Member of Hamas Political Bureau, Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar, was born to a Palestinian father and an Egyptian mother in 1945 in the Zeitoun neighborhood in the east of Gaza City. Al-Zahar spent his early childhood in the Egyptian city of Ismailia. 

Al-Zahar received his primary and secondary education in Gaza City.

In 1971, al-Zahar graduated with a bachelor's degree in general medicine from Ain Shams University and took his master's degree in general surgery in 1977.  

After his graduation, Al-Zahar, a father of seven, two of them were killed by the Israeli occupation forces, had worked as a general practitioner in a number of hospitals in Gaza and Khan Younis until he was dismissed by the Israeli occupation authorities over his political views. 

From 1981 to 1985, he worked as head of a medical society in Gaza and then served as dean of the nursing department at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG).  

Al-Zahar also worked as the board chairperson of the Al-Nour Centre for Studies and Research in the Gaza Strip. 

He founded a number of institutions, including Az-Zeitoun Club, Al-Qarara Charity Medical Clinic, the Federation of Unions and Islamic, Professional and Aid Blocs, the Arab Medical Society, and the IUG's nursing department, among others.   

In 1988, just six months after Hamas was founded, Al-Zahar was imprisoned by the Israeli occupation authorities for six months.  
The Israeli occupation authorities expelled him in 1992 to Marj al-Zohour in Lebanon, along with a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials. 

Four years later, Al-Zahar had been jailed by the Palestinian Authority security forces for a number of months, during which he was subjected to severe torture and was then taken to hospital in a critical condition with four broken ribs.     

On 10 September 2003, Al-Zahar survived an assassination attempt after Israeli occupation forces bombed his home, killing his eldest son, Khalid, and his bodyguard and injuring him, his wife, and his daughter. 

Al-Zahar served as a foreign minister in the tenth Palestinian government formed by Hamas following its landslide victory in the 2006 legislative elections.  

On 15 January 2008, his other son, Husam, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the east of Gaza City, along with 18 Palestinians.   

Al-Zahar published a number of intellectual, political, and literary writings and wrote several novels.