{{Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal arrived in the Gaza Strip on Friday, ending 45 years of exile from Palestinian land with a visit that underscored the Islamist group’s growing confidence following a recent conflict with Israel.}}<\/p>\n
After passing through the Egyptian border crossing, Meshaal knelt on the ground to offer a prayer of thanks and was then greeted by dozens of officials from an array of competing Palestinian factions lined up to meet him in warm December sun.<\/p>\n
Meshaal will spend barely 48 hours in the coastal enclave and attend a mass rally on Saturday that has been billed as both a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the founding of Hamas and a “victory” celebration following the November fighting.<\/p>\n
“All Palestinians will eventually return to their homeland. Khaled Meshaal is returning after a victory,” said veteran Hamas strategist Mahmoud Al-Zahar.<\/p>\n
The 56-year-old Meshaal left the nearby West Bank as a young boy in 1967 and, before Friday, had never set foot in the largely isolated Gaza, which has been governed by Hamas since a brief, 2007 civil war against its Fatah secular rivals.<\/p>\n
Later on Friday, he is expected to visit the home of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated by Israel in 2004, as well as that of Ahmed Al-Jaabari, the group’s military commander killed in an Israeli strike last month.<\/p>\n
Israel tried and failed to kill Meshaal himself in 1997 in a botched Mossad mission in Jordan. <\/p>\n
Although there was no indication he might be targeted again, Hamas laid on massive security for his arrival, with heavily armed men, some wearing black masks, patrolling the border area.<\/p>\n
Meshaal ran Hamas from exile in Damascus from 2004 until January this year when he quit the Syrian capital because of Iranian-backed President Bashar al-Assad’s war against Sunni Muslim rebels. <\/p>\n
He now divides his time between Qatar and Cairo.<\/p>\n
His abrupt departure from Syria initially weakened his position within Hamas: ties with Damascus and Tehran had made him important, but with those links damaged or broken, rivals based within Gaza had started to assert their authority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal arrived in the Gaza Strip on Friday, ending 45 years of exile from Palestinian land with a visit that underscored the Islamist group’s growing confidence following a recent conflict with Israel.}} After passing through the Egyptian border crossing, Meshaal knelt on the ground to offer a prayer of thanks and was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-4503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4503"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=4503"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=4503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}