Yesterday evening, an explosion in a Hezbollah enclave of Beirut, apparently caused by a drone, killed Saleh al-Arouri, a senior leader of Hamas and the founder of the group’s militant wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades. Al-Arouri was also one of the architects of the October 7 massacre, and though Israel hasn’t officially claimed responsibility for the assassination, which also took out a handful of other senior Hamas figures, it’s hard to imagine who else would have been behind it. A Biden administration official told The Washington Post that it was Israel’s doing and a senior administration official told reporters on Wednesday afternoon that al-Arouri “had American blood on his hands” and “was held accountable.” Some of Israel’s own politicians have been crowing about the hit. Danny Danon, a Likud Knesset member and former Israeli ambassador to the U.N., tweeted his congratulations to “the I.D.F., Shin Bet and the Mossad… for killing senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut,” before being shut down by I.D.F. officials, who publicly reminded him that the Israeli government wasn’t taking responsibility.
Not that that stopped anyone. Mark Regev, Bibi Netanyahu’s foreign press spokesman, went on MSNBC this morning to talk about the motivations of “whoever did this,” which sounds a lot like “asking for a friend.” “Obviously in Lebanon, there are many Hezbollah targets, but whoever did this strike was very surgical and went for a Hamas target because Israel is at war. … Whoever did this has a gripe with Hamas,” Regev said. “Whoever did this, it’s not an attack on the Lebanese state. It’s not an attack on the Hezbollah terrorist organization. Whoever did this, it’s an attack on Hamas, that’s very clear.”
For whoever did this, it was their first big “get” since the start of the retaliation for October 7, which has not looked like a stunning success so far. Israel has only killed about 8,000 Hamas fighters, a fraction of their total force, while drawing the ire of the international community for the I.D.F.’s scorched earth campaign in Gaza (which has killed an additional 14,000 Gazans). Moreover, the rates of friendly fire incidents have been astonishingly high: As many as 25 percent of Israeli soldiers casualties during the Gaza operation have reportedly been caused by their own comrades, in part because so many of the soldiers have been reservists, who haven’t received the kind of intensive, up-to-date training needed to operate in a dense urban environment.
Between the al-Arouri assassination and Israel’s announcement in the new year that it was pulling out five brigades from the Gaza Strip, it seems like the Israeli government—or “whoever did this”—is quietly bowing to the pressure from the Biden administration, which as I reported last month, leaned on Israel to wrap up the most intense military action in Gaza by the end of 2023 and shift to more targeted operations.
Personally, I’m surprised Israel hasn’t gone the Munich route earlier and focused on assassinations, however satisfying the razing of Gaza must feel to certain segments of Israeli society after the absolute horror of October 7. Israeli intelligence’s record of eliminating its enemies wherever they are has earned it the awe of spy agencies all over the world—as well as a hallowed place in antisemitic conspiracy lore as the pulsating core of the Jewish plot to take over the world. (I’ve heard people in the national security blob in D.C. refer to Mossad as the honey badgers of the Middle East.) The more surgical approach, as in Beirut, might also have allowed Israel to decapitate Hamas while limiting collateral damage and, crucially, retaining whatever sympathy it marshaled from the international community after October 7.
Tough Talk
Starting the year off with yet another bang, the ultra-nationalists in Bibi’s government are increasingly speaking out about their vision for Gaza after the war ends. Israel’s national security minister (and convicted extremist) Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich are both openly advocating the mass resettlement of Palestinians, saying that the only way to ensure the security of Israel after October 7 is to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Ben-Gvir told his party members on New Year’s Day that “to encourage the voluntary migration of Gaza’s residents to countries that will agree to take in the refugees” and to build Israeli settlements in Gaza would be the “correct solution.” Smotrich echoed these views and called for a “permanent” Israeli presence in Gaza as well as Israeli settlements like there are in “Judea and Samaria,” the biblical term the far-right uses to describe the West Bank.
An Israeli newspaper reported earlier this week that Bibi’s government is in talks with Congo about the “voluntary” immigration of Palestinians there. Gila Gamliel, Israel’s intelligence minister and a Likud member, asked the world to support the “voluntary resettlement of Palestinians in Gaza, for humanitarian reasons, outside of the Strip.” Bibi himself told the families of Israeli hostages today that the “scenario of surrender and deportation” of Palestinians from Gaza has much to recommend it. And despite the assurances to the contrary that his government has made to the Biden administration, Bibi told these families that “we are not rejecting that possibility.”
These statements triggered a rare and public rebuke by the Biden administration, delivered by State Department spokesman Matt Miller. “This rhetoric is inflammatory and irresponsible,” Miller said. “We have been told repeatedly and consistently by the government of Israel, including by the prime minister, that such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government. They should stop immediately. We have been clear, consistent, and unequivocal that Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land, with Hamas no longer in control of its future and with no terror groups able to threaten Israel. That is the future we seek, in the interests of Israelis and Palestinians, the surrounding region, and the world.”
To which Ben-Gvir, who has been happy for Israel to take billions in U.S. military aid (including in the form of guns for Israeli settlers), shot back that Israel is not a U.S. protectorate. “I really admire the United States of America but with all due respect, we are not another star in the American flag,” he tweeted—and doubled down on his proposal of “voluntary” relocation.
As I reported last month, there is no love lost between the Biden administration and Bibi and his lunatic retinue. In fact, most hope—quietly and off the record—that the end of this war will trigger the collapse of Bibi’s right-wing government and his final departure from the political stage. Statements like the one from Ben-Gvir don’t kindle any more fuzzy feelings in the White House, but there are some administration officials I’ve spoken to who don’t mind the insanity coming out of Jerusalem precisely because it shows that there is daylight between Bibi and Biden. This then allows the president to both support Israel while also highlighting that he is not doing so uncritically.
Whether that tightrope walk scores Biden any political points at home is yet to be determined. Voters have never been particularly deft at reading between the lines, and on an issue where opinions are so entrenched and views are so passionately held, it’s hard to imagine that this diplomatic dexterity won’t also get bent through the prism of partisanship.