Israelis are preparing for a response to the assassinations this week of the political leader of Hamas and a commander of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, Israel-based analysts told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr and Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh, who was a key figure in Gaza ceasefire negotiations, were killed within hours of each other in Beirut and Tehran respectively. Israel has not commented on Haniyeh’s death but has claimed responsibility for Shukr’s. Israeli military strategists have said Shukr was behind a recent attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 children, though Hezbollah has denied responsibility.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has vowed “severe punishment” for Israel in retaliation for Haniyeh’s assassination in the Iranian capital. Iranian leaders have vowed “severe revenge.” As thousands of people in Tehran took to the streets to mourn the Hamas leader, Iran’s leading newspapers covered the event through themes of revenge, mourning and defiance.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, for his part, said a response was “inevitable”.
Anticipating such a response, the Israeli military said it was on “high alert,” according to Israeli media, which reported that Israel was seeking to finalize an international coalition to help deflect an attack.
In April, after Israel struck the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Israel said that with help from the United States, Britain and France, it had intercepted missiles and drones launched by Iran in an unprecedented attack.
“General feeling of anxiety”
Footage shot by Middle East Eye on the streets of Tel Aviv, Israel, showed a mixed mood among the population. One woman said she felt “unsafe” and had cancelled her plans Wednesday morning after Haniyeh’s assassination. Another woman told the outlet that people were “happy” about the assassination but were aware that it could spark a wider war.
“People are tense, for sure,” said Ori Goldberg, a Tel Aviv-based expert on Israeli politics. “There are fewer people on the streets, there is a general sense of anxiety, but it’s not as hysterical as in October, when people were convinced that Hezbollah was going to invade the country from the north,” he said, describing the days after the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas in southern Israel. That fear has not come to fruition.
The assassinations restored some level of public confidence in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the military after the Oct. 7 attacks, widely viewed by experts and the Israeli public as an intelligence failure, said Israeli pollster and former Netanyahu aide Mitchell Barak.
But Barak added: “I don’t think anyone knows what’s going to happen now. I think everyone is trying to figure out what the answer is going to be or where it’s going to come from.”
Public satisfaction and dissociation
“Apart from the timing, the two assassinations have nothing in common,” said Alon Pinkas, an Israeli diplomat and columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
According to Pinkas, Shukr’s assassination is a response to the Golan attack. On the other hand, the assassination of Haniyeh, killed just hours after attending the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, could provoke a stronger response.
“Of course, Haniyeh’s assassination could have been an opportunistic act, born out of a need for revenge and a love of drama and fireworks,” Pinkas said, before adding that he thought it unlikely that Israel’s political or military leaders did not consider the consequences of the assassination. “If the reports we see in The New York Times are accurate, suggesting that a bomb had been planted in his home months earlier, that means that the timing and location of the assassination were deliberate, leaving Iran with no choice but to escalate hostilities, ending any chance of a hostage deal or a ceasefire.”
Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran appears to have been designed to weaken Iran, Pinkas said. But the choice of target is less clear, he added.
Unlike Yahya Sinwar, the main Hamas leader in Gaza, Haniyeh moved to Qatar in 2019 and was seen as a relatively moderate political figure within Hamas and one of the top candidates to end the conflict and secure the release of captives held in Gaza since October 7, a major concern of the Israeli public.
Still, Goldberg said, his death generated some public satisfaction.
“It may sound strange, I know, but there is a certain degree of dissociation in public opinion at work here,” Goldberg said. “Given the context, public opinion has little trouble distinguishing between the call for the return of the hostages and the celebration of the death of the man with whom Israel was in talks to achieve it,” he said, referring to the trauma Israelis felt following the events of October 7.
Netanyahu’s critics, both in Israel and abroad, were quick to suggest that the high-profile nature of Haniyeh’s assassination could be a ploy by the embattled prime minister to prolong and escalate the conflict in order to avoid the collapse of his fragile coalition government and the need for early elections.
For now, on the streets of Tel Aviv, “there is anxiety,” Goldberg said. “But there is also a sense of resignation. There is a sense that this is Israel’s destiny. People believe that Israel will always have to defend itself, and with that comes this idea of total impunity. For many, that’s just the way it is.”
