The Hamasian leader was shot yesterday on the southern outskirts of Beirut Saleh al-Arouri, right-hand man of Ismail Haniyeh and number two in the political office. Israel had warned him and kept his promise: Hamas leaders would not be safe even abroad. Al-Arouri is the highest ranking official among those killed so far. According to Lebanese television, the explosion was caused by a drone: images transmitted by the broadcaster show a gash inside the building and the destroyed carcass of a vehicle. With Arouri they were killed five other exponents of Hamas.
The attack took place in the Dahieh neighborhood, an area considered a stronghold of Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian militia allied with Hamas: for this reason the Palestinian leaders probably felt protected from possible Israeli operations. The 58-year-old Arouri was one of Hamas's top leaders, among the founders of the group's military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, and number two in its political wing. He also had close ties to both Iran and Hezbollah.
Four years ago Qassem Soleimani was hit in Iraq
Another symbolic date was chosen. Yet another. To Hamas, which on 7 October attacked Israel fifty years after the Yom Kippur War, Israel decides to respond in the same way as when it was struck Qassem Soleimani, the generalissimo of the Iranian Pasdaran eliminated exactly four years ago, in Iraq, by the Americans. Since 2015, the US had placed a bounty on Al-Arouri's head from 5 to 10 million dollars.
Has the red line been crossed?
And even the Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, when asked what "the red line" was to be crossed before the targeted executions began, responded a few days ago in a press conference: "If you hear that we attacked Beirut, you will understand that they have crossed the red line”. Where the reference is, of course, to Iran and Hezbollah.
Al-Arouri had become an almost daily interlocutor of Beirut's Shiite leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Own today at 18, in memory of the killing of General Soleimani, a TV message from Nasrallah himself was announced: from the words of the Lebanese Guide, if the intervention is confirmed, perhaps it will be understood if, when and how Hezbollah is preparing their revenge. He set out his line in August: “Any assassination on Lebanese soil against a Lebanese, a Palestinian, a Syrian or an Iranian will receive a strong response.” “Israel will pay the price for its crimes, including this one,” immediately thunders Ashan Attia, head of the Jihad. “It is a cowardly assassination – warns Hamas TV – Israel will not stop the resistance”.
The Lebanese Prime Minister: we have now entered a new phase of the war
“This killing — the Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati — aims to drag our country into one new phase Of the war". From Jerusalem they know it well. And American sources have no doubts about the paternity of the drone: the convocation of the War Cabinet in Tel Aviv in the evening was postponed by two hours, while the discussion on the so-called "Day After" plan, a future subdivision, was deleted from the agenda. of Gaza for civil and military areas that Netanyahu had to illustrate after the withdrawal of some brigades from the Strip. Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs ordered all Israeli ministers not to comment on the Beirut attack. This is also because it was the new Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, who let slip a few hours earlier that "we are now on the brink of the Third World War with Iran and radical Islam".
Al-Arouri was the one who in a famous video is seen rejoicing on October 7 together with Haniyeh, while listening to the news about the massacre in the kibbutzim. One who had three Israeli teenagers kidnapped and killed and is considered one of the masterminds of Black October. His role, however, was not only that of a bloodthirsty terrorist: in the past he had been the negotiator for the release of the soldier Gilad Shalit, he sat at the table of the Turkish leader Erdogan, he had been the most favorable to a reconciliation with Abu Mazen's Fatah. A few weeks ago, he said he was against the release of Israeli hostages without a real truce. His killing is only the beginning of what will happen, says an Israeli military source: "The hunt for the leaders of Hamas, without limits and without borders." Well beyond any red line.
