Lebanon Reacts As Israel Kills Top Hamas Leader, Saleh al-Arouri In Air Strike
LAGOS JANUARY 3RD (NEWSRANGERS)-Saleh al-Arouri, a top Hamas leader and a linchpin between the group and terrorist affiliates in Iran and Hezbollah, was killed in an Israeli strike in the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency and the Hezbollah-linked al-Mayadeen media outlet.
Arouri, who had a $5 million U.S. information bounty on his head, was believed by Israeli and U.S. national security officials to be involved in the funding and training of those Hamas members who conducted the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw another 240 or so dragged back to the Gaza Strip and held hostage.
The official Lebanese National News Agency condemned “the assassination” of Arouri in a posting on X, formerly known as Twitter, calling it “an attack on the sovereignty, stability and civil peace” of Lebanon. It said the blast killed a total of six people and was carried out by an Israeli drone.
The Lebanese state-run news agency also tweeted a statement that it said had been released by Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based Hamas ally, in which it mourned Arouri “and a number of his fellow mujahideen.”
“We consider the assassination of Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri and his martyred comrades in the heart of the southern suburbs of Beirut a serious attack on Lebanon, its people, its security, sovereignty and resistance,” according to the statement attributed to Hezbollah.
Hezbollah, U.S.-designated terrorist group that is also a political force in Lebanon, vowed not to let Arouri’s death go unpunished, characterizing it as a “dangerous development in the course of the war between the enemy and the axis of resistance.”
Israel has not yet commented on the alleged strike, and the Israel Defense Forces had no immediate confirmation when asked by USA TODAY. “The IDF has no comment,” a spokesman said in a text message.
‘A shadowy guy’
Based in Lebanon, Arouri, believed to be 57, was a top leader of Hamas’ political bureau and was considered by many to be the de facto leader of its military wing in the West Bank. He had also traveled widely in recent years, operating from Turkey and Qatar before setting up a Hamas operation in Lebanon where Hamas fighters could train.
Last November, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that he had told Israel’s premiere intelligence agency, the Mossad, to find and neutralize the heads of Hamas wherever they reside in the wake of the October 7 assault on southern Israel.
“They are looking for him like the Americans were looking for bin Laden” after 9/11, Udi Levy, former head of economic warfare for Mossad, told USA TODAY in its Oct. 20 story. “He is a shadow guy. He is under the radar. And believe me, these are the dangerous people, people like that.”
Levy confirmed Arouri’s death on Tuesday based on contacts within the Israeli government. “Yes, I’m very happy,” Levy told USA TODAY.
Questions about targeted killings outside Israel — and Gaza
Arouri’s death raises questions about whether – and where – Israel can target and kill suspected leaders of Hamas in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks. Netanyahu and other Israel leaders say it is their right to do so, while others disagree, citing international laws regarding sovereignty and the rule of law.
Israel conducted a similar campaign of assassinations after the Munich terrorist attacks in 1972, raising significant legal questions that have yet to be definitively resolved. In that case, Palestinian gunmen killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches in a raid at the athletes’ village in Munich in what became the worst terror attack in Olympic history.
In a follow-up X posting after confirming Arouri’s death, Lebanon’s National News Agency said, “The bombing of the suburb is a declaration of war on Lebanon after the failure of the criminal machine to achieve its goals in Gaza,” in an apparent reference to Israel.
Levy and other current and former Israeli intelligence officials told USA TODAY in October that they believe Arouri was involved in numerous other terrorist attacks against Israel, and of being the conduit between Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah that gave the Palestinian organization the capability to pull off the Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel.
Though experts told USA TODAY in October that they did not yet know what specific role Arouri might have played on Oct. 7, they said they saw him at the heart of a changing − and alarming − dynamic in which these three U.S.-designated terrorist entities are teaming up and further destabilizing the Middle East under the direction of Tehran.
“With him, I cannot go into details about the involvement,” Danny Danon, an Israeli lawmaker who sits on the Knesset foreign affairs committee, told USA TODAY when asked about Arouri. “But I can tell you that Iran is heavily involved with everything that’s happening in Gaza – the training, equipment, funding and method of fighting.”
“We have knowledge of collaboration between Tehran, Beirut and Gaza,” said Danon, who also was Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. “We are worried that the technology came from Tehran to Beirut and to Gaza.”
And Arouri, he said, “was heavily involved in that triangle.”
Arouri was a founding commander of the the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas that carried out the attacks.
And despite having spent years under U.S. terror sanctions, he traveled widely in the region, including in and out of Iran. Arouri also collaborated with terrorist figures including the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force paramilitary group, Qasem Soleimani, before he was killed by a U.S. airstrike in early 2020, Danon and other current and former Israeli and U.S. intelligence officials told USA TODAY.
Washington offered the reward of up to $5 million for information about Arouri in November 2018, saying he was “currently living freely in Lebanon” and reportedly working with Soleimani, and that he had been linked to “several terrorist attacks, hijackings, and kidnappings.”
Will Israel target more Hamas leaders internationally?
Richard Goldberg, a Trump administration Iran official, predicted that the strike that killed Arouri is just the first by Israel as it expands its counterattack on Hamas.
“Israel sent a message to all terror allies of Iran that no matter where they hide, they will never be secure,” said Goldberg, who served as the National Security Council director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction from 2019 to 2020. “Whether Hamas leaders reside in Qatar, Turkey, Lebanon, or another country, they should assume their days are numbered.”
“Hezbollah’s leadership,” Goldberg said in a post for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, “must also factor this escalation into the group’s next move.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:
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Posted by News Rangers
on Jan 3 2024. Filed under International, National.
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