Haniyeh was born in a refugee camp near Gaza City in 1962, joining Hamas in the late 1980s during the First Intifada, or uprising.
The 62-year-old served as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority between 2006 and 2007, after Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian legislative elections at the time.
After the establishment of a Hamas-led administration in the Gaza Strip, as a result of Hamas’ spat with rival Fatah faction, Haniyeh served as the leader of the de facto government in Gaza in 2007-2014.
In 2017, he was selected to replace Khaled Meshaal as Hamas’s political bureau chief.
Haniyeh left Gaza in December 2019, living in Turkiye and Qatar, and building up his authority to represent Hamas abroad.
His most notable previous visits included the funeral of Qassem Soleimani, a top commander of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who was killed by a US drone strike in 2020, and the inauguration of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in 2021.
In April of this year, Israeli airstrikes killed three of Haniyeh’s sons and four of his grandchildren, with Haniyeh making clear at the time that their deaths would not affect the ceasefire, and the hostage talks that were under way back then.