Analysis Beirut killing puts target on Hamas leaders - wherever they are

You’re reading an excerpt from the Today’s WorldView newsletter. Sign up to get the rest free, including news from around the globe and interesting ideas and opinions to know, sent to your inbox every weekday. Even after almost three months of intense urban warfare, Israel has not killed many of Hamas’s top leaders in Gaza. But the killing of Saleh Arouri, a senior Hamas official living in Beirut, shows that they may have more luck outside of the Strip, raising the prospect of a new and perhaps more unpredictable stage of the conflict. Israel has not made any claims of responsibility for the Tuesday attack on Arouri, though the target and method — two precision missiles fired by drone into a dense neighborhood — leave few with much doubt. Israeli officials have repeatedly warned that they would strike Hamas officials outside of Palestinian territory since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel that left 1,200 dead. The death of Arouri, the highest-ranking member of Hamas to be killed since Oct. 7, presents major practical and symbolic problems for the Palestinian organization. Political leader Yehiya Sinwar and military chief Mohammed Deif, both considered masterminds of the attack on Israel, are presumed to be in hiding amid Israel’s military operation in Gaza. The strike in Beirut means Hamas officials outside of Israel and the Palestinian territories may now be forced to go into hiding, too. Some of the organization’s most important figures, such as Qatar-based political head Ismail Haniyeh, had lived relatively openly in foreign cities. Other lower-level Hamas operatives dotted around the world should now realize they are at risk, too. Israel has a long history of elaborate assassination plots, sometimes chasing targets for decades, long after they’ve stopped posing a threat. Speaking the day after the strike that killed Arouri, the head of Mossad, David Barnea, compared the situation to Operation Wrath of God, the multiyear plan to kill Palestinian militants linked to the 1972 attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.“It’ll take time, as it took time after the Munich massacre, but we will put our hands on them wherever they are,” Barnea said at the funeral of former Mossad head Zvi Zamir, who led Israel’s intelligence service at the time of the Munich attack that killed 11 members of the country’s Olympic delegation. Little is known about how Arouri was tracked and targeted. A Hezbollah spokesperson told The Washington Post that the Hamas official had been due to meet with Hasan Nasrallah, the elusive leader of the Lebanese paramilitary group. The killing of Arouri took place in Dahieh, a dense suburb of Beirut where Hezbollah dominates. Though the attack did not kill any Hezbollah officials, it was widely seen as an affront to the power of the group. In a speech Wednesday, Nasrallah said Israel would face “a response and punishment” without revealing specifics.

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