Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri had long expected the Israeli drone strike that security sources said killed him in Beirut on Tuesday, three months after his group’s cross-border surprise attack that triggered a devastating war in Gaza.
“I am waiting for martyrdom and I think I have lived too long,” he said in August, while urging Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank to take up arms amid a wave of violence.
His murder comes at a defining moment for the organization, as Israel seeks to eradicate it in retaliation for the October 7 attack, when Hamas terrorists rampaged across the border, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages.
Israel has long accused it of lethal attacks on its citizens, but a Hamas official said it was also “at the center of negotiations” over the outcome of the Gaza war and the release of hostages carried out by Qatar and Egypt.
“Whoever did this carried out a surgical strike against the Hamas leadership,” said Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Israel’s prime minister. Israel does not typically confirm or deny responsibility for such attacks.
Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Aruri is seen above talking on the phone in an office in Beirut before he was assassinated. HAMAS MEDIA OFFICE/AFP via Getty Images
Although less influential than Hamas leaders in Gaza, Arouri was seen as a key player in the movement, running its operations in the West Bank from exile in Syria, Turkey, Qatar and finally Lebanon after long periods in Israeli prisons.
As the group’s senior official in Lebanon, he played an important role in consolidating Hamas’s relations with the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and, through it, with Iran, the main sponsor of both groups.
Arouri met several times with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as well as Iranian officials in Lebanon and Hamas sources said he worked with them to coordinate positions regarding the conflict in Gaza.
Hamas has confirmed his death but has not commented otherwise. Islamic Jihad, an allied group, vowed revenge for his murder in a statement Tuesday, saying it “will not go unpunished.”
Within Hamas, Arouri was described as a leading advocate of reconciliation between rival Palestinian factions, and enjoys a good relationship with Fatah, the party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that dominates the West Bank.
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Hamas and Fatah have been at odds for years, fighting a brief civil war in 2007 when Hamas took power in Gaza, although the rival organizations have continued to hold regular negotiations.
But when it came to the conflict with Israel, Arouri was seen as a hardliner.
He helped found the group’s military wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, and Israel accused him of orchestrating deadly attacks over the years.
He says he was behind the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank in 2014, an act that sparked a seven-week Israeli attack on Gaza that killed 2,100 Palestinians.
Attacks
As the Israeli occupation of the West Bank continued, with the expansion of Jewish settlements and the creation of an increasingly distant Palestinian state, Arouri said there was “no other option” but to participate in what he called comprehensive resistance.
He was one of the senior Hamas officials behind the group’s strong expansion in the West Bank, where its gunmen have carried out a series of attacks against Israeli settlers over the past 18 months.
Last year, several shootings occurred shortly after Arouri made televised threats against Israel.
With the group’s Gaza leaders, Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Marwan Issa, deep in hiding, Arouri was closely involved in negotiations over the war and said in December that no more hostages would be released until there was a full ceasefire.
Palestinians take part in a protest following the assassination of senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri in Ramallah. REUTERS The death of Saleh al-Arouri comes about three months after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. REUTERS
As a member of the Hamas politburo under the group’s Qatar-based general leader, Ismail Haniyeh, Arouri was accustomed to dialogue, even – indirectly – with its bitter enemies, the Israelis.
In 2011, shortly after his release from prison, Arouri was one of the Hamas negotiators involved in a prisoner exchange with Israel that the group hopes to replicate after the current war using hostages captured on October 7.
Born near Ramallah in the West Bank in 1966, Arouri was an early Hamas recruit and joined the movement when it formed in 1987, when Palestinians began their first Intifada uprising against the Israeli occupation.
Saleh al-Arouri played an important role in cementing Hamas’s relations with the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and, through him, with Iran, the main sponsor of both groups, according to reports. REUTERS
He was imprisoned in 1992, a year before Fatah’s leadership accepted the Oslo accords with Israel, accepting its existence and abandoning armed struggle in favor of a push to negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state.
Hamas rejected that approach, and when Arouri was released in 2007, he soon returned to the fight. He was imprisoned again until 2010, when the Israeli high court ordered his deportation.
He spent three years in Syria before moving to Turkey until Israel pressured Ankara to force him to leave in 2015.
He has since been residing in Qatar and Lebanon, working from the Hamas office in Beirut’s Dahiyeh district, a Hezbollah stronghold, until Tuesday’s sudden attack.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn