Nizar Awadallah

One of the senior leaders of Hamas and a member of the organization’s Political Bureau. He was born in the Gaza Strip in 1957, to a family originally from the town of Hamama, located in the Ashkelon area. He studied civil engineering at Ain Shams University in Cairo and is considered part of the founding generation of Hamas. He served as secretary of the Islamic Council of the movement and was close to the founder, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. He was imprisoned in Israel between 1989 and 1995. Over the years, he held a series of positions in Hamas’s leadership, was a member of the movement’s political leadership in the Gaza Strip, and headed the negotiation team in the Shalit prisoner exchange deal. In the internal elections for the head of Hamas’s government in Gaza, held on March 9, 2021, he defeated Yahya Sinwar in the first round by a small margin of votes, but lost to him in the fourth round. He later moved to Qatar and took an active part in the negotiations between Hamas and Israel during the war that broke out following the October 7 attack.