Saleh al-Arouri assassination: Netanyahu's political gains

On Nov. 22, Benjamin Netanyahu had declared at a press conference in Tel Aviv that he instructed Mossad, the foreign intelligence service, “to act against Hamas leaders wherever they may be.”

More than a month later, Saleh al-Arouri, number two in the Islamist movement and founder of its armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, was killed in a strike attributed to Israel — for which no claim was made — in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Al-Arouri was the most senior Hamas commander killed since Operation al-Aqsa Flood began on Oct. 7, and the first outside of Gaza.

Under 24 hours later, the head of Mossad stated that his service was “committed to settling accounts with the murderers who descended on the Gaza border.”

If Israeli officials had set the tone, Tuesday night's move proved risky. The attack was carried out on Lebanese soil, and fuelled the scenario of a regional conflagration. Israel would certainly have made the calculation that Hezbollah and Iran do not wish to move towards this eventuality, according to several observers, and bet on the other side on the gains arising from the elimination of Saleh al-Arouri.

Victory narrative

Almost three months after the start of Israel's military campaign in Gaza, Israel remains far from its objective of “wiping out” the Islamist movement, although Tel Aviv regularly insists that the offensive could continue for many months. While Israel boasts of having destroyed numerous Hamas tunnels, its preferred targets in Gaza, such as Yahya Sinouar and Mohammad Deif, have not been brought down.

Faced with this situation, Israel can claim Saleh al-Arouri’s assassination as a ‘victory.’ “His assassination is a way for Israel to demonstrate its military capabilities, especially that in three months of war, the achievements it can point to in Gaza are very tactical and do not signal a strategic breakthrough,” observed Mairav Zonszein, American researcher at the International Crisis Group. “In a way, this assassination is above all a means of consolidating the narrative of victory at this stage,” she added.

This ‘success’ is all the more necessary for Israel to send a double message to world public opinion and to its own population. While external criticism of the images coming out of Gaza and Gaza's death toll of over 22,400 is mounting, internal discontent is on the rise.

Since the beginning of the war, at least 175 Israeli soldiers have died in the Palestinian enclave. A large proportion of Israelis are also outraged at the fate of the nearly 130 hostages still held in Gaza, some 20 of whom have been declared dead by Tel Aviv, while more than a hundred were released at the end of November under an agreement negotiated indirectly with Hamas.

Accused of negligence, Israel angered its population when the Islamist movement declared on Dec. 8 that an Israeli captive had been killed in the enclave during a rescue attempt by Israeli forces. “At this stage, it is not possible to determine the circumstances of Sahar [Baruch]'s death, and it is not known whether he was killed by Hamas or by fire from our forces,” the army said in a statement.

Further stirring controversy, the three hostages mistakenly killed by Israel in the eastern suburbs of Gaza City in mid-December had raised a white flag and were shirtless when they were shot, the Israeli army later said.

A long time coming

Saleh al-Arouri's murder also came in the wake of a major defeat for the Netanyahu government, whose controversial judicial reform had provoked massive mobilizations in the country every week before the outbreak of war.

On Monday, the Israeli supreme court rejected by a narrow majority a key part of this reform. Opposing seven of their peers, eight judges overturned a measure, adopted by the Knesset at the end of July, which limited their own power to block executive decisions deemed “unreasonable.”

Immediately after Monday's decision, the ruling Likud party and its coalition allies blasted the supreme court's setback, arguing that debates on judicial reform should be dealt with after the war was over.

Two days later, the highest judicial body postponed until the next parliamentary elections the enactment of another law in this project, limiting the possibility of declaring a prime minister unfit for office and removing him or her from office.

This is yet another blow for the head of government. Since the beginning of the war, Benjamin Netanyahu — himself implicated in three legal cases and who saw his corruption trial resume in Jerusalem at the beginning of December — has been playing for time.

“Netanyahu's plan is to ensure that the idea of victory is not clearly defined and that the war is prolonged into a war of attrition,” commented Zonszein. Israel's military campaign in Gaza has recently entered its third phase, which is expected to be of lower intensity and focused in particular on the directed elimination of its targets.

In this respect, the strike that killed Saleh al-Arouri may allow Israel to justify the long duration of the war in view of the ‘success’ achieved and the potential elimination of other Hamas or “Axis of Resistance" leaders in the future.

Hostage deal

With this attack, Benjamin Netanyahu can also seek to reassure his ultranationalist partners by reaffirming his independence from American support.

According to two Washington officials recently quoted by Axios, the Biden administration had no advance warning of Saleh al-Arouri's assassination, while a senior Israeli official told the media that Israel had informed Washington “as the operation was taking place.”

While the US has recently stepped up the pressure on its Israeli ally to move into a new phase of the war, Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and its national security minister Itamar ben-Gvir regularly threaten to leave the coalition if the authorities do not take a hard line in the ongoing war.

Over the past few days, Washington has hardened its tone in the face of statements deemed “inflammatory” by Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right coalition partners regarding the displacement of the Gazan population.

But if the head of the Israeli government can calm discontent against him for a while, Tuesday night's strike is far from dispelling all the problems. On the one hand, the assassination of Saleh al-Arouri risks complicating the possibility of a new round of exchanges of Palestinian prisoners and Israeli hostages. Several Palestinian media have reported that Hamas asked mediators after Tuesday evening to freeze the negotiation efforts that had been progressing in recent days.

According to an Egyptian source familiar with the talks quoted by The New Arab, the visit of an Israeli delegation to Cairo — one of the mediators alongside Doha and Washington — to discuss a new deal was cut short after the murder of Saleh al-Arouri.

“Israeli military operations are not working in favor of the hostages' release, but Israel continues to pretend that this is the case,” noted Zonszein.

In the face of a certain consensus within Israeli society that internal problems must be resolved at the end of the war, the Israeli population is once again likely to direct its anger at Netanyahu if a hostage deal is delayed or not completed. According to an opinion poll conducted in mid-December by the Israel Democracy Institute, 69 percent of respondents, including a majority of right-wing voters, want elections to be held immediately after the end of the war.

This article was originally published in L’Orient-Le Jour.