The first assassination outside of Gaza may be a sign of what’s to come.
Israel’s assassination of the Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri by drone strike in Beirut on January 2 suggests that the Israel-Hamas war could still easily spill over into a regional conflict or launch a string of assassinations that drag in third-party states. What happens next will depend in part on just how unique a figure al-Arouri really was in the estimation of his Israeli adversaries, and on whether his death will prove to be an inflection point between Israel and Hezbollah.
Most of the Hamas political leaders in exile are based in the Qatari capital of Doha, where they have essentially become the organization’s diplomatic wing—useful for appearing on television or arranging financial and other forms of support. Al-Arouri, by contrast, played a significant role with Hamas’s paramilitary wing, the Qassam Brigades, which he helped found. He was a vital liaison between the movement’s external political leadership and its paramilitary leaders in Gaza, including Yahya Sinwar. Toggling between Turkey and Lebanon, he was also Hamas’s point man with its most important allies: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran’s Quds Force, and segments of Turkey’s Islamist government.
Whether al-Arouri can simply be replaced by someone else depends on the extent to which these aspects of Hamas’s operations have been institutionalized. His death could well leave significant gaps in Hamas’s ability to network with key allies, and it is surely a blow to an organization currently fending off an Israeli onslaught.
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Israeli leaders have continuously vowed that they will hunt down and kill all major Hamas figures, especially those they deem responsible for October 7. But the Beirut drone attack marks the first time since October 7 that Israel has taken out a major Hamas figure outside Gaza. What if it is just the beginning of an international campaign?
Qatar would then become the place to watch. Hamas politicians such as Ismail Hanniyeh, Khaled Mishal, Mousa Abu Marzouk, and Fathi Hamad found refuge in Qatar when they were forced to flee Damascus after the uprising in Syria in 2011. But a campaign of assassinations in Qatar would prompt a major crisis with a relatively friendly Gulf Arab country (Israel had an official trade office in Doha for a number of years in the 1990s). It could also greatly irritate the United States, which has a strong military partnership with Qatar—so much so that the forward headquarters of the United States Central Command, the Al-Udeid air base, is situated there.
Unlike its Gulf Arab neighbors, however, Qatar has not altered its pro-Hamas policies or rhetoric since the October 7 massacres in southern Israel, and it has blamed Israel entirely for the violence. Qatar has gotten away with this by making itself an invaluable go-between in hostage negotiations, and because of its extremely close relationship with the Pentagon. If Israel is serious about taking out other major Hamas leaders, Qatar may be forced to finally alter its policies and show these Hamas honchos the door, inviting them to leave immediately for Lebanon, Syria, Iran, or the most obvious far-flung refuge, Algeria. This would mark a sea change in the political and ideological landscape of the Middle East—the first time, after decades of pressure from other countries, that Qatar was finally forced to back down from its long-standing policy of supporting and succoring Islamist radicals.
Then again, maybe al-Arouri’s role in Hamas really was so singular that this assassination was a one-off, and not the opening act in an assassination campaign that would produce this potential reckoning for Qatar. Even if that is the case, the killing could easily have regional implications, particularly for Lebanon.
Read: The Middle East conflict that the U.S. can’t stay out of
The pattern of reciprocal attacks at the Israel-Lebanon border since October 7 has been dangerous but contained: Both sides tend to regard skirmishes that take place within a mile of the border in either direction, and involve limited deaths, as routine violence that does not demand an escalatory response to restore deterrence. The assassination has tested that restraint.
Israel seems to have anticipated as much, in taking care to ensure that all who perished in the drone strike were Hamas or Muslim Brotherhood members, rather than Hezbollah fighters; this has left Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, with some wiggle room in responding. Israel also issued a statement in which it did not accept responsibility for the killing, but stressed that whoever had struck al-Arouri was not striking at Lebanon.
Nasrallah has walked a careful line in response. He vowed revenge, saying that his forces would respond “on the battlefield” with an effort to “liberate every inch of Lebanese soil,” implicitly referring to several villages that Lebanon regards as still occupied by Israel. But in his regular Friday speech last week, he strongly suggested that the skirmishing would not surpass the level that has until now been considered acceptable.
Nonetheless, there is talk of escalation—on the part not of Hezbollah but of Israel. A prevailing atmosphere of insecurity has led the Israeli government to evacuate about 80,000 of its citizens from northern villages, and at least 75,000 Lebanese have evacuated themselves (receiving virtually no support from their dysfunctional government) from their country’s south. Israel has declared the Hezbollah presence in southern Lebanon to be totally unacceptable and is demanding that it move its troops farther north, ideally beyond the Litani River, consistent with Israel’s interpretation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which was adopted after the last major Israel-Hezbollah war, in 2006.
Hezbollah is under tremendous pressure in Lebanon not to enter another war with Israel: Lebanon’s economy is in total collapse, the country has been without a president for its dysfunctional and paralyzed government for more than a year, and a likely devastating war with Israel would serve no national purpose whatsoever. Israel, for its part, is primarily focused on crushing Hamas and freeing its hostages in Gaza. But important figures in Israel’s war cabinet, including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, have been agitating since the earliest days of the war that Israel should preemptively strike Hezbollah.
Read: When leaders fail
Gallant was earlier restrained by pressure from the U.S. government as well as from more moderate figures in the war cabinet, such as Benny Gantz. But now his faction seems to be gaining the upper hand and is loudly threatening a war with Hezbollah on the grounds that Israel’s citizens must be allowed to return to their northern villages in peace and security. The evacuations are likely a pretext, given that many in this hard-right faction wanted to strike Hezbollah even before they took place.
The Biden administration’s de facto negotiator on this issue, Amos Hochstein, has reportedly been pressing tirelessly for a compromise between Israel’s demand for withdrawal and Hezbollah’s unwillingness to appear to be bullied or to accept a change to the status quo that has persisted since 2006. Gallant and others, meanwhile, have loudly warned that time is running out and that Israel is ready to fight a new war with Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has retaliated for the Beirut assassination with a largely symbolic attack on a radar station in northern Israel, which caused no deaths or injuries and did not even put the installation out of action. Israel responded on January 8 with further escalation: It struck and killed Wissam al-Tawil, the deputy commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force, which operates in the border area with Israel. Israeli military spokespeople have threatened to go to war in Lebanon if Hezbollah does not agree to withdraw its forces from the south. The threat is either escalatory mania, born of the profound national trauma of October 7, or a remarkable exercise in bluffing and brinkmanship.
In either case, the Biden administration must urgently scramble to find a formula that both Israel and Hezbollah can live with—or find itself once again uncomfortably compelled to restrain the Israelis by employing the president’s new favorite word: Don’t.
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