Khaled Mashal

Khaled Mashal (Arabic: خالد مشعل‎ Khālid Mashʿal, Levantine Arabic: [xaːled meʃʕal], born 28 May 1956) is a Palestinian political leader and the leader of the Islamic Palestinian organization Hamas since the Israeli assassination of Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi in 2004.

After the founding of Hamas in 1987, Mashal came to lead the Kuwaiti branch of the organization. He moved from Kuwait to Jordan in 1991. Since the expulsion of the Hamas leadership from Jordan in August 1999, Mashal lived in Qatar before moving to the Syrian capital of Damascus in 2001. He returned to Qatar in 2012 as a result of the Syrian civil war.

Early life

Mashal was born in 1956 in Silwad in the West Bank during the Jordanian occupation. He attended Silwad Elementary School until the 1967 Six-Day War. His father moved the family to Kuwait afterwards for financial reasons. Mashal joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1971. He holds a bachelor of science degree in Physics from Kuwait University.

Membership in Hamas

While at Kuwait University, Mashal headed the Islamic Justice (qa’imat al-haq al-islamiyya) list in the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) elections in 1977.