The location where Al-Arouri was killed on Tuesday — in Dahiya, a densely populated residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Beirut where Hezbollah controls — was seen as particularly provocative, raising fears that the Lebanese armed group, which has exchanged fire with Israel over Their shared border is long, but it has avoided all-out war, and may feel forced to intensify its response.
While Israel has not publicly claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attack, it has vowed to hunt down Hamas leaders and retaliate against accomplices on October 7. The Israeli military's punitive war in Gaza has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, but the group's leadership structure remains largely intact.
Last month, Israeli media published leaked recordings of Ronen Bar, head of Israel's Shin Bet internal security agency, vowing to find and eliminate Hamas leaders “everywhere” in the world, including Lebanon, Turkey and Qatar.
“It will take a few years, but we will be there to do it,” he said in recordings broadcast by the Kan public broadcaster. “This is our Munich,” he added, referring to a series of Israeli assassinations in the 1970s that targeted Palestinians involved in the killing of 11 Israelis at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Nasrallah's speech, announced in December, was intended to commemorate the US assassination of Iranian top commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq in 2020. But analysts expect he will focus on Tuesday's attack, which Hamas said led to the deaths of six other members. In the group, they included two commanders in the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas, which Al-Arouri helped found.
Al-Arouri has been meeting regularly with Nasrallah, who has been in hiding since Lebanon's war with Israel in 2006. A Hezbollah spokesman confirmed that the two men were scheduled to meet on Wednesday, because “every time he is here he meets with Sayyed,” referring to Nasrallah.
Al-Arouri “is the one who traveled between here and Turkey; He had the link between the inside [Gaza] The spokesman told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the group's rules. “He was a major player on the political and military levels.”
Amal Saad, a lecturer in politics and international relations at Cardiff University who follows Hezbollah closely, said Al-Arouri was seen as a political emissary of sorts. In 2017, Al-Arouri was part of the Hamas delegation that visited Iran, at a time when relations between the two parties deteriorated due to differing positions regarding the civil war in Syria.
Al-Arouri’s assassination came at a time when Israel announced the withdrawal of some of its forces from northern Gaza, as part of what it described as the “third phase” of the war. Saad said that Nasrallah's speech is expected to provide clues about how Hezbollah will behave during this new phase.
“He won't really give any details; “The party never does that, and it never does that,” Saad said. But because Israel has vowed to target Hamas leaders for years to come, Nasrallah should expect more attacks on Lebanese soil, she said.
She added that what protects Hamas leaders in Lebanon is the “balance of deterrence” and “the knowledge that Israel will not dare” to attack Beirut. Now that that threshold has been crossed, she said measures will need to be taken to protect the remaining leadership outside Gaza, which will likely entail going underground or into hiding. She added that this may be what saves Lebanon from an all-out war.
Saad said there were two messages from Tuesday's attack. “The first thing for Hezbollah: You can no longer harbor Hamas activists. Lebanon will no longer be a haven for Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” she said. The second, clearer message is to Hamas leaders: that there is no safe place.
She added that the challenge facing Hezbollah will be to respond in a cautious and measured way “to ensure that Israel understands that you will not be able to do this again,” but without dragging the country into a full-scale war.
In August, Al-Arouri told the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen TV channel that repeated Israeli threats against his life are “part of the price we pay.” The 57-year-old said he did not expect to reach his current age, and predicted that assassinations and other actions carried out by the Israeli government could push the region into an “all-out war.”
Since October, groups aligned with Iran across the region, including Hezbollah, have retaliated for the Israeli attack on Gaza, with attacks targeting Israeli or US interests.
However, the threat of a broader regional conflagration remained ever-present as attacks continued and even escalated, sparking more forceful rhetoric and military responses from the United States and Israel.
Some of the most devastating attacks were carried out by the Houthis, an armed group that controls northern Yemen and also has ties to Iran. The group has carried out missile and drone attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea, saying it aims to prevent Israeli-owned ships, or ships bound for Israel, from crossing as long as the Gaza blockade continues.
On Sunday, an attempt by Houthi militants to board a container ship in the Red Sea culminated in a clash between US Navy helicopters and the militants, resulting in the killing of 10 Houthi militants. This was the first direct clash since October between the US military and the militant group, and led to fears of further escalation in one of the world's busiest sea routes.
Before Al-Arouri's killing on Tuesday, Israel intensified its attacks outside its borders, including suspected attacks inside Syria. Iranian official media reported that one of these raids, which took place in Damascus on Christmas Day, led to the killing of a high-ranking Iranian general, Sayyed Radi Mousavi.
