Khaled Mashal (Arabic: خالد مشعل, romanized: Khālid Mashʿal, Levantine Arabic: [ˈχæːled ˈmeʃʕæl]; born 28 May 1956) is a Palestinian politician who served as the second chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau from 1996 until May 2017, when he was succeeded by Ismail Haniyeh. He has been the acting leader of Hamas twice, from July 2024 until August 2024 and since October 2024, after both leaders were assassinated by Israel. He is regarded as one of the most prominent leaders of Hamas since the death of Ahmed Yassin, alongside Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar.

Mashal was born in Silwad in 1956. Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the 1967 Six-Day War forced Mashal's family to flee Palestine. He has since lived in exile in other parts of the Arab world. For that reason, he was considered part of Hamas' "external leadership".

After the founding of Hamas in the wake of the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation in 1987, Mashal became the leader of the Kuwaiti branch of the organization. In 1992, he became a founding member of Hamas' politburo and its chairman. He became the recognized head of Hamas after Israel assassinated both Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successor Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi in the spring of 2004. Under his leadership, Hamas secured a surprise majority of the seats in the Palestinian legislative election in 2006. Mashal stepped down as Hamas' politburo chairman at the end of his term limit in 2017.

Mashal was born in 1956 in Silwad in the Jordanian-ruled West Bank. He attended Silwad Elementary School until fifth grade. His father, Abd al-Qadir Mashal, was a farmer (fellah) and had moved to Kuwait in 1957 to work in agriculture and as an imam. He had participated in the 1936–1939 Arab revolt with the Palestinian guerilla leader Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni. Mashal's half-brother is the former Al-Sakhra Band singer and former Dallas Public Works and Transportation Department engineer Mufid Abdulqader. Abduqalder is serving a 20-year prison sentence in the United States for funding Hamas through the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.

Following the 1967 Six-Day War, during which Israel occupied the West Bank, his family fled to Jordan and, after a month or two, they joined Abd al-Qadir in Kuwait, where Mashal completed high school. He entered the prestigious Abdullah al-Salim Secondary School in the early 1970s and joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1971.

Mashal enrolled in Kuwait University in 1974, and soon became involved in student politics. He headed the Islamic Justice list (qa'imat al-haq al-islamiyya) in the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) elections in 1977. The list was based on the Palestinian Islamic movement, a part of the Muslim Brotherhood. The GUPS elections were cancelled and he founded the Islamic League for Palestinian Students (al-rabita al-islamiyya li tolaab filastin). He graduated with a bachelor of science degree in physics in 1978.

As a 19-year-old, Mashal visited historical Palestine in 1975 for two months for the first time since the occupation began in 1967. He was able to travel extensively in both Israel and the occupied territories. The trip deepened his feelings for his homeland and his sense of the losses in 1948 and 1967.

After graduating, Mashal became a teacher and taught physics in Kuwait until 1984. In 1983, the Palestinian Islamic movement convened an internal, closed conference in an undisclosed Arab state, which included delegates from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Palestinian refugees from Arab states. The conference laid the foundation stone for the creation of Hamas. Mashal was part of the project's leadership. After 1984, he devoted himself to the project on a full-time basis. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, he and the rest of Hamas' leadership in Kuwait relocated to Jordan.