Israel ready ‘for any scenario’ after strike kills Hamas deputy in Lebanon

Palestinian Territories – AFP

Israel kept bombing Gaza on Wednesday after the army said it is ready for “any scenario” following a drone strike in Lebanon which killed the deputy leader of Hamas, stoking fears of a regional escalation.

Although Israel did not claim the Beirut assassination on Tuesday evening, it was widely assumed to be behind the killing of Saleh al-Aruri, 57, the political number two of Hamas and one of the founders of the group’s military wing.

After Aruri and six others were killed in the attack, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said the military was in a “very high state of readiness in all arenas” and “highly prepared for any scenario”.

The Israeli armed forces again bombed Gaza targets overnight, including in the crowded southern city of Rafah where eyewitnesses said survivors flocked to Al-Najjar Hospital to mourn the dead, including a child.

Israel has killed more than 22,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, in response to Hamas’ October 7 attack in which 1,139 people died.

Israel has labelled Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar a “dead man walking” and vowed to also kill other commanders of the group.

Amid the almost three-month-old war, Israel has traded almost daily cross-border fire with the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed ally of Hamas, while so far avoiding a full-scale war.

Maha Yahya of think tank the Carnegie Middle East Center told AFP that Aruri’s killing was “a significant escalation” but added: “I don’t think Hezbollah will be willing to drag Lebanon into a major conflict at this particular moment and time given the situation regionally”.

Violence has also flared with other groups in the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance”, including in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, where Houthis have attacked cargo vessels in the Red Sea, a key shipping lane for world trade.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian condemned the “cowardly” Beirut strike and said it proved that Israel “has not achieved any of its goals after weeks of war crimes, genocide and destruction in Gaza and the West Bank of Palestine, despite the direct support of the White House”.

– ‘Dangerous development’ –

Hezbollah vowed Aruri’s killing would not go unpunished and labelled it “a serious assault on Lebanon… and a dangerous development”.

In the Israel-occupied West Bank — the Palestinian territory where Aruri was born, and which has seen an upsurge in violence since October 7 — the Palestinian Authority called a general strike to mourn his death.

Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh also condemned the killing and warned of its “risks and consequences”.

– ‘We both now have nothing’ –

Another strike, on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on Tuesday, again saw Palestinians rush to rescue victims and retrieve bodies from the rubble.

“There are about 12 martyrs so far, mostly children,” said bereaved resident Ghazi Darwish. “What was their fault? Among them my one-month-old son, what did he do to Israel? My other son is five years old, he was also martyred.”

Further south in Khan Yunis, the Palestinian Red Crescent said Israel had twice struck its headquarters, killing five people, on Tuesday.

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, deplored the strikes as “unconscionable” and said “Gaza’s health system is already on its knees”.