Hamas Says Meshaal Wants to Step down as Leader

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, who survived a 1997 Israeli assassination bid, has confirmed he wants to step down after eight years in post, the Islamist movement said on Saturday.

"Political bureau chief Khaled Meshaal has notified Hamas's consultative council that he does not wish to be a candidate for the movement's future leadership," a statement said.

Senior Hamas figures have asked the Damascus-based Meshaal to reconsider, the statement said.

They urged him to leave it to the consultative council to decide "on the basis of the higher interests of the movement," stressing that it was "not a purely personal matter."

Meshaal will remain active in Hamas "in the service of the people, the movement and the Palestinian cause," the statement stressed.

The political bureau is Hamas's principal decision-making body and its members are elected by secret ballot by the much larger consultative council.

Among the leading candidates to replace Meshaal, are his number two, Moussa Abu Marzuq, who also lives in exile; the leader of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, and another prominent Gaza Hamas figure, Mahmoud Zahar.

The Hamas confirmation that Meshaal wants to step down comes amid press reports of growing friction between the Damascus-based leadership-in-exile and the movement's Gaza wing, which has ruled the territory since ousting forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.

A series of meetings Meshaal has held with Abbas in recent months in a bid to reconcile the two factions and reunify their rival administrations have reportedly drawn criticism from some Gaza leaders.

Meshaal was propelled into the movement's top job after the Israeli assassination of Hamas spiritual leader and co-founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in Gaza in March 2004, and the killing of his immediate successor Abdel Aziz Rantissi a month later.

The exiled Hamas leader remains a top target, but Israel has so far been unable to reach him in Damascus, where he is under the de facto protection of the Syrian regime.

In 1997, agents from Israel's Mossad intelligence service disguised as Canadian tourists bungled an attempt to assassinate him on a street in Amman by injecting him with poison, but they were captured by Jordanian authorities.

He fell into a coma and a furious King Hussein demanded Israel hand over the antidote if it wanted the captured agents to be freed.

The episode compelled Benjamin Netanyahu, then as now Israeli prime minister, to release Yassin and 19 others from prison.