NAME: Abdel Aziz Rantisi

AGE: 56

NATIONALITY: Palestinian

CLAIM TO FAME: The new man heading Hamas

WITH his smart suits, gold-rimmed glasses and winning smile, Dr Abdel Aziz Rantisi doesn’t immediately appear to be an extremist. A paediatrician by training, a long-time militant and one of the six men who founded the Palestinian organization, Hamas in 1987, Dr Abdel Aziz Rantisi is now its leader in the Gaza Strip. He replaces Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, assassinated on March 22, 2004, in an Israeli helicopter strike as he left a Gaza City mosque after morning prayers.

However, the full extent of Dr Rantisi’s authority was not immediately clear as, according to Hamas officials, Khaled Mashaal, based in Syria, remains the head of Hamas’ political bureau, an important decision-making body. Hamas has been run largely as a collective of senior activists in Gaza and the Arab world, where Yassin had a key role as ideologue, spiritual leader and strategist.

Known as a hard-liner, Dr Rantisi has been the most visible and fiery Hamas spokesman in recent years. He is known as the leader who makes the most vitriolic statements and opposes any compromise with Israel. When Hamas and other Palestinian factions declared a unilateral truce with Israel last summer, Dr Rantisi was a vocal critic of the decision. And now after the assassination of Hamas’ spiritual leader, Dr Rantisi has vowed that with him as leader of Hamas, “The Israelis will not know security.”

Addressing the crowd at a memorial service for Sheikh Yassin, he told them: “We will fight them until the liberation of Palestine, the whole of Palestine.”

Rantisi’s family fled as refugees to Gaza in 1948 from their home village near Jaffa. He graduated from the faculty of medicine at Egypt’s Alexandria University and also obtained a Master’s degree in paediatrics from there. He has six children and has had a post at the Islamic University in Gaza. After the founding of Hamas, Rantisi was the first of the group’s leaders to be arrested by Israel. In and out of Israeli custody several times, he has spent more than seven years behind bars altogether.

Eventually Israel sent Rantisi and more than 400 other Hamas members into temporary exile in Lebanon in 1992 after the killing of an Israeli soldier. Rantisi became internationally known there, using his fluent English to speak for the deportees. The group returned after a year and Rantisi was arrested on his return and sentenced to three and a half years in prison for his political activities in South Lebanon. He stayed in prison until 1997. During one confinement, Dr Rantisi shared a cell with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. There he memorized the Quran and reportedly constructed a model of Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque out of empty milk, toothbrush and cigarette cartons.

Hamas’ new leader had often been at the head of Gaza street marches. A spokesman for the organization, he welcomes journalists to his apartment, setting out sweets and coffee for his visitors.

In June last year, Rantisi escaped an assassination attempt when an Apache helicopter fired several missiles at him, but missed. Just hours after he was treated for shrapnel wounds, Rantisi was back on television saying: “The Jews killed the prophets, and now they’re killing the Palestinian people. We will continue our Jihad and our resistance until we throw the last Zionist criminal out of our land.”