Citing Israeli officials whose names remain unknown, WSJ reported that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered intelligence agencies to work out plans to assassinate Hamas officials in Lebanon, Turkey, and Qatar.
The assassination policy has a long history in the Israeli regime’s life of nearly 8 decades. The last threat by Israeli military and intelligence authorities was against Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri in September. Hamas leader Yahya al-Sinwar is another Palestinian resistance figure that has long been on the Israeli hit list. The Israeli threats are ordinarily limited to Gaza, but now the Israelis are expanding their range and are revisiting assassination policy beyond Palestine.
Record of Israeli assassination of resistance leaders and commanders
The Israeli regime, which considers the resistance commanders as a serious threat to its security, from the outset put the policy of assassinating militant leaders at the top of its agenda and has registered a black record in this regard.
Over the past few decades, a number of influential leaders of the Palestinian resistance have been assassinated by Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, including Khalil al-Wazir, the second man in the Palestinian Liberation Organization, who was killed in his home in Tunisia in 1988. According to the Israeli outlets, 24 Mossad operatives attacked the house of al-Wazir from the Tunisian coast.
Fathi Shaqaqi, the founder of the Islamic Jihad Movement, was one of the Palestinian leaders who was assassinated by the Mossad in Malta in 1995. Also, in 2004, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, was assassinated, unleashing widespread international reactions against Israel. Abdelaziz Rantisi, who took over the presidency of Hamas after Yassin, was assassinated by Israeli security apparatus a month after his assuming the post.
Izz El-Deen Sheikh Khalil, a member of Hamas, was killed in a car explosion in Damascus in 2004, with Hamas blaming Tel Aviv for his assassination.
Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh was another senior leader of Hamas killed in Dubai in 2010, and the head of the Dubai Police announced that a probe showed that the Mossad was involved in the assassination.
Mohammed al-Zawari was one of the commanders of Hamas and the supervisor of the Ababil drones project, which played an important role in the 2014 war in the Gaza Strip. Hamas accused the Israelis of assassinating him in Tunisia.
Omar al-Nayef was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who was killed in the Palestinian embassy in Bulgaria in 2016. Again, the fingers of blame were pointed at Tel Aviv.
Mending a damaged face
Although the Israelis have succeeded in assassinating resistance leaders in the past, in recent years, despite the rise of the leaders of the movement from the heart of Hamas military wing, which has led to more anti-Israeli military operations in Gaza and the West Bank, and despite the fact that more painful blows were dealt to the Israeli enemy, the leaders of Tel Aviv have failed to implement the policy of assassinating these leaders.
The massive airstrikes during over two months of unabated war on Gaza have even laid bare the weakness of the Israeli intelligence to precisely determine the whereabouts of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders and commanders. To reverse this intelligence failure, the Israelis had several times resorted to psychological warfare. Tel Aviv leaders first claimed that the reason for their inability to take out resistance commanders in air and ground operations was their escape from Gaza, and, unfortunately, remarks by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas fed the Israeli rumor. But this part of the psychological warfare completely failed when the pictures of the resistance commanders on the battle front came out, as well as when Israeli prisoners said they met in the tunnels during their captivity al-Sinwar who talked to them in fluent Hebrew, the official Israeli language.
Moving to a new stage of their psychological warfare, the Israelis once again talk about assassination option out of their illusion that this can shake the morale of the Palestinian political and military leaders and cover up the drawbacks of the much-vaunted multi-layer Israeli intelligence apparatus which failed to predict October 7 operation by Hamas; as if the Israeli government that even showed no mercy with newborn babies in Gaza hospitals has ever had no plan to kill resistance commanders.
Another part of this psychological warfare is publishing fake news by Western mainstream media. One report of this sort was published by the New York Times suggesting that the Israeli army a year ago had received warnings of an attack as big as that of October 7 but had ignored it. Analysts agree that such reports are merely desperate efforts to reverse the irreparable defeat Israeli intelligence and security system suffered after Hamas attack.
Political goals
Tel Aviv’s recent assassination threat carries a special emphasis on pursuing the targets outside of Palestine and in foreign countries. In the past years, Hamas has succeeded in strengthening its regional diplomatic and communication network and opened political offices in other countries, against the wishes of the Israeli regime and its ally the US. Certainly, these political offices plays an important role in building a possibility for international consultations between the leaders of the resistance and the leaders of other countries to strengthen the political campaign of condemning the brutal attacks of the regime on civilians, countering the media propaganda and psychological warfare and political games of the Western supporters of the Tel Aviv, mobilizing public opinion in Islamic countries in support of Palestine, and garnering foreign backing.
This showed one of its important effects during the recent prisoner swap deal mediated by Qatar and Egypt. While the Israelis initially rejected any negotiations over the prisoners and demanded the complete release of the prisoners to stop their barbaric war, it was the powerful diplomacy of the resistance leaders that managed the political situation in such a way that the Israelis accepted Hamas conditions for a truce and thus unconsciously accepted defeat.
Also, the presence of the head of the political office of Hamas in Qatar made it easier for the officials of the Axis of Resistance to meet and make the necessary arrangements to advance the war. For example, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian paid several visits to Doha to meet Ismail Haniyeh who for his part visited Tehran for consultation.
In such conditions, Israeli threats are directed to countries that already host Hamas offices and officials or potential countries that in the future would do so given the Palestinian movement’s heightened international position to play a role in the Palestinian case. Recently, powers such as Russia and China have shown their increasing desire to increase involvement in the Palestinian case, and naturally, the establishment of Hamas relations with these powers and the visit of the movement’s officials to these countries represent a big nightmare for the Israelis.
Hamas leaders are invisible fighters
Regardless of the Israeli goals behind raising the assassination option again, the repeated threats have never frightened the resistance leaders. In September when the Israelis threatened to assassinate al-Arouri, the latter published a photo of himself in military uniform. Reacting to the publication, Israeli media said that the Palestinian commander wanted to send the message that he manages the battle and is ready for martyrdom.
“We have faith and we hope that our lives will end with martyrdom. Martyrdom is a great victory in the eyes of the resistance leaders. The resistance leaders are part of the Palestinian nation. All Palestinian resistance groups have sacrificed their leaders,” he said in a televised interview.
From another aspect, living in a war situation for years has
transformed the resistance leaders into elite fighters who in the
current war join other fighters on the front lines in the complicated
network of Gaza tunnels whereas the Israeli Intelligence agencies has so
far failed to track and target them despite Tel Aviv bragging about
their capabilities.
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