Osama Hamdan is the top representative of Hamas in Lebanon and is a member of the organization's politburo. Hamdan was born in the Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip to a Palestinian refugee family that fled the village of al-Batani al-Sharqi during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Hamdan worked at the Hamas office in Tehran as assistant to then Hamas representative Imad Alami from 1992-93. He became Hamas' official representative in Iran in 1994, serving in that post until 1998. In 1998, Hamdan was appointed as Hamas representative in Lebanon, a post he still holds. In 2004, he served as Hamas' spokesman in Cairo during a dialogue between Palestinian factions.

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