Sources at the Palestinian faction Hamas told DPA news agency that the group’s advisory council will convene in Cairo Monday to conduct elections for its political office, with most observers speculating a renewed four-year term for incumbent political bureau leader Khaled Meshaal.
Preliminary meetings ahead of the elections kicked off Sunday with a high-level presence on the part of Hamas leaders, DPA quoted the sources as saying. Meshaal and other colleagues from Gaza and abroad have been trickling into Cairo since Saturday.
The advisory council, Hamas’s highest legislative body, reached the quorum required for the election of a new political bureau chief at the meeting, which is the first high-level one since an earlier meeting in Khartoum, Sudan in January 2012.
After the Khartoum meeting, Meshaal said he did not want to remain in office, but the majority of the council’s members objected.
Many group leaders support Meshaal, who assumed the office in 1996, for the vast regional ties he has cultivated, as they believe that Hamas needs to be lead from a figure based abroad.
Hamas, largely considered a terrorist group by Western countries, has been in control of the Gaza Strip since 2007 after a power struggle with its rival Fatah, led by Palestinian Authority leader President Mahmoud Abbas.
Edited translation from DPA
