The killing of deputy Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut on Tuesday evening was a dangerous gamble by Israel – assuming it was behind the attack – and the consequences remain to be seen.
On the one hand, there is no question that al-Arouri needed to die. He was one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, was the orchestrator of countless terrorist attacks against Israel in the West Bank, where he oversaw Hamas terror cells, and was one of the operatives charged with facilitating contacts and relations between Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah.
Al Arouri’s death did not come as a surprise. He long spoke about becoming a martyr and knew that one day Israel would catch up with him. Operationally, if the strike was carried out by Israel, it was also not that difficult. Israel knew that al-Arouri spent most of his time in Lebanon, in Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood – a known Hezbollah stronghold where he probably thought that he had some immunity.
Nevertheless, Israel would have had the ability to track him there – mostly from the air – without too much difficulty. The missile fired at the third floor of the Beirut apartment building showed the precise nature of the bombing. The missiles blew out half of the third floor. The other half appeared to remain intact. Another missile struck a car on the street below. Just that car and not others parked nearby.
The strategic intelligence of the IDF
This shows the quality of the intelligence. Israel, if it was behind the attack, knew the exact location of its target. It had likely followed him for days, knew his schedule, where he was going and when the right time would be to attack.
On the surface, this is not very different than the dozens of similar targeted killings that Israel has carried out over the years, mostly in the Gaza Strip and against Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist leaders: Salah Shehada in 2002, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 2004, his successor Abdel Aziz Rantisi a few weeks later, Ahmed Jabari in 2012, and many others.
WHAT MADE the strike against al-Arouri a gamble was the location and the timing. Bombing a target in the Dahiya is not a move that Israel would have made without careful consideration, especially when tensions with Hezbollah are at an all-time high with daily fighting along the border. Hezbollah has yet to fire long-range missiles into Israel. Will the strike in Beirut now push it over the edge?
The second gamble has to do with the hostages. On the one hand, it is natural to assume that due to the strike, Hamas will call off negotiations for another swap like the one that took place a few weeks ago and saw the release of more than 100 hostages. On the other hand, it is possible that due to the al-Arouri killing, there will be more pressure on Hamas leaders – especially those who reside overseas – to reach a deal and maybe even include their immunity as one of the new conditions.
It was fitting that the killing of al-Arouri took place on Tuesday. Earlier that day, Zvi Zamir, the former IDF general and head of the Mossad, passed away at the age of 98. Zamir was the Mossad chief in 1972, when the agency launched “Operation Wrath of God,” a targeted assassination campaign that sent the Mossad’s top unit to hunt down every terrorist involved in the attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes on the sidelines of the Olympic games in Munich.
Operation Wrath of God was extensive and reportedly continued into the mid-1980s. It illustrated an important Israeli ethos – no matter how long it takes and how far it will need to go, Israel will not let the murderers of Jews get away. The killing of al-Arouri is just the latest example.
There is a “but,” though. While impressive, killing a top Hamas operative in Lebanon – where the Israeli Air Force can operate quite freely – is not as hard as it is to kill someone in a place like Iran or even in the Gaza Strip, where, despite 90 days of war – at the time of writing this column on Thursday afternoon – the Hamas leadership is still intact.
And this is important to keep in mind: while al-Arouri’s killing will undermine Hamas operations in the West Bank and possibly the continued support of Iran and Hezbollah, in the longer term, he will be replaced, possibly even by someone who is more cunning, lethal, and dangerous.
THIS WAS the lesson, for example, that Israel learned in 1992 when an IAF helicopter fired a missile at a car in southern Lebanon, killing then-Hezbollah leader Abbas Musawi and leading to the appointment of Hassan Nasrallah as successor, someone whom everyone in the Israeli defense establishment believes is far more dangerous than his predecessor.
Despite this risk, there is little underestimation of the value of eliminating the leadership of a terrorist organization. It has the ability to be the blow that brings the organization down. By destroying the centralized power base, even if there are still gunmen, they will have a harder time operating without clear guidance, leadership, and command-and-control infrastructure.
The problem is that doing so over the last 90 days in Gaza has not been easy. Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and others remain alive, hidden somewhere in the hundreds of kilometers of tunnels which exist under the rubble in Gaza. Their elimination is crucial, not just for the ultimate objective of toppling Hamas, which is hard to imagine without the elimination of the leadership, but also for Israel’s storytelling purposes.
Storytelling is important in any crisis, but especially in a conflict like the one that Israel is currently engaged in with Hamas. The reason is that without the right narrative, it will be hard to claim a victory in an asymmetric war with Hamas, which is not affected by the conquering of territory or the elimination of infrastructure and terrorist gunmen.
If, for example, Israel were to end its war now with Yahya Sinwar still alive and in control of Gaza, would it be able to declare victory? Or, what would happen if Sinwar were eliminated but the hostages remained in Gaza, or vice versa? That is why Israel needs something, and the elimination of Hamas’s top leadership can provide that.
The killing of al-Arouri was an important first step in that direction. Time will tell if Israel can finish the job.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.