and three of their children. Another son, Azzam Al-Hayya, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City in May while Hayya was engaged in talks with mediators.

Azzam was the twin brother of Hammam Al-Hayya, who was killed in the 2025 Israeli strike in Doha that Hayya survived.

Hayya left Gaza in 2021 and based himself in Qatar with other members of Hamas’ exiled political leadership. From Doha, he became a key Hamas contact with Arab and Islamic governments and was seen by analysts who follow the group as part of a faction that strengthened ties with Shi’ite Muslim Iran, which supplied Hamas with weapons and financing before the Gaza war.

He was also deeply involved in multiple rounds of indirect negotiations with Israel during the war before a ceasefire was eventually reached.

Direct talks with U.S. envoys

Trump authorized Witkoff and Kushner to speak directly with Hamas as he sought an end to the war and the release of the remaining hostages. Their Oct. 8, 2025, meeting with the delegation led by Hayya was the most high-profile direct encounter between U.S. officials and Hamas.

Witkoff later said he offered Hayya condolences over the death of his son Hammam in the Israeli strike in Doha, telling CBS News’ 60 Minutes that both men belonged to “a really bad club, parents who have buried children.”

Hayya has said the two exchanged “humane words” about their losses. He also used the talks to outline Hamas’ broader political demands.

“We want stability, we want a Palestinian entity, we want a Palestinian state in accordance with international law and relevant resolutions,” Hayya told Al Jazeera. “We want to live in peace so that the region can stabilise, and without that, the region will not stabilise.”

Defends Hamas’ right to “resistance”

Hamas’ 1988 founding charter called for the destruction of Israel, although its leaders have at times proposed a long-term truce in exchange for a viable Palestinian state on territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. Israel has described such proposals as a tactic rather than a genuine acceptance of permanent coexistence.

Hayya has been quoted as saying the Oct. 7 attack was initially intended as a limited operation to capture “a number of soldiers” who could be exchanged for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

“But the Zionist army unit completely collapsed,” he said in comments published by the Hamas-linked Palestinian Information Center in 2024, referring to the Israeli military.

Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in the Oct. 7 attack and abducted another 251. Israel’s subsequent offensive killed more than 73,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities.

Despite the destruction caused by Israel’s campaign, Hayya said in a December 2025 speech that Hamas’ “resistance” had demonstrated that “the enemy can be defeated” and had shattered what he described as the myth of Israeli “strategic deterrence.” He has also argued that the war returned the Palestinian issue to the center of the international agenda.

(Source: Reuters)