The tension in the Middle East has risen several integers with the death on Tuesday in Beirut of Saleh al Arouri, number two of Hamas and founder of the armed wing of the organization. The attack with a drone, presumably Israeli, against a building in a suburb of the capital of Lebanon worsens the escalation and increases the risk of an extension of the Gaza war beyond the Strip and Israel’s attacks on the West Bank. This Wednesday’s speech by the leader of Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, who announces that he will not ignore the selective assassination of the Hamas militant, the proclamations of revenge of this organization and the threat from the head of the Israeli secret service, calling them “the living dead » to those who were involved in the October 7 attack, they nullify different initiatives to achieve a truce that allows the exchange of hostages and prisoners.
Beyond the theater of operations, Egypt’s decision to suspend mediation between Hamas and Israel hardly counts. What is really significant is the increasingly explicit configuration of a rejection front in which the Hezbollah militia acts as the necessary actor so that the Israeli Army has to fight on two fronts. At the same time, the unpredictable scope of Hezbollah’s reaction is a factor of pressure on Arab governments, who condemn the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, but have so far opted for caution. And finally, there has been an increase in influence of Iran in the war with its decisive role on three fronts: the support given to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi militia, which controls part of Yemen and puts in check navigation in the Red Sea, a primary route in China’s commercial relations with Europe and in oil exports.
In Israel’s borderless combat against Hamas, there are too many factors that could favor the extension of the conflict to assume that Arouri’s death will result in a multiplication of statements without tangible consequences on the battlefield. The forecast of several Israeli Army commanders regarding the prolongation of the war throughout 2024 and the agitation of the Arab street, until now very restrained, are so many factors to take into account to envision a possible globalization of the crisis with political and economic effects beyond the Middle East. As different voices from the Democratic Party and the academic world have pointed out in the United States, and in Europe, in general, a public opinion moved by the extension and consequences of the war, the risks are increasing with each passing day. .
The presence in Beirut of a very prominent Hamas leader is a significant fact to measure the extent to which radical Islamism is willing to give nature to a alliance with unpredictable effects, outside the control of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, two determining states in the strategy and behavior of Arab governments. Arouri’s death is not one more in a war that will be three months old on Sunday, but rather the unequivocal sign that the conflict has a ability to infect the entire region far superior to any forecast made when hostilities broke out.