The people of Saleh al Aruri say goodbye to their 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 inhabitants in the West Bank, has been decked out in green flags for the occasion. From the speakers of its minaret a string of verses from the Koran plays on a loop. He will do so 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 Aruri, Hamas's number two, on Tuesday. Israel has not acknowledged responsibility for the attack, but anonymous sources in the US Administration have attributed it to it. In Arura no one has any doubts about who he was. It was an expected murder. Sooner or later, it was going to happen. Even Al Aruri himself (57 years old) knew it. Last August he assured that the time had come for his martyrdom. That he had already lived enough.

Just 10 meters 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, is Mislimán (81 years old), the mother of the deceased. “She received what she wanted,” she explains calmly and without shedding a single tear. “I thank God because her wish of becoming a martyr has been fulfilled,” continues the old woman who, due to the stays in prison and the exile of her son, 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,” she adds.

The Al Aruri are newly installed in the house where the condolence ceremony takes place; It is not the one they had occupied for generations. On October 31, in a search and capture operation against Hamas, Israeli soldiers dynamited it in an attempt to blow up 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. “As you upload a video or put a like You will find out on social networks,” 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 Aruri was his sister Um Quteiba (52 years old). Last July she did 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 against which Israel has conspired to make it disappear. A photo from his cell phone (the one that illustrates this information) attests to this. Along with Um Quteiba and his brother Saleh appears the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniya. Also the leader of the political bureau, Khaled Meshal, and another of its members, Jalil al Jayya, with one of the founders, Izzat al Rishq. Everyone wears the typical white robes to comply with this religious rite that gives those who do it a special status and turns them into people of respect.

The smile that Um Quteiba shows in that photo today has been erased. Sitting on a sofa in her house and covered with a beige wool shawl, she says that, when on Tuesday afternoon she heard on the news that something had exploded in Beirut, her heart skipped a beat. . “At first they didn't say anything, but I knew it was Saleh,” says the woman. “As soon as I saw him, I started calling him again and again, but he didn't answer. Then I called his wife, and she told me that she knew he was in Lebanon, but she didn't know where exactly. She didn't have the slightest clue.” That is until the news confirmed it and her prediction became true. Among the six dead caused by the attack was number two of Hamas, Haniya's lieutenant. Saleh al Aruri.

In his office in Ramallah, Hani al Masri, director general of Masarat, a think tank Palestinian specialist in the conflict, analyzes the murder of Al Aruri. “The attack occurred just when a new truce was being negotiated,” says the expert. “The message that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to give with this action is clear. “He needs to continue the war to escape responsibility for not having been able to prevent the October 7 attacks and 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,” he continues. “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,” he adds.

Achieving unity of Palestinian factions

Al Masri knew Al Aruri 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 “He was an intellectual, a very educated and well-read person,” he says. “His greatest interest was in achieving unity among the various Palestinian factions.” [rota tras las elecciones de 2006 que ganó Hamás en Gaza, pero no aceptó Fatah, que todavía hoy gobierna en Cisjordania]. 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 told him no”.

But Al Aruri was also a loose verse in the organization and ordered armed actions on his own, without consulting the rest of the leadership. He even admitted that the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank was the work of the Ezedin al-Qassam Brigades after Hamas denied responsibility.

The military success that Israel celebrates with his death will not bring any solution to the conflict, according to the analyst. “Israel only believes in security solutions and has killed a lot of leaders of different Palestinian factions,” he notes. “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 written them 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,” he highlights.

“Israel will not achieve its goal of destroying Hamas just because it eliminated Al Aruri,” Al Masri 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 to some of his ministers who have openly expressed it,” he adds in reference 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 settler settlements in that territory. “Now, in addition, there is the risk of a strong response from Lebanon by Hezbollah,” he warns.

At Arura's house the procession of condolences continues and the leader's sister, Um Quteiba, with a soft voice, appears surprised by the influx. “Saleh was a very normal person and we didn't know that she was so popular in Palestine and throughout the Arab world,” she continues. “We are aware that he worked for many years discreetly and silently for the Palestinians, but we were unaware that he was so famous.” At 12:00, 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 Aruri's family had about him reached them precisely on October 7. “We have entered several towns in Israel with our weapons,” Um Quteiba remembers 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,” he concluded. Just because Hamas' number two 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 them from locating him. He managed it for three months. Until Tuesday. Since then, the recording of the Quran coming from the speakers of the Arura mosque has not stopped playing.

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