The Lebanese Government confirmed, this Wednesday, that it is holding talks with Hezbollah to try to stop the escalation of the conflict with Israel following the death, on Tuesday, of a senior official from the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Beirut.
Lebanon’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdallah Bou Habib, told British broadcaster BBC 4 that authorities had started talks with the Lebanese movement to “convince” them that they “should not respond” to the death of the Hamas group’s number two, Saleh al- Arouri, in an attack that occurred in Beirut on Tuesday. “(…) We are maintaining dialogue in this sense,” said Bou Habib, before stressing that in the next 24 hours they will know “whether (Hezbollah) will respond or not” to Al-Arouri’s death.
“We are very worried,” said the minister, adding that “the Lebanese do not want to be dragged (into a war with Israel).”
Bou Habib said that “even Hezbollah does not want to be drawn into a regional war” and called on Western countries to “put pressure on Israel to put an end to its violence and its actions, not only in Lebanon and Beirut, but also in Gaza.” .
Hours earlier, Hezbollah had guaranteed that the death of Al-Arouri, in an attack that killed six more people, “will not go unanswered or unpunished” and warned that the attack in Beirut represents “a dangerous event in the course of the war between the enemy and the axis of resistance”, following weeks of fighting on the border between Lebanon and Israel.
“The criminal enemy, which following 90 days of crimes, massacres and destruction was unable to subdue Gaza (…), nor the rest of the proud cities, fields and villages, is resorting to a policy of murder and physical liquidation of all those who worked , planned, executed or supported the heroic operation (…)”, indicated the Lebanese group, referring to the attacks carried out on October 7 by Hamas in Israel.
The AMAL Movement, also a Shiite and a political ally of Hezbollah, stressed that the attack in Beirut was “an attack once morest the whole of Lebanon and its sovereignty”, adding that “it is a crime that adds to the long list of crimes and massacres committed by Israel since its creation,” according to the Lebanese newspaper L’OrientLe Jour.
Al-Arouri was released in 2010 following spending 12 years in Israeli prisons and had lived in Lebanon since 2018. Considered the ‘number two’ of Hamas and one of the commanders of the AlQassam Brigades, he was attributed responsibility for several attacks once morest Israel from Lebanon.
The attack that killed Al-Arouri targeted the Hamas office in the suburbs, south of the Lebanese capital, a stronghold of the Shiite Hezbollah movement, an ally of Hamas.
Al-Arouri was one of Hamas’s main negotiators in the release of hostages taken by the group in the attack once morest Israel on October 7.
This was the first time since the start of the current war in the Gaza Strip that Israel attacked the Lebanese capital. Clashes between the Israeli army and Hezbollah were until then limited to the border areas in southern Lebanon.
The news quickly received a response from authorities in Lebanon, Iran or the Palestinian group itself, who accuse Israel of responsibility for the attack. However, Israeli authorities have not commented on the incident.
