Khalil Al-Hayya: The Hamas Leader At The Centre Of Gaza Ceasefire Talks

Khalil Al-Hayya, the Hamas leader who met US envoy Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, in Cairo on Sunday, has emerged as a key figure in the group during the Gaza war as Israel killed several of its senior leaders.

Named Hamas’ overall leader in July, Hayya has been closely involved in negotiations during the conflict. He narrowly survived a 2025 Israeli airstrike in Qatar that killed his son and several aides.

The Cairo meeting was Hayya’s second with Kushner. According to Reuters, Hayya led a Hamas delegation in talks with Kushner and US envoy Steve Witkoff in October 2025, helping clinch a deal that resulted in a ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages seized during the Hamas-led attacks on Israel in 2023.

The meetings mark a departure from Washington’s longstanding policy of shunning Hamas, which the US designates as a terrorist group.

Hayya was part of a five-member council that ran Hamas from 2024 after Israel killed its leader Yahya Al-Sinwar, one of the masterminds of the October 7, 2023 attacks that ignited the Gaza war. Hayya had served as Sinwar’s deputy for Gaza.

Under his leadership, Hamas agreed in July to lay down its weapons under a Trump-backed plan that linked disarmament to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. Hamas has rejected the term “disarmament”, saying instead that it agreed to hand over its weapons for storage under the control of a US-backed Palestinian technocratic government.

Israel has rejected the plan, which also foresees Gaza being rebuilt, saying it will not withdraw until Hamas is fully disarmed.

From Gaza To Hamas’ Political Leadership

Born in the Gaza Strip in 1960, Hayya joined the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement from which Hamas emerged in 1987. He has a PhD in Islamic Studies.

Hayya rose through Hamas’ ranks alongside figures such as Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, another former leader of the group who was assassinated by Israel in Tehran in 2024, Reuters reported.

The Doha airstrike was not Hayya’s first narrow escape.

In 2007, an Israeli airstrike hit his family home in Gaza City’s Shejaia quarter, killing several of his relatives. Hayya was not there at the time.

In 2008, his son Hamza was killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza. During a war between Hamas and Israel in 2014, the house of Hayya’s eldest son, Osama, was bombed, killing him, his wife and three of their children.

Azzam Al-Hayya, another of his sons, was killed by 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, the son killed in the Doha strike.

Hayya left Gaza in 2021, basing himself in Qatar along with other members of Hamas’ exiled political leadership. From Doha, he acted as Hamas’ point person with Arab and Islamic states, among other responsibilities.

Among Hamas watchers, Hayya is seen as part of a camp that strengthened the group’s ties to Shi’ite Muslim Iran, which provided Hamas with arms and finance before the Gaza war.

During the Gaza war, Hayya was involved in numerous rounds of indirect negotiations with Israel before a ceasefire deal was reached.

His Talks With Washington

Trump granted Witkoff and Kushner permission to speak directly to Hamas as he sought to secure an end to the war and the release of the remaining hostages.

Their October 8, 2025 meeting with the Hayya-led delegation was the highest-profile encounter between the US and Hamas at the time.

Witkoff said he had expressed condolences to Hayya during their meeting for the loss of his son Hammam in Israel’s Doha airstrike.

“I told him that I had lost a son, and that we were both members of a really bad club, parents who have buried children,” Witkoff told CBS News’ 60 Minutes programme.

Hayya has said he and Witkoff exchanged “humane words” over the loss of their sons.

He also outlined Hamas’ core demands.

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

Hayya’s Position On The October 7 Attack

Hamas’ 1988 founding charter called for Israel’s destruction, although its leaders have at times offered a long-term truce in return for a viable Palestinian state on all Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.

Israel regards this as a ruse.

Hayya has been cited as saying the October 7 attack had been meant as a limited operation to capture “a number of soldiers” to swap for jailed Palestinians.

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

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

Despite the devastation caused by Israel’s Gaza offensive, Hayya said in a December 2025 speech that “the resistance” had shown “the enemy can be defeated” and that the myth of Israeli “strategic deterrence” had been shattered.

He has also said the Palestinian issue has been put back on the international agenda.