Israeli Press
Maariv's Jacky Hugi says Hamas is shifting its leadership to Turkey
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Jacky Hugi, the Arab affairs commentator of the Israeli daily Maariv, wrote on Saturday that after fourteen years in Qatar, Hamas is moving the weight of its leadership to Turkey.
Hugi presents this as his reading of the movement's direction rather than as an announced decision, and Hamas has made no such announcement. The movement's political bureau has been based in Doha since 2012, after it left Damascus at the start of the Syrian war.
Where the bureau sits is not a detail for Palestinians. Qatar has been one of the two mediators — with Egypt — through every round of the ceasefire talks, and the address of the leadership shapes who can convene it, who can pressure it and how fast a message travels when a deal is on the table.
Turkey is not a mediator of that kind. Ankara hosts figures from the movement and speaks for Gaza loudly in international forums, but it does not sit at the Cairo table where the arrangements over disarmament and withdrawal are being argued.
The claim arrives in a week when Jared Kushner, Tony Blair and Nickolay Mladenov are due in Israel and then Cairo to try to close the gap between Netanyahu and the American plan. Whether the leadership has in fact moved, and what Doha makes of it, neither Hugi nor anyone else has yet established on the record.
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