Who was Saleh al-Arouri, Hamas number two, killed in the Israeli strike in Beirut?

This is undoubtedly the most important target shot down by the IDF since the beginning of the conflict between the Jewish State and Hamas. Palestinian Islamist movement No. 2 Saleh al-Arouri was killed in an Israeli strike on a Beirut suburb Tuesday night, Hamas’s political office said.

He was killed along with his bodyguards and several others in an Israeli strike on a Hamas office in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, a stronghold of Iran-backed Hezbollah.

According to the Lebanese daily L’Orient-Le Jour, Saleh Arouri, who was in his fifties, was born in the West Bank (a Palestinian territory today largely occupied by Israel) in a village near Ramallah.

After spending a total of almost twenty years in Israeli prisons, Saleh Arouri was released in 2010 on the condition that he go into exile and live in Lebanon from then on.

Organizer of several attacks

Accused by Israel of organizing numerous terrorist attacks, in 2017 he was elected deputy head of the Hamas politburo Ismail Haniyeh, officially becoming number two in the Islamist movement. According to the Israeli daily Jerusalem Post, he was suspected of playing an important role in Hamas terrorist activities in the West Bank.

According to the Lebanese newspaper, he was also one of the main negotiators during discussions aimed at releasing Israeli hostages from Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. That didn’t stop the Israeli army from blowing up his house on October 31 in the village of Arura near Ramallah in the West Bank.