Izzat al-Rishaq

Izzat Muhammad al-Rishq is a senior leader of the Hamas movement abroad and a member of its political bureau. He was born on July 17, 1960, in Hebron. Following the Six-Day War in 1967, his family emigrated to Kuwait, where he grew up and received his education. While studying at Kuwait University, he was active in the Palestinian Islamic movement, helped establish the Islamic al-Haq Bloc and the Islamic League of Palestinian Students, and between 1986 and 1991 served as head of the Palestinian affairs section of the Kuwaiti Society magazine. Al-Rishq is part of the founding generation of Hamas. After the expulsion of Palestinians from Kuwait in the aftermath of the 1990 Gulf War, he moved to Jordan. In 1996, he was arrested in Jordan for his role in Hamas, and was detained again at the end of 1999. That same year, he was expelled from Jordan along with several Hamas leaders, including Khaled Mashal, to Doha, the capital of Qatar. He lived in Doha until 2001, then moved to Syria, where he remained until January 2012, before returning to Doha, where he resides today. Over the years, al-Rishq has held several positions within Hamas: he serves as a member of the political bureau, head of the office for Arab and Islamic relations, and previously chaired Hamas’s Central Elections Committee, which oversaw the movement’s participation in the 2006 elections. He has also served on the Board of Trustees of the Al-Quds International Foundation.