Press outlets in Lebanon, Gaza, and Israel are reporting that Hamas’s second-in-command, Saleh al Arouri, was killed alongside at least three of his top aides in an Israeli drone attack in the Dahia district at Beirut. Al Arouri was Hamas’ top strategic planner and an architect of the October 7 massacre. 

“This is the most significant, the most important, and the biggest IDF success since the start of the war,” Israel’s Channel 11 military analyst, Roy Sharon, said after details of the attack emerged from Lebanon Tuesday. “Arouri is considered Hamas’s number two, but when it comes to strategy, he is a top target,” he said. 

Born in 1966 in the northern West Bank village of Aroura, al Arouri attended the Islamic college and soon joined Hamas. After 17 years under Israeli administrative arrests, he was exiled to Jordan. From there, al Arouri moved to Turkey, where he established a major Hamas operation charged with fundraising, planning, and arming its terrorists in Israel.

Israeli security officials have long seen him as a top planner of the recent spate of terrorist acts from the West Bank. After pressure from Jerusalem, Turkey diminished the profile of al Arouri’s presence at Istanbul, and he moved most of his activity to Beirut. There he established Hamas’ presence in Lebanon. With considerable organizational skills, he coordinated Hamas’s activities in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and elsewhere.

Al Aroui also tightened the Sunni terrorist group’s relations with Iran and its various, mostly Shiite, proxies. He emerged as a top player in coordinating Tehran’s “ring” around Israel from his new Dahia digs at Hezbollah’s Beirut stronghold.

Earlier this week, Hezbollah’s chief, Hasan Nasrallah, warned that assassination attempts in Lebanon against any Hezbollah ally — Lebanese, Palestinian, or any other nationality — would be “furiously” avenged.

On Tuesday Mr. Nasrallah reportedly postponed a major speech he had scheduled for Wednesday, the fourth anniversary of America’s killing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps chief, Qassem Soleimani. Israeli analysts have compared the devastating results of that event on the IRGC to today’s al Arouri killing. 

Officially, as Israel braces for a likely escalation in Hezbollah’s already furious attacks on its northern border, it declined to comment on the reported assassination. Yet, since the start of the war, top government officials have announced that one of its top goals is to reach Hamas’s leadership and those involved in the October 7 atrocities “wherever they are.”

The killing of al Arouri occurred on the day that a former Mossad chief, Zvi Zamir, passed away at the age of 98. Zamir led Israel’s operation Wrath of God, an assassination campaign against the Palestinian Arab terrorists who participated in the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre. The world-wide campaign lasted until 1988, when the last terrorist was killed.