Saleh al-Arouri’s hometown bids goodbye to its most famous son with resignation and pride: ‘I knew they were going to kill him’

The great mosque in Arura, a small town of 4,000 residents in the West Bank, has been decked out in green flags for the occasion. From the loudspeakers of its minaret, a string of verses from the Quran plays on a loop. It will be this way for three days in an extraordinary display of mourning unusual in Palestine. The most famous man in the area has died. A missile launched by a drone over a suburb of Beirut (Lebanon) ended the life of Saleh al-Arouri, Hamas’ number two man, on Tuesday. Israel has not acknowledged responsibility for the attack, but anonymous sources in the U.S. Administration have attributed it to Israel. In Arura no one has any doubts about who it was. It was an expected murder. Sooner or later, it was going to happen. Even 57-year-old al-Arouri himself knew it. Last August, he asserted that the time for his martyrdom had arrived. That he had already lived long enough.

Just a few steps from the temple, the women of the family receive condolences at home from the neighbors who approach while the men serve coffee. At the back of the house, surrounded by other women, sits Misliman, 81, mother of the deceased. “He got what he wanted,” she explains calmly and without shedding a single tear. “I thank God because his wish to become a martyr has been fulfilled,” continues the old woman who, due to her son’s stays in prison and exile, had not seen him for 20 years. “We are proud of him and everything he did. He knew that sooner or later what happened would come.”

The al-Arouris recently moved into the house where the condolence ceremony is taking place; It is not the one they had occupied for generations. On October 31, in a search and capture operation against Hamas, Israeli soldiers blew it up in an attempt to eliminate one of the symbols of the Islamist organization, the residence of the second in line of command. They also took his nephew into custody, interrogating and threatening him for five hours. “Don’t even think about making public anything related to Hamas,” the Israeli military told him, according to his own account. “If you upload a video or add a like on social media, you’re gonna get it,” they warned him. “Hamas is the same as the Islamic State, you better stay as far away from them as possible.”

Of all the family members, the last one to see al-Arouri was his sister Um Quteiba, 52. Last July she made the hadj — the pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the five commandments of Islam — with him. Both traveled to the sacred Saudi city along with several members of the leadership of the Islamist movement that Israel has vowed to eliminate. A photo from her cell phone (the one at the top of this article) provides evidence. Along with Um Quteiba and her brother Saleh, there are the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the political bureau, Khaled Mashal, and another of its members, Khalil al-Hayya, with one of the founders, Izzat al-Rishq. Everyone is wearing the typical white robes to comply with this religious rite that grants special status those who do it and turns them into people of respect.

The smile that Um Quteiba shows in that photo is no longer there today. Sitting on a sofa in her home and covered with a beige woolen shawl, she says that when she heard on the news on Tuesday afternoon that something had exploded in Beirut, her heart skipped a beat. “At first they didn’t say anything, but I knew it was Saleh,” she says. “As soon as I saw it, I started calling him again and again, but he didn’t answer. Then I called his wife, who told me that she knew he was in Lebanon, but she didn’t know where exactly. I didn’t have the slightest clue.” That is until the news confirmed that her prediction had come true. Among the six fatalities caused by the attack was Hamas’ number two, Haniyeh’s lieutenant, Saleh al-Arouri.

In his office in Ramallah, Hani al-Masri, general director of Masarat, a Palestinian think tank specialized in the conflict, analyzes the murder of al-Arouri. “The attack occurred just when a new truce was being negotiated,” says the expert. “The message that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to send with this is clear. He needs to continue the war to escape his own responsibility for not having been able to prevent the attacks of October 7, and he believes that opening a new front in Lebanon will prolong it even more,” he says. “Neither Hezbollah, nor Syria, nor Iran want a conflict with Israel, but the Hamas attacks showed that Israel is vulnerable. A small party like Hamas has defeated an entire state and returned Palestine to the international agenda. Now no one can ignore the rights of their people.”

Achieving unity of Palestinian factions

Al-Masri knew al-Arouri well. He met him twice in Cairo, the Egyptian capital, during conferences on Palestine held in 2017 and 2021. “He was a distinguished person within the political and military apparatus of the organization, but he was not only a politician and a soldier, he was also an intellectual, a very educated and well-read person,” he says. “His greatest interest was to achieve the unity of the different Palestinian factions [broken after the 2006 elections that Hamas won in Gaza, but which Fatah, which still governs in the West Bank, did not accept]. He wanted Hamas and Fatah to form a single electoral list and had outlined a program on which he had worked with great effort. In one of our meetings he asked me to be part of that candidacy. I said no.”

But al-Arouri was also a loose cannon in the organization and ordered armed actions on his own, without consulting with the rest of the leadership. He admitted that the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank was the work of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, after Hamas had denied responsibility.

The military success that Israel celebrates with his death will not bring any solution to the conflict, according to this analyst. “Israel only believes in security solutions and it has killed a lot of leaders of different Palestinian factions,” he points out. “But it has been of no use because every time one disappears, a new one appears. Many, many have been murdered,” he adds, waving a list of several pages in which he has them written down. “The only solution is to recognize the rights of the Palestinians and end the occupation once and for all, but Israel demonstrates with each of its actions that it does not want to.”

“Israel will not achieve its goal of destroying Hamas just because it eliminated al-Arouri,” he continues. “The only thing it has achieved for now is to freeze the negotiations to exchange the hostages for Palestinian prisoners. Netanyahu doesn’t care about his kidnapped citizens. Nor do some of his ministers, who have openly expressed it,” he adds, alluding to the ultra-nationalists and ultra-Orthodox members of the Israeli government, who are calling for a military occupation of Gaza and the construction of new settlements in that territory. “Now, in addition, there is the risk of a strong response from Lebanon by Hezbollah,” he warns.

At the house in Arura, the string of condolences continues and the leader’s sister, Um Quteiba, speaking in a soft voice, appears surprised by the influx. “Saleh was a very normal person and we did not know that he was so popular in Palestine and throughout the Arab world,” she says. “We are aware that he worked discreetly and silently for many years for the Palestinians, but we did not know that he was so famous.” At noon, after prayer, the men and children go through the town in a march filled with Hamas flags and calling for revenge. “Your blood has not been shed in vain, dear Saleh!” they shout. “Tell the world that Hamas and its flag are here!” In protest of his death and in solidarity with Gaza, a general strike was called this Wednesday in the West Bank. Almost all businesses, except bakeries and pharmacies, were closed.

The last news that al-Arouri’s family had about him reached them precisely on October 7. “We have entered several towns in Israel with our weapons,” Um Quteiba remembers him saying on the phone. “Our victory is about to come; ours and that of all Palestinians,” he added with great optimism. “Please be proud of us because we are going to achieve it.” Just because Hamas’ number two man knew that sooner or later Israel would try to kill him does not mean that he did not take precautions to prevent it. From that day on, the leader of the Islamist militia cut off contact with his relatives to prevent Israel from locating him. He managed it for three months. Since Tuesday, the recording of the Quran coming from the speakers of the Arura mosque has not stopped playing.

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