Key Points
- An expert says a reported Israeli drone attack that killed a Hamas leader in Beirut was unprecedented.
- Lebanon's Hezbollah group, a Hamas ally, has been exchanging fire with Israel almost every day since 7 October.
- There are fears the Hamas-Israel war could escalate and spread, following the Beirut attack.
Following almost three months of war in Gaza, Israel's declared mission to destroy Hamas when a deadly drone strike was carried out in Lebanon, allegedly on its behalf.
The attack, whichthreatened to further heighten tensions in the Middle East and underlined the risk of the Hamas-Israel war spreading well beyond the Gaza Strip.
The Hezbollah group in Lebanon and the Israeli army both issued statements following the death of Arouri suggesting they wanted to avoid risking the further spread of the war beyond the Gaza Strip.
After spending long stints in Israeli prisons, Saleh Al-Arouri (pictured in 2017) lived in exile in Syria, Turkey, Qatar and finally Lebanon. Source: Getty / Anadolu
On Wednesday, a local Hezbollah official and three other members were killed in an Israeli strike on southern Lebanon, two security sources told Reuters.
Hezbollah is a Lebanese Islamist political party and militant group formed in 1982 after Israeli forces invaded southern Lebanon that year.
It is backed by Iran and leads a multi-party alliance that holds just under half the seats in Lebanon's parliament.
Hezbollah is listed as a terrorist organisation by countries including Australia, the US, Germany and the UK.
The European Union lists only its military wing as a terrorist organisation. However, Hezbollah itself makes no distinction between its political and military wings.
The drone strike in Lebanon
Arouri was killed by a drone strike in Lebanon's capital Beirut.
Hamas' al-Aqsa Radio and Lebanon's pro-Iranian Mayadeen TV confirmed word from security sources that Arouri had been killed when a drone struck a Hamas office in south Beirut.
He was one of at least seven people killed in the drone attack.
Israel neither confirmed nor denied assassinating Arouri but has promised to annihilate Hamas following the group's 7 October cross-border assault in which around 1,200 people were killed and 240 abducted.
Eyal Mayroz, a senior lecturer in peace and conflict studies at the University of Sydney, said that, while Israel had been involved in drone, missile, and rocket attacks in Lebanon, they had been mainly in the south of the country, and mainly in retaliation to attacks by Hezbollah.
Mayroz said the Lebanese government had condemned the attack, referring to it as a breach of Lebanese sovereignty.
"Even though the people that were attacked were not Lebanese, it is still a breach of Lebanon's sovereignty."
Who was Saleh al-Arouri?
Arouri was a member of the Palestinian Islamist movement's political bureau based abroad, and a co-founder of Hamas' military wing, al-Qassam Brigades.
Israel had accused Arouri of supervising and ordering Hamas attacks in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in support of militants fighting Israel's devastating air and ground offensive in Gaza.
In August, Arouri said he thought he had "lived too long" and was "waiting for" death, alluding to Israeli threats to eliminate Hamas leaders whether in Gaza or abroad.
In October, the Israeli army destroyed the West Bank house of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri, although he was already in exile at the time. Source: Getty / Anadolu
Israel had long accused him of orchestrating attacks on its citizens. But a Hamas official said he was also "at the heart of negotiations" conducted by Qatar and Egypt over the outcome of the Gaza war and the release of Hamas-held Israeli hostages.
Reactions to the deadly attack
Hamas has confirmed Arouri's death but not otherwise commented. Islamic Jihad, an allied group, swore revenge for his killing in a statement on Tuesday, saying it would "not go unpunished".
Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari did not directly comment on Arouri's killing, but said the military is ready "for any scenario" that follows.
"I won't respond to what you just mentioned," he told a reporter when asked what Israel was doing to prepare for a potential response.
"We are focused on the fight against Hamas."
Hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets of Ramallah in the Occupied West Bank to condemn Arouri's killing, chanting: "Revenge, revenge, Qassam!"
In a speech in Beirut on Wednesday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed his powerful Iran-backed Shi'ite militia "cannot be silent" following the killing.
Nasrallah said his heavily armed forces would fight to the finish if Israel chose to extend the war to Lebanon, but he made no concrete threats to act against Israel in support of Hamas.
He said there would be "no ceilings" and "no rules" to Hezbollah's fighting if Israel launched full war on Lebanon.
Lebanon's caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati condemned the drone blast as a "new Israeli crime" and said it was an attempt to pull Lebanon into war.
Mark Regev, an adviser to the Israeli prime minister, said in an interview with MSNBC TV that Israel "has not taken responsibility for this attack".
"But whoever did it, it must be clear - this was not an attack on the Lebanese state ... Whoever did this did a surgical strike against the Hamas leadership."
The United States, Israel's main supporter, has been urging it to rein in its air and ground blitz - which has demolished vast tracts of densely populated Gaza - in favour of more targeted strikes focusing on Hamas leaders.
Two explosions on Wednesday during a memorial ceremony at a cemetery in southeastern Iran killed nearly 100 people, at a time of high tension between arch-enemies Iran and Israel.
The US has rejected any suggestion that it or its ally Israel was behind the deadly blasts.
Israeli forces meanwhile kept up their aerial and ground blitz against Hamas militants in Gaza.
In Rafah near south Gaza's border with Egypt, medics said an Israeli missile strike on a house killed three people. The Gaza health ministry also said an Israeli airstrike killed and wounded dozens in north Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp.
Israel has said it tries to avoid harm to civilians but blames Hamas for embedding fighters among them, an accusation the militant group denies.
What could happen next?
Mayroz said Israel would likely experience "repercussions" for the attack from Hezbollah.
"It is difficult for them not to do anything. So, what will that thing be, whether it will come from Lebanon through Hamas operatives there, or some kind of terrorist attack against Israel somewhere is unclear, but certainly at some point, there'll be repercussions."
At the same time, he said "the question on some people's minds was, is Israel intentionally trying to escalate the front against Hezbollah in Lebanon? And if so, why?"
He said this idea was also fuelled by a recent Israeli airstrike on Iranian military adviser Sayyed Razi Mousavi.
"Hezbollah is controlled to a great extent by Iran," Mayroz said.
Mayroz says war with Israel wouldn't be widely supported by the Lebanese population, and this would act as a handbrake on further escalation by Hezbollah.
"They're one of the poorest countries in the world, so there is reluctance on the part of Hezbollah to escalate."
Israel has announced hinting at a new phase in the war amid a rising global outcry over the plight of Gaza's civilians, although it also warned its offensive has many months to run.
Egypt and Qatar , but Mayroz is not confident an agreement was close to being reached even before Arouri was killed.
"The negotiations were not very advanced, the differences between the sides are quite significant," he said.
"Hamas' position was that any condition for even a negotiation is a ceasefire or even a longer, sustainable ceasefire, which Israel of course would never agree to."
Israel believes 129 hostages remain in Gaza after some were released during a brief truce in late November and others were killed during airstrikes and rescue or escape attempts.
The war between Hamas and Israel is the latest escalation in a long-standing conflict.
Hamas is a Palestinian political and military group, which has governed the Gaza Strip since the most recent elections in 2006.
Hamas' stated aim is to establish a Palestinian state and stop the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, illegal under international law.
Hamas in its entirety is listed as a terrorist organisation by the European Union and seven other countries, including Australia.
But the UN Assembly rejected classifying Hamas as a terrorist group in a 2018 vote.
In 2021 the International Criminal Court opened an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in the Palestinian territories dating back to 2014, including the recent attacks of both Israel and Hamas.
