The death of Hamas number two, Saleh al Aruri, in an attack this Tuesday in the capital of Lebanon has increased tensions in the region and increased fears that the war between Israel and Gaza could spread beyond the Gaza Strip. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied that it was behind this attack. Hamas has warned that the Beirut bombing will have consequences, and Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari has assured that the armed forces…
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The death of Hamas number two, Saleh al Aruri, in an attack this Tuesday in the capital of Lebanon has increased tensions in the region and increased fears that the war between Israel and Gaza could spread beyond the Gaza Strip. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied that it was behind this attack. Hamas has warned that the bombing in Beirut will have consequences, and Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari has assured that the forces are prepared for any scenario. The leader of the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, warned this Wednesday: “If the enemy plans to start a war against Lebanon, we will fight without borders, without restrictions, without borders (…)”. A day after the worst blow to Hamas since the start of the war in the Palestinian enclave, clashes between Israel and Hezbollah continue at the border, as embassies continue to prevent an escalation of the conflict in the region.
This Wednesday, the West Bank woke up to closed shops, institutions and businesses and mobilizations in cities such as Ramallah, the administrative capital of the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian factions, including Hamas and the ruling Fatah party, had called for a general strike to protest Al Aruri's death. Hundreds of people demonstrated in Ramallah and chanted “revenge”. The attack, which killed Al Aruri and five others, including two other Hamas military leaders, targeted the Palestinian group's offices in Dahiye, a Beirut suburb controlled by Hezbollah, the militia that has been in power since exchanged almost every day after the rocket was launched. Aerial fire and artillery war with Israel in the north of the country. If Israeli responsibility for the attack on Al Aruri is confirmed, it would be the first in Beirut since 2006.
This Wednesday, the leader of Hezbollah expressed his condolences for the death of Al Aruri and described the bombing as “a blatant Israeli aggression.” In a speech he planned to give ahead of news of Tuesday's attack, he said Hezbollah's “swift” action on Oct. 8, after the start of the Israel-Gaza war, and the exchange of artillery fire on the border since then had a major impact Attack would have prevented Israel's bomb attack in Lebanon. He has also promised that there would be “no limits” or “rules” for the Iran-backed Shiite militia should Israel decide to start a war against the country. “In a word, anyone who thinks of war against us will regret it,” he declared.
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Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said hours earlier that his government was talking to Hezbollah to convince the militia “that it should not respond” to the attack in Beirut on Tuesday afternoon. “We are not demanding them, we are having a dialogue with them,” Bou Habib said in an interview with the BBC. In the next 24 hours we will see “whether they react or not,” the minister added. “We are very concerned, the Lebanese do not want to be drawn into it, even Hezbollah does not want to be drawn into a regional war,” he added. Bou Habib has called on the West to pressure Israel to “end all its violence” in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
The United States has acknowledged that it has grave concerns about a possible escalation. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said he could not comment on who was responsible for the attack, although he stressed that Al Aruri was “a brutal terrorist with civilian blood on his hands.” According to him, Washington was not informed of the attack in advance.
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Several demonstrators hold their cell phones in the air during a protest against the death of Saleh al Aruri this Wednesday in Beirut. ALAA AL SUKHNI (Portal)
Various voices are calling for tensions to be reduced. The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon warned that any escalation “could have devastating consequences for people on both sides of the border”. “We continue to call on all parties to cease fire and on all influential interlocutors to urge this restraint,” said spokeswoman Kandice Ardiel. In Cairo, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told a delegation of US senators that the priority was to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and stressed the need to prevent the conflict from spreading in the region, a statement said. “Al Sisi stressed the importance of intensive and responsible work to avoid factors that increase the scale of the conflict in the region due to its dangerous impact on regional and international peace and security,” the Egyptian presidency concluded in a statement of the meeting .
For his part, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke in the same vein this Tuesday with Benny Gantz, a member of Israel's emergency government. “The President stressed that it is important to avoid any attitude of escalation, especially in Lebanon, and that France will continue to convey these messages to all actors directly or indirectly involved in the region,” the Elysée noted, according to BFM TV. Macron also expressed his “deep concern at the very high number of civilian deaths and the situation of absolute humanitarian emergency in Gaza.”
Meanwhile, the extent of any change in Hamas's stance remains unclear. Husam Badran, a member of the militia's political office in exile, responded to Al Aruri's death by warning the “criminal occupation” regarding Israel that “the battle” between them and Hamas is “open.” But Sami Abu Zuhri, another senior official in the Palestinian Islamist group, said that while this death “will have consequences,” the group still maintains the position that it is open to talks “about anything” as long as Israel stops its attacks completely adjust others. “Subjects”. Hamas and other Islamist factions are still holding 129 hostages in Gaza as of October 7, and there have been talks between the two sides about a possible ceasefire and the exchange of hostages for Palestinians detained in Israel.
Iran, which had already warned this Tuesday that the death of Al Aruri “will spark another wave of resistance and motivation to fight against the Zionist occupiers,” according to the Foreign Ministry spokesman, issued a warning this Wednesday in the United States. Defense Minister Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Ashtiani has warned Washington to “prepare” for the consequences of the assassination of Hamas' number two, according to Iranian media. In his words, Joe Biden's administration has “ventured” into the region and “changed its balance”, i.e. the “impact”. [de la muerte de Aruri] “They will have negative impacts and harm Americans themselves.”
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