Hamas elects Haniya as new chief of Islamic movement

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's leader in the Gaza Strip, was named on Saturday to succeed Meshaal.

Haniya takes charge of Hamas as it seeks to ease its worldwide isolation while simultaneously marginalising hardliners within the movement.

Hamas last week unveiled a policy document charting out a new political manifesto; ceasing to call for the destruction of Israel.

In its founding charter, Hamas called for setting up an Islamic state in historic Palestine, or the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, which also includes Israel.

Israel nearly immediately rejected the document, calling it an effort to "dupe" the global community.

The newly elected leader and "his brothers...will do their best to work on the key issues including: liberation, Jerusalem, prisoners, right of refugees, lifting the siege imposed on Gaza, and achieving internal unity", Mashal stated.

Following his release, Israel deported Haniya to southern Lebanon along with other senior Hamas leaders, where he spent a year.

"Meshaal had already set in motion a new phase", he told AFP.

The power shift from the diaspora to Gaza began in 2012 when Hamas leaders-in-exile had to quit their longtime base in Syria as a result of the civil war that began a year earlier.

PM Ntanyahu said that the Hamas document showed that the Palestinian group remains unwilling to make peace with Israel.

A statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netahyahu rejected the revised charter as an effort to "fool the world".

Egypt on Saturday reopened the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip for three days to allow hundreds of stranded Palestinians to return home, officials said.

Between 2000 until 2005 during the Second Intifada, he became a member of the Palestinian Supreme Committee for Dialogue, and a representative of Hamas in the Supreme Follow-up Committee of the Palestinian National and Islamic movements. "Time for promise & hope?"

Some analysts say it seems Abbas is seeking to increase financial pressure on Hamas in the impoverished Gaza Strip, but he risks being blamed for worsening conditions in the enclave of two million people.

Haniyeh, a former deputy chief, will replace Qatar-based veteran Khaled Meshaal, who steps down at the end of his term limit just as Hamas appeared to have softened its stance towards Israel in a new policy document last week.

An eloquent advocate of the right to resistance, his strongly held beliefs that a future Palestinian state should be governed by laws "inspired by sharia" Islamic law have provoked concern in the West.

Haniya, as the leader of Hamas in Gaza since 2006, was associated with the political wing of the movement that, at least nominally, is more involved with diplomacy and governance and less directly with armed struggle.