As Israel and Hamas begin indirect negotiations on Monday to end the two-year war in Gaza, the talks will be guided by two men leading their respective delegations.
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The Hamas delegation is led by Khalil al-Hayya, a senior official who survived an Israeli strike in Doha last month.
The Israeli team is headed by Ron Dermer, a close aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but viewed by some in Israel as an unconvincing negotiator.
Below are profiles of the two men at the centre of the high-stakes negotiations.
Khalil al-Hayya
Khalil al-Hayya has survived three assassination attempts and is considered one of the more moderate figures in Hamas.
With a broad stature and well-groomed appearance, Hayya has led rounds of indirect negotiations between the Palestinian Islamist movement and Israel.
Along with several senior Hamas officials based in the Qatari capital, Hayya was the target of Israeli strikes last month.
Hayya and other leaders survived, but the attack killed several people including his son and his office director.
Ahead of his departure for Egypt on Sunday evening, Hayya spoke in a recorded message marking his first public appearance since the attack.
He praised Palestinian resilience while noting that his people live “in the shadow of pain… with the loss of thousands” of lives.
Hayya was born in January 1960 in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City and grew up in a conservative and religious family.
Known to Palestinians as Abu Ossama, Hayya spent three years in an Israeli prison in the late 1990s for his membership in Hamas, which is banned as a “terrorist” organisation by Israel, the EU and many western nations.
He studied at the Islamic University of Gaza, obtained a master’s degree in Jordan, and earned a doctorate in Islamic law in Sudan.
Hayya had already survived assassination attempts in 2007 and 2014.
Several of his family members including his eldest son had been killed, and he also lost other relatives during an Israeli attack in the early months of the war sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
In 2006, Hayya was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council, where he subsequently led Hamas’s parliamentary bloc, a year before his movement took control of Gaza.
He served as Hamas’s political deputy head for the territory, before taking the lead following the death of Yahya Sinwar in an Israeli attack in October 2024.
Hayya left the Gaza Strip years before Hamas’s October 2023 attack and has led the movement’s negotiation delegation since 2014.
A Hamas official close to him told AFP that he demonstrates “intelligence and wisdom”, while noting his “conservative and pragmatic temperament”.
“He does not lose his temper easily and is respected by all members of the political bureau and military commanders,” the official added.
They said Hayya maintained “privileged” relationships with several movements, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Lebanese Hezbollah, as well as Arab countries such as Algeria, Egypt and Qatar.
He also has close ties with Iran, the main financial and military backer of Hamas, the official added.
Yasser Abu Hein, a Gaza-based political analyst, said Hayya is “considered a wise negotiator”.
Losing a number of his children, as well as several other relatives and friends, “earned him great sympathy” from Palestinians and Arab countries, Abu Hein said.
According to him, last month’s assassination attempt in Doha made Hayya “an icon and a symbol of the Palestinian struggle”.
Ron Dermer
Israel’s top negotiator in the Gaza truce talks, Ron Dermer, is a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but families of hostages say he has been ineffective in previous negotiations.
The 54-year-old Miami Beach native was appointed by Netanyahu in February to lead the talks, despite being little known to most Israelis.
“He’s a mystery for the Israeli public,” said Gayil Talshir, a political science professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Dermer’s nomination drew immediate criticism over his lack of military experience, his rare appearances on Hebrew-language media, and what some describe as his limited command of the country’s language and culture.
Relatives of Israelis held captive in Gaza say that no hostages have been released by Hamas since he assumed the role.
“Since you took on the role to bring hostages home, the results have been zero!” shouted the uncle of hostage Tal Chaimi through a loudspeaker at a recent dawn rally outside Dermer’s Jerusalem home.
Yet in Netanyahu’s eyes, Dermer, a former American football player, appears to be the right man to secure a war settlement that aligns with both his interests and Israel’s strategic objectives.
“No outside force will be able to take control of Gaza if there are still 20,000 Hamas terrorists running around the territory,” Dermer wrote on X on July 27.
“No investor will rebuild Gaza if Hamas remains and things could flare up again. This is our opportunity to put Gaza on a different track and ensure security for decades to come.”
A father of five who renounced his US citizenship after immigrating to Israel in the 1990s, Dermer wields such influence over the prime minister that he is often described as Israel’s “de facto foreign minister”, Talshir said.
He has been tasked with managing “the only foreign relationship that really matters” to Netanyahu — that with the United States.
“I think there is a comfort level that Netanyahu feels being able to speak to close confidants in English,” Ari Harow, Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, was quoted as saying by the Jerusalem Post in February.
“When you look at his own history, Netanyahu spent a significant portion of his childhood in the United States,” he said.
The relationship between the two men stretches back years.
In 2008, Dermer worked on Netanyahu’s re-election campaign.
The following year, he was appointed senior adviser to the premier and is believed to have written many of Netanyahu’s English-language speeches.
In 2013, Dermer became Israel’s ambassador to the United States, a post he held until 2021, becoming a crucial liaison between the two allies.
He reportedly played a key role during Trump’s first term in brokering the Abraham Accords, which normalised Israel’s relations with three Arab countries.
According to Israeli media, Dermer has been deeply involved in decision-making throughout the Gaza war.
In February, Netanyahu chose Dermer to lead truce negotiations, reportedly favouring him over Mossad chief David Barnea and Ronen Bar, head of internal security agency Shin Bet.
Dermer was reportedly selected for his closer ties with the Trump administration — but also for his alignment with Netanyahu’s strategic goals.
“Dermer and Netanyahu did not want the prime goal of the negotiations to be to bring the hostages back, but to keep what they believe was in Israel’s interest, which was to go on with the military occupation of Gaza… and try to annihilate Hamas,” Talshir said.
Netanyahu recently announced that Dermer will soon leave his government post.
But before that, he will lead negotiations to achieve the implementation of the first phase of Trump’s peace plan, leading to the release of the hostages, while ensuring that the subsequent stage involving the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza is “watered down”, Talshir predicted.
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