Hamas Movement: Mashaal Won’t Seek Re-Election

Al-Manar
The Palestinian resistance group Hamas announced in a statement issued on Saturday that its Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal won't seek a new term.

Reconsider,
we shall consider you wish

According to the official statement, Mashaal, who has served as politburo chief for the past 16 years, announced his decision during a recent Shura Council meeting and said he would continue serving the resistance group and the Palestinian people in other ways.

The Shura Council reportedly met in Sudan during Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's visit there.

In the statement from Hamas' official e-mail account, the Palestinian group urged him to reconsider his decision. "The movement urges (Mashaal) to reconsider, and to leave this issue to the Shura Council, with full respect to his wishes (not to run again), considering this is a public matter that the Hamas institutions should decide, and not an individual person," the statement said.

Palestinian sources say Haniyeh is considering running for Hamas politburo chief. The sources told Italian news agency AKI that Haniyeh's visits to Sudan, Egypt, Tunis and Turkey over the past month were aimed at raising his profile among leaders in the region ahead of elections in Hamas.
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Gardian

"In recent weeks, he (Mashaal) has indicated that Hamas should make a strategic turn away from armed struggle to popular non-violent resistance in the wake of the Arab spring revolutions and the success of Islamist parties in elections."

"The new approach caused a rift with the internal Gaza leadership, which said there would be no change in Hamas policy. "There has been no change concerning our mode of thinking towards the conflict," Mahmoud Zahar, the most senior Hamas figure inside Gaza, told the Guardian in an interview this month."

"However, his reported decision to step down may indicate that the Hamas leadership within Gaza has won a power struggle."
Related:

• No renewal to Mishaal: external pressures and internal differences
• Hamas: The Growing Distance from Damascus
• Hamas to leave Syria & Meshaal could step down
• Syria and Hamas Blame not Break commented
• The enemy is this American Administration and its “tool” not “ally” in the region, Israel,
  

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