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BEIRUT — An explosion in a Beirut suburb Tuesday killed Saleh Arouri, a senior Hamas leader, the group said in statement, and the attack raised the specter of the conflict in Gaza expanding into the kind of wider war that Israel, Iran and its allied groups have so far avoided.
Arouri, the second-in-command of Hamas’s political office, was killed in Dahieh, a densely populated stronghold of Hezbollah, the Iran-aligned Lebanese militant and political group. A spokesperson for Hezbollah told The Post that the attack involved a drone armed with three rockets and blamed Israel.
Israel has not claimed responsibility for the strike, and the Israel Defense Forces declined to comment on the attack.
A U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said the IDF was responsible for the strike targeting Arouri.
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Danny Danon, a member of the Knesset from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, congratulated the IDF and Israeli intelligence agencies in a tweet Tuesday night “for killing the senior Hamas official Saleh Arouri in Beirut.”
“We will reach all those involved in the [Oct. 7] massacre and settle accounts with them,” he added.
Since Hamas’s attack inside Israel on Oct. 7, Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged near daily rocket and artillery strikes along the Lebanese-Israeli border. More than 100 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in the exchanges, which have led to the displacement of over 23,000 residents in southern Lebanon.
Amal Saad, an analyst whose work focuses on Hezbollah, said the attack that killed Arouri is expected to lead to retaliation from the group. Hezbollah, she said, needs to determine how to respond without tipping the country into an all-out war.
“It’s calibrating a response that falls in between, and strikes the sub-threshold level,” Saad said.
Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah had warned Israel in August against assassinations inside Lebanon. In a speech at the time, he said “any assassination on Lebanese soil that targets a Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, Iranian or others will certainly have a strong reaction.” He added that Lebanon will not become an arena “open for assassinations, and we will not at all accept changing the existing rules of engagement.”
Nasrallah is set to make another speech Wednesday, marking the anniversary of the U.S. killing of Qasem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force.
In a statement Tuesday, Hezbollah said it considered the assassination “in the heart of the southern suburb of Beirut a serious assault on Lebanon, its people, its security, sovereignty and resistance.” The message behind the attack, it said, carried “great symbolism.”
“We in Hezbollah affirm that this crime will not at all pass without a response and punishment,” it said. “[Hezbollah’s] hand is on the trigger.”
Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, said the “cowardly” attack also killed Samir Fandi and Azzam al-Aqra’, two leaders in the military wing of Hamas, as well as four other members of the group.
In a televised speech, Haniyeh said Arouri was killed “after a life full of sacrifice, jihad and resistance, and after working in all fields for Palestine,” adding that Arouri had fulfilled his dream of martyrdom for the Palestinian cause.
“These attacks will only reinforce [Hamas]’s strength, tenacity and determination,” he said.
Arouri, who has spent several stints in Israeli prisons, helped found the Qassem Brigades, Hamas’s military arm, and was accused by Israel in 2014 of being the mastermind behind the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers. The killings in the West Bank triggered an Israeli assault on Gaza that killed over 2,000 Palestinians.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the attack was “a new Israeli crime that definitely aims to bring Lebanon into a new phase of confrontations.”
A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said the attack is “another spark in the veins of resistance and motivation to fight against the Zionist occupation, not only in Palestine, but in the region.”
Iran and its network of allied militias, despite almost daily militia attacks across the region, including on U.S. bases, have so far avoided the kind of escalation that would lead to war with either Israel or the United States, analysts said. And there was nothing in the statements from Tehran on Tuesday suggesting that its approach has changed.
Israeli analysts said the targeted nature of the strike, and the fact that it did not appear to kill or injure any Hezbollah leaders, was meant to avoid drawing the Lebanese group into a broader war.
Mark Regev, an adviser to Netanyahu, told MSNBC that “whoever did it, it must be clear: That this was not an attack on the Lebanese state.”
“Whoever did this did a surgical strike against the Hamas leadership,” he said in the interview.
Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, said it was in Hezbollah’s interest — and that of Iran, its sponsor — to avoid a full-fledged war with Israel. “I don’t think that this operation changes this calculation,” he said.
“It was also sending a signal to Hezbollah that Israel was targeting Hamas leaders and not Hezbollah capabilities and leadership in Lebanon,” he said. “So it’s not an escalation toward Hezbollah but rather an implementation of the Israeli intention to get at Hamas leadership.”
Claire Parker in Cairo, Alex Horton and Bryan Pietsch in Washington, Miriam Berger in Tel Aviv, Ellen Francis and Mohamad El Chamaa in Beirut, Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv, Hazem Balousha in Amman, Jordan, and Hajar Harb in London contributed to this report.