Ismail Haniyeh
Reuters
Haniyeh was killed in an explosion on a visit to Tehran in July 2024
Ismail Haniyeh was Hamas's overall leader until the group confirmed his death in Iran on 31 July 2024.
A prominent member of the movement in the late 1980s, Israel imprisoned Haniyeh for three years in 1989 as it cracked down on the first Palestinian uprising.
He was then exiled in 1992 to a no-man's-land between Israel and Lebanon, along with a number of Hamas leaders.
After a year in exile, he returned to Gaza. In 1997 he was appointed head of the office of Hamas's spiritual leader, strengthening his position.
Haniyeh was appointed Palestinian prime minister in 2006 by President Mahmoud Abbas after Hamas won the most seats in national elections, but was dismissed a year later after the group ousted Mr Abbas' Fatah party from the Gaza Strip in a week of deadly violence.
Haniyeh rejected his sacking as "unconstitutional", stressing that his government "would not abandon its national responsibilities towards the Palestinian people", and continued to rule in Gaza.
He was elected head of Hamas's political bureau in 2017.
In 2018, the US Department of State designated Haniyeh a terrorist. He had lived in Qatar for the last several years.
Mohammed Deif
Media sources
Deif was known for his ability to evade assassination, but Israel says it killed him in July 2024
Mohammed Deif was the head of Hamas's military wing - al-Qassam Brigades - and is thought to have been a key planner of the 7 October attack.
He was a shadowy figure known to Palestinians as The Mastermind, and to Israelis as The Cat with Nine Lives.
Israeli authorities imprisoned him in 1989, after which he formed the al-Qassam Brigades with the aim of capturing Israeli soldiers.
After his release, he helped engineer the construction of
tunnels that have allowed Hamas fighters to get inside Israel from Gaza,
Deif was one of Israel's most-wanted men, accused of planning and supervising bus bombings which killed tens of Israelis in 1996, and of involvement in the capture and killing of three Israeli soldiers in the mid-1990s.
Israel imprisoned him in 2000, but he escaped at the beginning of the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada.
In one assassination attempt, in 2002, Deif survived but lost one of his eyes. Israel said he also lost a foot and a hand, and that he had difficulty speaking.
Israeli security forces again failed to assassinate Deif during a 2014 assault on the Gaza Strip, but killed his wife and two of his children.
Israel says
it eventually killed Deif in an air strike on a compound in Khan Younis in July 2024.