Khaled Mashal
Khaled Mashal (Arabic: خالد مشعل, romanized: Khālid Mashʿal, Levantine Arabic: [xaːled meʃʕal], born 28 May 1956) is a former leader of the Palestinian organization Hamas.
After the founding of Hamas in 1987, Mashal became the leader of the Kuwaiti branch of the organization.[4] In 1992, he became a founding member of Hamas' politburo[5] and its chairman.[6] He became the recognized head of Hamas after Israel assassinated both Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successor Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi in the spring of 2004.[6][7] Under his leadership, Hamas stunned the world by winning a majority of the seats in the Palestinian legislative election in 2006. Mashal stepped down as Hamas' politburo chairman at the end of his term limit in 2017.[8][9]
The Six-Day War in 1967 forced Mashal's family to flee the West Bank and he has since then lived in other parts of the Arab world exile. For that reason, he was considered part of Hamas' "external leadership."
Mashal was born in 1956 in Silwad in the Jordanian-occupied West Bank.[10] He attended Silwad Elementary School until fifth grade.[3] His father, Abd al-Qadir Mashal,[11] was a farmer (fellah) and had moved to Kuwait in 1957 to work in agriculture and as an imam.[3] He had participated in the 1936–1939 Arab revolt with the Palestinian guerilla leader Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni.[3]
Following the 1967 Six-Day War, during which Israel occupied the West Bank, his family fled[12] to Jordan and, after a month or two, they joined Abd al-Qadir in Kuwait,[3] where Mashal completed high school.[13] He entered the prestigious Abdullah al-Salim Secondary School in the early 1970s[14] and joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1971.[4][3]
Mashal enrolled in Kuwait University in 1974,[3] and soon become involved in student politics. He headed the Islamic Justice list (qa’imat al-haq al-islamiyya) in the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) elections in 1977.[15] The list was based on the Palestinian Islamic movement, a part of the Muslim Brotherhood.[15] The GUPS elections were cancelled and he founded the Islamic League for Palestinian Students (al-rabita al-islamiyya li tolaab filastin).[15] He graduated with a bachelor of science degree in physics in 1978.[16]
