TEL AVIV, Israel (news agencies) — The killing of a top Hamas commander in an apparent Israeli airstrike on a Beirut apartment has given Israel an important symbolic achievement in its 3-month-old war against the Islamic militant group.
But history has shown the benefits of such dramatic operations are often short-lived, bringing on further violence and equally formidable replacements as leaders of militant groups.
The drone strike on Saleh Arouri, the deputy political head of Hamas and a founder of the group’s military wing, follows a long line of suspected Israeli killings of senior militant leaders over the years.
While Israel did not claim responsibility for Tuesday’s blast, it had all the hallmarks of an Israeli attack. Both Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group immediately blamed Israel and could soon respond.
Here is a look at the strike and Israel’s history of suspected killings of militants abroad:
A mysterious blast shook a Beirut neighborhood. Hamas officials confirmed the deaths of Arouri and six other Hamas members, including two military commanders.
A Lebanese security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the attack appeared to have been carried out by a drone that fired missiles into the building, targeting one specific floor.
Israeli officials declined to comment. Israel has frequently used armed drones for precise targeting of militants in the West Bank and Gaza, including during the current war.
Israel had accused Arouri, 57, of masterminding attacks against it in the West Bank, where he was the group’s top commander. He also was believed to be a key figure in Hamas’ relations with both Hezbollah and the group’s Iranian patrons. In 2015, the U.S. Treasury Department designated Arouri as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, offering $5 million for information about him.
Israel rarely takes responsibility for targeted assassinations or comments publicly on its forces’ forays abroad. It took 25 years for the country to acknowledge its role in killing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s deputy, Khalil al-Wazir, known as Abu Jihad, in Tunisia in 1988.
The strike that killed Arouri came just over a week after another suspected Israeli airstrike outside of Damascus killed Seyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria.
Some Israeli politicians were quick to praise Arouri’s assassination.
Danny Danon, Israel’s former representative to the United Nations and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, congratulated the security forces for the killing on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a member of Israel’s Security Cabinet, stopped short of outright acknowledging Israel’s involvement. He posted on social media a passage from the biblical book of Judges saying “so perish your enemies Israel.”
Israel clearly stands to gain from such a strike amid its war against Hamas.
Arouri’s assassination was a tangible achievement to show Israelis still reeling from the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that triggered the war, when more than 1,200 people were killed and 240 taken hostage in Gaza. Arouri was well known in Israel for his role in deadly attacks, especially in the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers that sparked the 2014 Gaza war.
“It’s important to prop up morale and show Israel that the security and intelligence system is working, because many Israelis lost faith in the security forces after Oct 7,” said Danny Orbach, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Still, some in Israel, especially relatives of the 129 hostages still held in Gaza, expressed anger that the assassination could endanger their family members or hostage negotiations.
Targeted assassinations can provide a “temporary advantage,” Orbach said, but do not often have a lasting impact because new leaders emerge.
Hezbollah’s charismatic leader, Hassan Nasrallah, for instance, took power after his predecessor was killed in an Israeli airstrike in 1992.
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