Death of Hamas number 2: the Palestinian “resistance” will not give in, affirms the Islamist movement

Saleh al-Arouri, senior Hamas representative in Beirut, was killed on Tuesday January 2 in an Israeli drone strike. It targeted the offices of the Palestinian Islamist movement, responsible for the terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, which killed more than 1,140 Israelis, mostly civilians.

Several other Hamas members were reportedly eliminated in this targeted operation. The other victims would be bodyguards of Saleh al-Arouri, present in the Hamas offices, located in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, stronghold of their ally Hezbollah.

A senior Hamas official said that the assassination of its number two in a strike in Beirut blamed on Israel would not bring the “resistance” to its knees. “The cowardly assassinations carried out by the Zionist occupier against the leaders and symbols of our Palestinian people inside and outside Palestine will not succeed in breaking the will and resilience of our people, nor in hindering the continuation of its valiant resistance,” said Ezzat al-Rishq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, in a statement.

The announcement of Saleh al-Arouri's death sparked condemnation in the region. The Lebanese Prime Minister denounced the Israeli strike on the suburbs of Beirut as an “Israeli crime”. In a statement, he estimated that “this new Israeli crime aims to drag Lebanon into a new phase of confrontation” with Israel. Clashes between the Israeli army and Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, were until now limited to border areas in southern Lebanon.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh condemned the “assassination” of Hamas number two, also warning of the consequences of “this crime”. Although Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have been at odds since 2007, Mr. Shtayyeh “condemned the assassination that took place in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital on Tuesday evening, where Saleh al-Arouri, the vice president of the office politics of the Hamas movement, was killed, as well as two of his companions. He called the strike “a crime perpetrated by known criminals” and warned “against the risks and consequences that could ensue,” according to a statement from his office. Same story with Islamic Jihad, an armed group in Gaza, which denounced an “attempt by the Zionist enemy (...) to drag the entire region into war”.