Mahmoud al-Zahar

Mahmoud al-Zahar
محمود الزهار
Foreign Minister of the Palestinian National Authority
In office 20 March 2006 – 18 March 2007
Prime Minister	Ismail Haniyeh
Preceded by	Nasser al-Kidwa
Succeeded by	Ziad Abu Amr
Personal details
Born	1945 (age 71–72) Jerusalem, British Mandate for Palestine
Political party	Hamas
Alma mater	Cairo University Ain Shams University
Profession	Physician
Religion	Sunni Islam

Mahmoud al-Zahar (Arabic: محمود الزهار‎‎ Maḥmūd az-Zahhār) (born 1945) is a Palestinian politician. He is a co-founder of Hamas and a member of the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip. Since the formation of the Hamas/"Change and Reform" government in the Palestinian National Authority in March 2006, al-Zahar has served as foreign minister in the government of prime minister Ismail Haniyeh. Prior to that he was seen as a major candidate among the Hamas members elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council for prime minister, as he was at that time the most senior official within the organization. His son, a member of the Hamas military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was killed by Israeli fire in Gaza on 5 January 2008.

Little is known about al-Zahar's early life beyond the report that he was born to a Palestinian father and an Egyptian mother.

At the age of 26, he graduated from the Cairo University Faculty of Medicine and five years later he got his Masters Degree in General Surgery from Ain Shams University, Cairo. He then became the adviser to the Palestinian Health Minister, and helped create the Palestinian Medical Society and was one of the primary founders of the Islamic University in Gaza in 1978.

Instrumental to the creation of Hamas in 1987, al-Zahar has remained a senior official and spokesperson for the group and is rumoured to have succeeded to leadership of the group following Israel's assassination of Ahmed Yassin in 2004. Hamas routinely denied this rumour, but refused to name who their new leader was, for fear of Israeli action.

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