Israel’s ‘nightmare’ and who was the Hamas leader who was killed in a drone attack in Lebanon, Saleh al-Aruri?
After the death of a key Hamas leader in a drone attack in Beirut, Israel has said that the attack was on Hamas and not on Lebanon, but after that, Hamas and its ally Hezbollah have threatened serious consequences.
Regarding this operation, the Israeli spokesman said that Saleh al-Aruri was killed in a surgical strike against the leadership of Hamas.
Israeli spokesman Mark Reggio declined to confirm whether Israel had carried out the killing, but told US TV channel MSNBC that ‘whoever did it, it should be clear that it was. There was no attack on the Lebanese state.
Hamas strongly condemned the killing, while its ally Hezbollah called it an attack on Lebanon’s sovereignty.
Meanwhile, Lebanon’s prime minister has accused Israel of trying to “drag Lebanon into the front”.
According to Lebanese media, the deputy political leader of Hamas, Saleh al-Aruri, was killed in a drone strike in southern Beirut along with six other people, including two Hamas military commanders and four other members.
Saleh al-Aruri is said to have been a key figure in Hamas’s armed wing, the Qasim Brigades, and a close ally and associate of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. He was acting as a liaison between his group and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Saleh al-Arouri was born on August 19, 1966, in the village of Arora, northwest of Ramallah, and studied Sharia at Hebron University.
Saleh al-Aruri joined the Muslim Brotherhood at an early age and then joined Hamas operatives in 1987 and participated in the establishment of the al-Qassim Brigades in the West Bank between 1991 and 1992.
Ismat Mansour, who spent 20 years in Israeli prisons, told the BBC that he had been with Saleh al-Aroori for many years since 1994.
Mansoor says that al-Aroori spent a long time in Israeli custody, but in no case, “the charges against him were not proved.”
Saleh al-Arouri was reportedly released a decade after his arrest in 2007, but was re-arrested by Israel in 2010.
In this context, Mansour says that from inside the prison Al-Aruri played an important role in leading the prisoner exchange agreement under which 1027 Palestinian prisoners were released, including the current leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar.
Mansour said that al-Arouri and Sinwar met with Hamas leaders in the Negev prison and they finalized the details of the final agreement. There were obstacles for movement leaders abroad. He was then released several months before the contract was completed. They may be given space to finalize the arrangements for the exchange agreement.
After that, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the removal of Saleh al-Arouri from the Palestinian territories, from where he moved to Syria and then to the southern outskirts of Lebanon, after Turkey and Qatar, to Hezbollah’s main stronghold in Beirut. Is.
Saleh al-Aruri was elected as a member of Hamas’ political bureau in 2010 and then as vice president in 2017, in what was seen at the time as Hamas’s endorsement of its war against Israel, which included a The figure was chosen to lead military operations in the West Bank and is close to Iran in the movement’s second-highest post.
According to Palestinian news reports at the time, a few days after his election, Saleh al-Aruri visited Tehran and met publicly with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Saleh al-Aruri was also elected head of Hamas in the West Bank in 2021.
Al-Arouri was seen meeting with Nasrallah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad Secretary General Ziad al-Nakhla after a Hamas-led attack on Israel in October last year killed more than 1,200 people.
According to Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV, the three leaders discussed ways to stop and succeed in Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.
Al-Arouri has long been Israel’s most wanted man, accused of being the ‘architect’ of attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank, of firing rockets from Gaza and Lebanon, and has been described by Israeli media as a terrorist. ‘s nightmare and the ‘godfather’ of Iran-Hezbollah relations. Apart from this, he is also included in the US list of international terrorists.
It should be noted that Israeli forces demolished al-Arouri’s house in late October and arrested 20 people, including his brother and nephews.