A gaping hole rips through the facade of a building in a residential area in Beirut's southern suburbs. In this Hezbollah stronghold, security forces from the Shiite movement have set up barriers to secure access. With great precision, in the late afternoon of January 2, a drone strike attributed to Israel targeted the third-floor apartment where Saleh Al-Arouri, the number two in Hamas's political office, was staying. The 57-year-old Palestinian, one of Ismail Haniyeh's most credible successors at the head of the movement, was killed along with six other people, including two military wing commanders.
This targeted assassination is Israel's worst strike against Hamas since the war in Gaza began on October 7. Near Yahya Sinouar, the leader of Hamas in the Palestinian enclave, and his military wing that planned the bloody attack that was responsible for the deaths of 1,200 people After the deaths of the people of Israel that day and the capture of more than 240 hostages, Saleh Al-Arouri was a priority target for the Jewish state. The Israeli army had previously taken responsibility for the elimination of middle managers in Gaza. This operation is therefore the first to target the movement's leaders in exile. It is a snub to Hezbollah, whose stronghold in Beirut is under attack by Israel for the first time since the 2006 war.
“His assassination is a turning point in the history of Hamas. “He was a historical figure who enjoyed great respect both in the West Bank and among all actors of the resistance axis in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq,” estimates researcher Leila Seurat at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Paris. With him, he is one of the most active architects of reconciliation with Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah and unity of the Palestinian factions eliminated by Israel. His death comes symbolically on the eve of the commemoration of the assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Ghassem Soleimani in an American drone strike in Baghdad on January 3, 2020. Hamas leader Ismaïl Haniyeh nevertheless cursed that his movement “will never be defeated “. “It is the story of resistance and the movement that becomes even stronger and more determined after the assassination of its leaders,” he added.
A radical and unifying figure
Originally from Aroura, a small village near Ramallah, where he was born in 1966, Saleh Al-Arouri joined Hamas in 1987 while studying Islam at Hebron University. He helped build the movement's military infrastructure in the West Bank and was accused of being involved in the 2014 kidnapping of three young boys that sparked a war in Gaza. He was arrested by Israel several times. The Jewish state released him in April 2010 on the condition that he leave the West Bank. From Damascus to Istanbul and then Beirut, the man joined Hamas's political office in exile until he became its number two in 2017.
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