“It hurts my heart that we are losing martyrs,” says 17-year-old Palestinian Abdo Rakhman. Like more than a thousand other Palestinians and Lebanese, he came to the funeral of Hamas number two, Saleh al-Arouri, and six other members in southern Beirut. At the Imam Ali Mosque, where the service and preaching are held, dozens of people waved various flags, including those of Palestine, Hamas, its armed branch Al-Qassam Brigade and Islamic Jihad.
Rakhman lives in the adjacent Shatila neighborhood, one of the former refugee camps where thousands of Palestinians sought refuge after being expelled from Palestine after the Nakba (1947-1949) and the Six-Day War (1967). His neighborhood has many people who died in the resistance struggle against Israel. “But victory is near,” he says, “I am sure of it.”
Two Palestinian women agree. “As Muslims, we believe that we will either conquer and liberate Palestine or die as martyrs and end up in heaven.” Then they rush to the crowd to join in prayer before the procession begins.
After the prayer and a few moments of silence, music comes from some speakers that move along with the crowd. This nasheed, an Islamic chant that often refers to certain events and religious texts, sings about martyrdom. Loud gunshots ring out, and the crowd slowly moves towards the Palestinian Martyrs’ Cemetery.
Spiral of violence
Last Tuesday’s assassination attempt in Beirut is the latest escalation in the spiral of violence in which the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and Israel have been engaged for months. After the October 7 Hamas attacks, all eyes are on the fighting on Lebanon’s southern border, which could potentially turn the war in Gaza into a full-scale international conflict.
Israel has not officially claimed responsibility for the attack on Hamas members in Beirut, but it was hardly a surprise. Arouri knew he was high on Israel’s hit list, and in recent months Israel reiterated several times, most recently last Wednesday, that its foreign intelligence service Mossad would hunt Hamas members around the world. Moreover, it has been an open secret for decades that Hamas members have been in Beirut, welcomed by Hezbollah.
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What exactly this assassination attempt in the Dahiye district, the southern Shiite suburb of Beirut where Hezbollah has its power base, means for the course of the war depends on how Hezbollah decides to respond. How completely sidelined the Lebanese government is in this became clear again on Thursday when Foreign Minister Abdullah Bou Habib told CNN: “It is their decision.”
Hezbollah leader Nasrallah, as in previous speeches, did not give much away on Wednesday and Friday about Hezbollah’s next steps. “Of course he will never announce specific operations in a public speech, just like every other army in the world does not,” said Amal Saad, a university lecturer at Cardiff University and Hezbollah expert. “But he has made it clear that the attack on Arouri will not go unpunished, and remains vague about it. It’s all part of the psychological warfare.”
Broken windows
The traces of the attack are still clearly visible in Dahiyeh. The building where the Hamas delegation had gathered was heavily damaged, and some of the apartments next to it still have broken windows. The street has now been opened to traffic again. Pedestrians or cars stop or slow down to take a look at where it all happened.
Shopkeepers say that at the time of the attack they heard no drone or plane, but only two or three explosions. Samar Zaitar and Fatima Haidar were also working in a clothing store a street behind the site of the attack. “People were running away, we thought the war had really started,” says Zaitar. “Someone shot in the air to warn others to get away.”
Whether or not the broad daylight assassination attempt in Beirut was a red line, few Lebanese in Dahiye will do anything other than publicly declare that they stand with Hezbollah and its leader Nasrallah. “It doesn’t bother us,” says Hussein Barakat, who works in a restaurant about a hundred meters from the building. “There are only two paths for us: victory or death.”
His colleagues join the conversation and wholeheartedly agree with him. “Look around you,” says Hussein Gassem al Haj, “everyone continues with life, shops are open. We are not afraid.” There are already thirty thousand dead in Palestine, they say. Everyone here has relatives and friends killed by Israel and wants revenge. What do they expect from their leader? “Nasrallah decides. Whatever it is, he is always right, even if he is wrong, he is right,” says Gassem al Haj.
Zaitar is indeed afraid, especially now that she has a family. She still remembers what Dahiye looked like after the short-lived war in 2006, when Israel invaded southern Lebanon and also heavily bombed parts of Beirut, such as Dahiye. “Unfortunately, I don’t think there will be an end to all the problems without another war.”
Large-scale war
Despite this kind of rhetoric among some Lebanese, and the knowledge that Hezbollah must make a clear statement in response to the attack on Arouri in Beirut, analysts remain convinced that Hezbollah will not be the one to take the step towards a full-scale war with Israel will put. “Nasrallah is very aware of the sentiment among the rest of the Lebanese, and they simply do not want that,” says Hezbollah expert Nicholas Blanford, who lives in Lebanon. “Nasrallah said months ago that if Israel were to carry out attacks on Lebanese territory , there would be a response. They will, but it will still be a response that does not initiate war.”
Hezbolla expert Saad agrees, but warns: “If the rules of engagement between Israel and Hezbollah continue to be violated in this way, things could really get out of hand. And Hezbollah is then ready for war.”
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