Hassan Nasrallah: Assassination of Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri will not go unpunished

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel on Wednesday that its assassination of Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in Lebanon will not go unpunished.

Nasrallah gave the warning at the end of a long speech scheduled for a commemorative gathering that took place on the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Iranian Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani in Iraq. 

Throughout the speech, the Hezbollah leader teased that he will respond to Israel’s assassination of Arouri in a more detailed public address that is scheduled to take place on Friday.

Nasrallah praised Arouri and gave condolences to his family, as well as to Hamas, and described the targeting of Arouri in Beirut as the first time an Israeli attack strikes Beirut since 2006. 

He described Arouri’s death as a “major and serious crime” that cannot go without retaliation, and addressed Israel directly by saying: “between you and us, there lies the battlefield.”

Saleh al-Arouri, who was deputy chair of Hamas’s political bureau and co-founder of the Qassam Brigades, was assassinated on Tuesday night by an Israeli drone strike that targeted a building adjacent to the Hamas headquarters in the densely-populated Dahiyeh neighborhood, in the Hezbollah-dominated southern Beirut. 

According to a statement made by Hamas on Telegram, the strike killed Arouri, along with two senior Qassam commanders, Samir Fendi and Azzam al-Aqraa, as well as four more Hamas cadres: Mahmoud Zaki Shahin, Mohamed Bashasha, Mohamed al-Rayys and Ahmed Hammoud.

Exiled in Lebanon for years, the senior military and political figure was a figurehead in the reconciliation between Hamas and Iran in 2014, as well as the more recent efforts for reconciliation between divided Palestinian factions, particularly with Hamas’s rival in the West Bank, Fatah.

The Occupation threatened to assassinate Arouri before October 7, after it accused him of rebuilding the Qassam capabilities in the West Bank. The US State Department also offered a $5 million bounty in exchange for information about his whereabouts for years.

In his Wednesday response to Arouri’s assassination, Nasrallah also gave an overview of the ongoing war on Gaza and Hezbollah’s confrontations with the Occupation’s military on the southern Lebanese border since October 8, saying that while Hezbollah launched the Lebanese front based on “exact calculations,” it is not afraid to face Israel in an open war. 

“Whoever thinks of going to war with us will regret it. We have been taking Lebanon’s national interests into account, but if war is declared on Lebanon, then the Lebanese national interest is to take the war to its full extent,” he said.

After Israel initiated its aggressive ground operation on Gaza, cross-border shelling erupted on the Lebanese border, with Hezbollah and armed Palestinian factions fighting together on one side against the Israeli military.

So far, 137 Hezbollah fighters and 28 Lebanese civilians, including three journalists and three children, were killed in the Occupation’s bombardment of towns across southern Lebanon since October 8. 

The deadly clashes displaced nearly 45,000 Lebanese residents by November. On the other side, 14 Israelis were killed on the Lebanese front, including nine soldiers.

The Occupation military announced on Monday the demobilization of five brigades from combat duty in the Gaza Strip in order to “revitalize the economy,” though an Israeli official declared on the same day that some of them could be sent to the border with Lebanon.

In the speech, Nasrallah noted with humor the warnings directed to Israel by western actors like the United States, France and the United Kingdom, quoting their concern regarding Israel escalating its aggression on the border with Lebanon.

He also listed the broad victories achieved by the launch of the Aqsa Flood, the Qassam Brigades’ operation against Israel on October 7, in which the group’s fighters killed 1,200 and took prisoners, of whom over 100 are still being held in the Gaza Strip. According to Nasrallah, the operation reinvigorated the Palestinian cause and pushed against the tide of normalization that saw many countries in the region move toward acknowledging and building normal ties with Israel.

Listing Israel’s losses, he said that in the eyes of the world, Israel has lost its moral high ground. He called the Occupation the “killer of children,” “causer of starvation” and “the perpetrator of the greatest genocide of this century.” He also described Israel as having failed to bring about a quick and decisive victory to the war via airstrikes, and cited a decline in public trust for the Israeli military domestically.