Saleh al Aruri, Hamas negotiator leader and at the same time a loose verse in the Islamist organization

The death of Saleh al Aruri in Beirut – in an attack in which even the United States sees the hand of Israel, although the Government does not officially confirm its responsibility – means for the Palestinian Islamist organization Hamas the loss of one of its most skilled cadres in exile: one who had led negotiations with other Palestinian factions, with Israeli authorities and with various international allies, as well as one of the main people responsible for its finances. It was also a loose verse from the organization that had come to order armed actions on its own, without consulting the rest of the leadership.

Instead of vertical leadership and a strict hierarchy, Hamas has diverse centers of power and decision given its dual nature—political movement and armed group—and the different geographies and circumstances in which its leaders operate: Government of Gaza, clandestine opposition in West Bank and more or less public activity in exile depending on the country in which they are located and the moment in which the relations of those countries with Israel pass. Hence, sometimes the statements of its leaders seem contradictory, and, on many occasions, the left hand of the organization does not know what the right hand is doing. Al Aruri has been one and the other.

Born in Ramallah in 1966, he became involved in the Islamic movement in the late 1980s, when he was studying at the University of Hebron, characterizing himself as a skilled recruiter of volunteers and fundraiser. He was also one of the Hamas leaders who contributed to the establishment of the organization's armed wing, the Ezedin al-Qassam brigades, in the West Bank, according to the map of Palestinian leaders and organizations of the think tank European Council on Foreign Relations.

Al Aruri was detained on several occasions by the Israeli authorities and spent long periods in prison, the longest between 1992 and 2007, when he became a spokesperson for Palestinian prisoners and an interlocutor with the Israeli prison authorities. Upon his release—during negotiations between Fatah and Hamas to share a government—Al Aruri stated in an interview with the British newspaper The Telegraph that his organization should stop attacking civilians and move “from a military-oriented party” to “a political movement.” This did not prevent Israel from imprisoning him again for almost three years, at the end of which it deported him abroad.

The Islamist leader ended up in Damascus, where the political bureau was then located, that is, the civilian leadership of Hamas – protected by the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad – and rose to occupy second place after the then political leader of the Palestinian group. , Khaled Mashal. But, in 2012, Hamas—a Sunni Islamist organization—distanced itself from the repression of the Syrian regime—Shiite—against the demonstrations that had begun the previous year and took sides with the mostly Sunni rebels. So he left Syria. Thus, one of the fundamental pieces of the so-called Axis of Resistance, led by Iran and articulated by Syria, the Lebanese party-militia Hezbollah and the Shiite militias of Iraq, as well as Palestinian Islamist groups, was broken up.

Refuge in Türkiye

Some of the Hamas leaders settled in Qatar; others, like Al Aruri, ended up in Turkey, where the government of moderate Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered them refuge. The arrival of Hamas leaders occurred, according to local analysts, as part of a pact between the Turkish and Israeli authorities after mediation by Ankara, in the case of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, kidnapped by Hamas in 2006 and released in 2011 in exchange of the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners (Al Aruri also participated in these negotiations).

In Istanbul, Al Aruri began to amass power. He led the Hamas delegation in successive Turkish-sponsored attempts to reconcile it with Fatah and the Palestinian National Authority. Also at that time, the foundations for Hamas' investments in Turkey began to be established (recently, the United States included the Turkish construction company Trend GYO on its sanctions list, which is accused of being a financing vehicle for the Palestinian organization. ). Although it is not clear what the role of the number two of Hamas in these negotiations, the US Treasury included him in its blacklist in 2015, considering him one of the key economic managers of Hamas, responsible “for sending hundreds of thousands of dollars” to the group's cells in the West Bank “for the purchase of weapons.”

Around this time, Al Aruri also began acting on his own. In June 2014, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered in the West Bank. Israel claimed that those responsible were members of Hamas, leaked to the press that Al Aruri had masterminded the attack and began a bombing campaign on Gaza that left more than 2,000 dead, most of them civilians. The Hamas leadership in Qatar denied that their group had anything to do with the attack, but, to the surprise of many, Al Aruri called a press conference in Turkey where he acknowledged responsibility: “The popular will […] culminated in the heroic operation of the al Qasam Brigades by imprisoning the three Hebron settlers.” A year later, the Turkish Foreign Ministry stated categorically: “Al Aruri is not in Turkey.”

After pressure from the United States and Israel—a country with which Turkey was trying to restore diplomatic relations—Ankara decided to expel him. He number two Hamas, however, did not go to Doha, where the other heavyweights of the organization were located, but settled in Lebanon.

There, as head of the Hamas office in Beirut, he once again brought out his ability as a negotiator and, in 2017, after successive interviews with Iranian and Lebanese representatives, he appeared with Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah to announce the reestablishment of relations. , broken due to differences due to the Syrian civil war. He thus became a fundamental piece in the puzzle of Iranian influence in the region.

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