Mahmud al-Zahar

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Mahmud al-Zahar

Mahmud az-Zahar (* 1945 in Gaza ; Arabic محمود الزهار, DMG Maḥmūd az-Zahār ; also transcribed as al-Zahar , al-Sahar or Mahmoud ) is one of the founders of Hamas and, as the leader of the radical wing, belongs to the so-called top five of the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip .

Life

Youth and Studies

az-Zahar's father is Palestinian, his mother Egyptian. Little is known about his youth. At the age of 26 he graduated from Cairo University with a degree in medicine and five years later earned a master's degree in general surgery from Ain Shams University in Cairo.

He was one of the co-founders of the Palestinian Medical Society and one of the key founders of the Islamic University in Gaza in 1978.

Hamas

Az-Zahar helped found Hamas from 1987 to 1988 and has remained one of its key officials and spokesman ever since. It has therefore been speculated that he became their leader after the killing of Ahmad Yasin by Israel in 2004. Hamas has rejected these rumors and refuses - for fear of renewed Israeli reprisals - and targeted killings to name its new commander.

az-Zahar won a seat in the March 2006 elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council and became Foreign Minister. In 1996 he spoke out against Hamas participating in the elections. He is considered a “ hardliner ” within Hamas; However, he supported the temporary armistice of some Palestinian resistance groups, which expired in 2006, although he had previously spoken out strongly against such a measure.

After the elections, Mahmud al-Zahar did not rule out negotiations with Israel about a third party, contrary to earlier statements. As foreign minister, however, he failed to soften the international boycott against Hamas.

Az-Zahar was arrested several times by both Israel and the PA , whose partial cooperation with the "Zionist entity" he rejects and whose authority he ignores. In the early 1990s, he and more than 400 other Palestinians were expelled from Israel to Lebanon on charges of terrorism . His life was later attacked when an Israeli F-16 fighter plane dropped a bomb on his home in Rimal on September 10, 2003 . However, he was only slightly injured; However, his son Chalid and a personal bodyguard were killed in the attack and 20 other people, including az-Zahar's daughter, were injured. On January 15, 2008, his son Hussam was killed in fighting during an Israeli advance.

az-Zahar was most recently the negotiator in the talks that led to a six-month ceasefire with Israel.

In an interview with the British magazine The Economist on January 31, 2008, az-Zahar described his and Hamas' vision of a future Palestine as part of an all-Islamic Arab state. In doing so, he corrected the idea of ​​an independent Palestinian independence derived from history: “'We [Palestinians] were never an independent state in history,' he notes. 'We were part of an Arab state and an Islamic state.' ”(“ We Palestinians have never in history been an independent state. We were part of an Arab and an Islamic state. ”)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Leading politicians of Hamas and Israel  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.heute.de   . In: Heute.de of January 4, 2009
  2. ↑ "A Hamas hardliner - A conversation with Hamas's foreign minister" , The Economist , January 31 of 2008.
personal data
SURNAME Zahar, Mahmud az-
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zahar, Mahmud al-; Zahar, Mahmoud al-; Sahar, Mahmud al-; محمود الزهار (Arabic)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Palestinian co-founder and spokesman for Hamas
DATE OF BIRTH 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Gaza