The death of Saleh al Aruri in Beirut – in an attack in which even the United States sees the hand of Israel, although the government has not officially confirmed its responsibility – means that the Palestinian Islamist organization Hamas has lost one of its most capable cadres in exile: one , who had led negotiations with other Palestinian factions, with Israeli authorities and with various international allies, as well as one of the main people responsible for the country's finances. It was also a loose verse of the organization ordering armed action on its own without consulting the rest of the leadership.
Instead of vertical leadership and a strict hierarchy, Hamas has different levels of power and power due to its dual nature – political movement and armed group – and the different regions and circumstances in which its leaders operate: Gaza government, secret opposition in the West Bank, etc Decision centers more or less public activities in exile depending on the country in which they are located and the timing of these countries' relations with Israel. Therefore, the statements of their leaders sometimes seem contradictory, and in many cases the left hand of the organization does not know what the right hand is doing. Al Aruri was one thing and the other.
He was born in Ramallah in 1966 and became involved in the Islamic movement in the late 1980s while studying at Hebron University. He was also one of the Hamas leaders who helped found the organization's armed wing, the Ezedin al-Qasam Brigades, in the West Bank, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank's map of Palestinian leaders and organizations.
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Al Aruri was arrested several times by Israeli authorities and spent long periods in prison, the longest between 1992 and 2007, when he became a spokesman for Palestinian prisoners and interlocutor for Israeli prison authorities. After his release – during negotiations between Fatah and Hamas over a joint government – Al Aruri stated in an interview with the British newspaper The Telegraph that his organization should stop attacking civilians and “transform from a military-oriented party” to “a political party “Should be a movement.” This did not stop Israel from imprisoning him again for almost three years and ultimately deporting him abroad.
The Islamist leader landed in Damascus, where the Politburo was located at the time, i.e. the civilian leadership of Hamas – protected by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – and rose to second place after the then political leader of the Palestinian group. , Khaled Mashal. But in 2012, Hamas – a Sunni Islamist organization – distanced itself from the Shiite Syrian regime's repression of demonstrations that had begun the previous year and sided with the predominantly Sunni rebels. So he left Syria. This destroyed one of the basic components of the so-called Axis of Resistance, led by Iran and articulated by Syria, the Lebanese party militia Hezbollah and the Shiite militias of Iraq as well as Palestinian Islamist groups.
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Refuge in Türkiye
Some of the Hamas leaders settled in Qatar; others, like Al Aruri, ended up in Turkey, where they were offered refuge by the government of moderate Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The arrival of the Hamas leaders, according to local analysts, came as part of a pact between the Turkish and Israeli authorities after mediation by Ankara, in the case of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped by Hamas in 2006 and released in 2011 in exchange for the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners (Al Aruri also took part in these negotiations).
In Istanbul, Al Aruri began to amass power. He led the Hamas delegation in successive Turkish-backed attempts to reconcile with Fatah and the Palestinian Authority. It was also at this time that the foundations were laid for Hamas' investments in Turkey (recently the US added to its sanctions list the Turkish construction company Trend GYO, which was accused of being a financing instrument for the Palestinian organization). Although it is not clear what role Hamas's number two played in these negotiations, the US Treasury Department added him to its blacklist in 2015, deeming him one of Hamas' key economic managers responsible for “the transfer of hundreds of thousands of dollars.” ” to the group’s cells in the West Bank “to buy weapons.”
Around this time, Al Aruri also began acting independently. In June 2014, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered in the West Bank. Israel claimed those responsible were members of Hamas, leaked to the press that Al Aruri was the mastermind of the attack, and launched a bombing campaign on Gaza that killed more than 2,000 people, most of them civilians. The Hamas leadership in Qatar denied that their group had anything to do with the attack, but to the surprise of many, Al Aruri called a press conference in Turkey where he acknowledged responsibility: “The will of the people.” […] culminated in the heroic operation of the al-Qasam Brigades by detaining the three settlers from Hebron.” A year later, the Turkish Foreign Ministry stated categorically: “Al Aruri is not in Turkey.”
Under pressure from the United States and Israel – a country with which Turkey has tried to restore diplomatic ties – Ankara decided to expel him. However, Hamas's number two did not go to Doha, where the organization's other heavyweights were based, but settled in Lebanon.
There, as head of Hamas' Beirut office, he again demonstrated his skills as a negotiator, appearing in 2017 with Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah after successive interviews with Iranian and Lebanese officials to announce the restoration of relations. fractured due to differences resulting from the Syrian Civil War. This reassembled a fundamental piece of the puzzle of Iranian influence in the region.
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