http://www.euronews.com/ Khaled Meshaal moved into the top leadership position of Hamas in 2004, after its founder Sheik Yassin had been assassinated, on the orders of Israeli leader Ariel Sharon.
Just a few days after that, Yassin’s successor Abdel Aziz Al Rantissi was also killed. Meshaal had been in exile since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.
Meshaal was 31 when Hamas was founded in 1987. Yassin, within the Muslim Brotherhood, was a key proponent calling for the destruction of Israel and of setting up an Islamic state in all of ancestral Palestinian territory. He differed in this way from the head of the PLO, Yasser Arafat.