Israel assassinated Saleh Al-Arouri, deputy head of the political bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), this evening, Tuesday, with a march targeting an apartment in the southern suburb of Beirut, after a long record of resistance and repeated Israeli threats to assassinate him.
Tel Aviv had threatened to assassinate Al-Arouri a few months before the “Al-Aqsa Flood” battle, as it accused him of being primarily responsible for attempts to ignite what they said was the spark of a new uprising in the occupied West Bank, and renewed its threats after the attack of last October 7.
Saleh Muhammad Suleiman Al-Arouri was born in 1966 in the village of Aroura, Ramallah, in the central West Bank. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in Islamic law from Hebron University.
Al-Arouri contributed to the establishment of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades – the military wing of the Hamas movement – in the West Bank, and is considered one of the most prominent heads masterminding its arming.
The prominent Hamas leader spent more than 18 years in Israeli prisons, and was deported outside Palestine when he was released for the last time in 2010, where he was chosen as a member of the Hamas political bureau, then deputy head of its political bureau in October 2017, and a Hamas official in the West Bank.
Al-Arouri was one of the members of the negotiating team to complete the deal for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit with the Palestinian resistance, a deal known as “Loyalty of the Free” in 2011.
On October 31, the occupation forces blew up the home of Saleh Al-Arouri’s family, weeks after the start of the current war on the Gaza Strip.
