2024-01-02 23:14:22
by Francesco Battistini
He was in his office, he felt protected: centered by a drone. He had been living in Lebanon since 2018 and met leader Nasrallah almost daily. The Islamists: “We will take revenge”
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
JERUSALEM — They chose another symbolic date. Yet another. They too. And to Hamas, which on October 7 had attacked Israel fifty years after the Yom Kippur War, it is in the hours of another anniversary that Israel decides to respond with a new excellent murder. On the southern outskirts of Beirut, hit by a drone, the Hamasian leader Saleh al-Arouri, right-hand man of Ismail Haniyeh and number two in the political office, dies, pulverized from the sky in the same way as Qassem Soleimani, the generalissimo of the Iranian Pasdaran eliminated exactly four years ago, in Iraq, by the Americans.
Six dead, several injured: Al-Arouri is the highest ranking official among those killed so far. He was shot in his office along with Khalil al-Hayya, a senior figure and member of the Hamas politburo, as well as two commanders of the Al Qassam Brigades and bodyguards. Last night he was in the Dahieh area, a Hezbollah stronghold, between Al Musharrafiya and Al-Sharq Sweets, an area highly protected by the guardians of the Shiite revolution. Al-Arouri knew he was at the top of the list and took great precautions in his movements. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu wanted it underground even before October 7th. Since 2015, the US had placed a bounty on his head from 5 to 10 million dollars. And even the Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, when asked what the “red line” was to cross 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.”
They. Where the reference is, of course, to Iran and Hezbollah: 57-year-old Palestinian from Ramallah who had been living in Lebanon since 2018, Al-Arouri had founded the political wing of Hamas in the West Bank and had become an almost daily interlocutor of the Shiite leader of Beirut, Hassan Nasrallah. Just today at 6pm, 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 the their revenge. He had expressed 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.”
“This killing – Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati is worried – aims to drag our country into a 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 and the discussion on the so-called “Day After” plan was also canceled from the agenda. a future division of Gaza into 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”.
Few mourn someone like Al-Arouri, the man who in a famous video is seen rejoicing on October 7th 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.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani yesterday had a conversation with Secretary of State Blinken who thanked Italy for its naval commitment in the Red Sea. Maximum commitment agreed for the Palestinian population.
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January 2, 2024 (modified January 2, 2024 | 10:13 pm)
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