Ismail al-Ashqar

Ismail Abd al-Latif Muhammad al-Ashqar was born in 1962 in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. He is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and one of the senior leaders of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Between 1989–1994, he was imprisoned for five years in Israeli prisons, and in 1996 he was arrested by the Palestinian Authority’s security forces. He holds a bachelor's degree in geological engineering from Istanbul University (1987). In the past, he served as CEO of the Al-Nour Center for Research and Studies. He is a member of the “Hussam” Association of Prisoners, a member of the Engineers Syndicate, founder of the Islamic Reconciliation Committee in the northern Gaza Strip and of the “Islamic Homeland Salvation” Party, where he served as deputy secretary-general. He also headed the editorial staff of the newspaper Al-Risala. In 2006, he was elected to serve as a member of the Legislative Council on behalf of the “Change and Reform” list in the North Gaza district. He served as deputy head of the faction for four consecutive terms, chaired the Committee for Interior, Security, and Local Government, and was a member of the council’s political committee. He founded the Arab Center for Research and Studies, where he serves as chairman, and also heads the Board of Trustees of the Palestine Academy for Security Sciences. He also participated in the Cairo reconciliation talks that led to the Palestinian reconciliation agreement in 2012. On September 14, 2025, the IDF Spokesperson published his name as one of the senior Hamas figures in the Strip who submitted an emigration request for their families. The publication stated that he serves as chairman of the Foreign and Security Committee of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.