Hamas has a new leader. It does not have a new direction.
Khalil al-Hayya, appointed this week as the terrorist group’s overall leader, used his first major address to signal continuity with Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, the architects of the Oct. 7 massacre. That alone tells Israelis everything they need to know.
Al-Hayya spoke of carrying the same banner until it is raised over Al-Aqsa and a “free” Palestine. This is the same rejectionist program Hamas has sold for decades: no Jewish sovereignty, no real peace, no accountability for the bloodshed it unleashed. And it is important to note that this is not a fringe ideology. Hamas won the last democratic election held by the Palestinians, and in the years since has had little trouble recruiting a sizable terrorist army from among the Palestinian populace.
The timing of al-Hayya’s remarks is also significant, with Gaza lying in ruins some three years after Hamas’s Pyrrhic victory. The Oct. 7 invasion left roughly 1,200 people murdered in southern Israel and 251 kidnapped into the Strip. The war that followed shattered Gaza’s infrastructure and exposed, again, how Hamas embeds its military project inside civilian life.
Yet al-Hayya’s answer is not commitment to a new path punctuated by disarmament, and it is certainly not remorse. Rather, it is a promise to continue on the path of those who brought devastation to Gaza by perpetrating unimaginable horrors against the civilians of southern Israel.
He demanded Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza, reconstruction without political conditions, and Palestinian unity based on “democratic foundations.” These of course are conditions that would turn Hamas’s Pyrrhic victory into a genuine triumph. And the notion of Hamas dedicating itself to “democracy” after forcibly dragging all of Gaza along in service to Iran’s regional plots is a transparent attempt to present a more polished political facade for the same conflict.
Al-Hayya’s own record reinforces the point. A longtime deputy to Sinwar, he has been close to Tehran and has served as a key Hamas negotiator from exile in Qatar. His rise does not mark moderation. It consolidates the faction that refuses to pay the moral or political price for Oct. 7.
The world should listen carefully. Hamas is saying, in its own words, that it remains unrepentant. Israel cannot be expected to treat that as anything other than a continuing threat.
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