Source: @MouinRabbani
An undated handout photo released by Hezbollah military media press office on July 31, 2024, shows top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr at an undisclosed location. The body of Shukr was recovered on July 31 from the rubble of an Israeli strike in south Beirut, a source close to the group said, a day after the attack which also killed five civilians, three women and two children, according to Lebanon's health ministry.
An undated handout photo released by Hezbollah military media press office on July 31, 2024, shows top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr at an undisclosed location. The body of Shukr was recovered on July 31 from the rubble of an Israeli strike in south Beirut, a source close to the group said, a day after the attack which also killed five civilians, three women and two children, according to Lebanon's health ministry.
- === RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / HEZBOLLAH MILIRARY MEDIA PRESS OFFICE " - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS === (Photo by HEZBOLLAH MILITARY MEDIA OFFICE / AFP) / === RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / HEZBOLLAH MILIRARY MEDIA PRESS OFFICE " - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS ===
On 30 July Israel bombed the Lebanese capital, Beirut. It proclaimed the purpose of the attack was to kill Fuad Shukur, one of the most senior members of Hizballah’s military council.
The attack appears to have been conducted by several missiles fired from a drone. Although it killed a number of civilians in the targeted building and largely destroyed it, causing significantly more extensive damage than the January strike, also in Beirut, that killed Hamas Deputy Chairman Salih Aruri, it was described as a limited operation. By Israeli standards this is an accurate description.
A recent assassination attempt in the Gaza Strip aimed at Muhammad Deif, Hamas’s military commander, was carried out with a number of 2,000 pound bombs that produced hundreds of civilian casualties. As for Shukr, his fate as of this writing remains unknown.
The same cannot be said of Ismail Haniyya, Chairman of the Hamas Politbureau and thus its formal leader. Within less than twelve hours after the Beirut bombing Haniyya was confirmed killed, along with a member of his security detail, in the Iranian capital Tehran. Haniya had traveled to Tehran to attend the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, this past Sunday.
The loss of a senior leader is a serious and painful blow to any organization, and Hizballah and Hamas are no exceptions in this regard. In Hizballah’s case more than for Hamas, there is the additional question of how Israeli intelligence was able to locate its target with precision, assuming Shukr was indeed at the scene of the attack, at such a sensitive political and operational moment. This is because Shukr operates clandestinely, while Haniyya did so publicly.
After the recent killing of 12 Syrian children in Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights, which Israel blamed on Hizballah and Hizballah on Israel, Israeli leaders – along with their Western sponsors led by the United States – began claiming the children were Israeli citizens and were killed in northern Israel. They weren’t, but it set the stage for Israel to vow that it would avenge its dead. Its chorus of flunkies and apologists began repeating their usual mantra about Israel’s right to defend itself and choose the manner in which it would do so.
According to multiple news reports the United States, France, and others passed messages to Hizballah through the Lebanese government and the office of Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri to inform it that Israel would attempt to strike a painful blow at Hizballah, but that it had no intention of escalating the situation to the level of a full-scale war. The messengers therefore requested that Hizballah absorb the blow and refrain from a response that could lead to a spiral of escalation unleashing a full-scale regional conflict.
Their biggest concern is that, in contrast to Israel’s genocidal onslaught on the Gaza Strip, Iran may decide to directly intervene in any Israeli-Lebanese conflict. This in turn could precipitate a US-Iranian confrontation. Instead of warning Israel not to attack Lebanon, Hizballah was counseled by Israel’s Western sponsors to accept being attacked in response to a massacre it strenuously denies it had any connection with.
Instead of Israel’s Western messengers insisting upon an independent international investigation to determine responsibility for the Majdal Shams killings, they gave Israel a green light to do as it saw fit, including setting the entire Middle East aflame. And they continue to reject making that phone call to Israel about Gaza that would put an end to this horror show.
In other words, Israel was implicitly, and perhaps – or more than perhaps – explicitly during Binyamin Netanyahu’s recent sojourn to the United States, assured that there would, as ever, be no repercussions for Israel in response to its actions, at least not from the West.
Hizballah of course took a very different position on the matter, and replied that it would respond forcefully to any Israeli attack that constituted an escalation in the current Israeli-Lebanese confrontation. It also made clear that in doing so it would not distinguish between a large-scale or more limited Israeli attack or escalation. Bombing Beirut, and doing so in order to kill one of the organization’s most senior leaders, clearly constitutes such a significant Israeli escalation. That it targeted a single building and killed a small number of civilians rather than hundreds, is in this context wholly irrelevant as far as Hizballah is concerned.
A further reason one should expect a forceful Lebanese response is that Hizballah is convinced that if it does not do so it would be inviting Israel to carry out further such attacks. It may also believe that Israel is determined to provoke it into a major war, and that attaching a significant price to Israeli provocations may be its best bet to prevent one.
Alternatively, less likely, Hizballah may have come to the conclusion that Israel’s constant stream of threats against Lebanon demonstrate that a major war is inevitable, and that it is best served to be done with it when Israel is experiencing unprecedented crisis and weakness. But engaging Israel in a full-scale war would also undermine Hizballah’s role as a Support Front (or Solidarity Front) for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The purpose of Lebanon’s and other such fronts is to tie up Israeli resources and strengthen Hamas’s negotiating position. Consistently announcing that attacks from the various Support Fronts on Israel will automatically cease once Israel’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip comes to a halt strengthens the Palestinian position. Engaging Israel in a war independent of developments in the Gaza Strip makes it more difficult to link the actions of the Support Fronts to Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip. With respect to Haniya he played a very different role in Hamas than did for example Yasir Arafat in Fatah or George Habash in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Haniya, who hails from the Shati’ (Beach) Refugee Camp in Gaza City, had been active in Hamas from its very early days. He served as personal assistant to its founder, Shaikh Ahmad Yasin, before beginning his rise through the movement’s ranks. After Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian Authority (PA) legislative elections, he assumed the post of Prime Minister, and was elected (in internal Hamas polls) to its Politbureau. In 2017 was elected as the movement’s leader. According to various reports Iran, whose relations with Hamas had ruptured after the latter took a position opposing the Syrian government during that contry’s civil war, had insisted that Haniyya’s predecessor, Khalid Mash’al, be replaced as a condition for reconciliation.
Mash’al had been in charge of the movement when it broke with Damascus and relocated its headquarters from Syria to Qatar. Not long after assuming the leadership of Hamas Haniyya relocated from Gaza to Doha. So while his assumption of office reflected the shifting center of gravity within the movement to the Gaza Strip, where it ruled, his departure to Qatar removed him from the central role in his organization that Arafat and Habash played within theirs throughout their tenure.
Yahya Sinwar is officially the leader of the Hamas branch of the Gaza Strip, but has been more powerful and consequential within the movement than was Haniyya. Even if Haniya had been the central operational figure within Hamas his removal will not have a particularly significant impact. In 2004 Israel assassinated the movement’s founder, Yasin, and his successor, Abd-al-Aziz Rantisi, within the space of two months. This didn’t really affect the movement’s continued growth and development, either politically or militarily.
Israel has for decades been quite effective at killing leaders and senior cadres, but is a genuine failure when it comes to defeating their movements. It seems to believe that these movements are dependent upon individuals rather than constituencies, and that removing this or that leader will eliminate opposition. Israel’s other problem is that those organizations it hits hardest with assassinations are also those who have become most adept at quickly replacing those killed with individuals ready to assume their roles. As it was with their predecessors, so it will be with Haniyya and – if he was indeed killed – Shukr. The damage of their killings is primarily in terms of morale and symbolism rather than operational capacity or capability.
In Haniyya’s case the fact of his assassination in the Iranian capital is at least as significant, and arguably more important, than the assassination itself. It demonstrates, conclusively, that Israel is dead set on a confrontation with Iran. With Biden still in the White House, it seems to believe it can successfully do so, and with a bit of luck also engineer a direct US-Iranian confrontation. Those within the US administration determined to stop this slide into regional war are powerless to stop it in the face of Biden’s continued unconditional support for Israel, while their colleagues who think Israel is doing the US a favor believe their moment has finally arrived.
It is going to be at least as difficult for Iran to turn the other cheek and not respond directly to an Israeli attack in its capital city as it is for Hizballah. Fasten your seatbelts. Israel’s determination to unleash a multi-front war may prove as irrational consequential as Germany’s nearly a century ago.
On 30 July Israel bombed the Lebanese capital, Beirut. It proclaimed the purpose of the attack was to kill Fuad Shukur, one of the most senior members of Hizballah’s military council.
The attack appears to have been conducted by several missiles fired from a drone. Although it killed a number of civilians in the targeted building and largely destroyed it, causing significantly more extensive damage than the January strike, also in Beirut, that killed Hamas Deputy Chairman Salih Aruri, it was described as a limited operation. By Israeli standards this is an accurate description.
A recent assassination attempt in the Gaza Strip aimed at Muhammad Deif, Hamas’s military commander, was carried out with a number of 2,000 pound bombs that produced hundreds of civilian casualties. As for Shukr, his fate as of this writing remains unknown.
The same cannot be said of Ismail Haniyya, Chairman of the Hamas Politbureau and thus its formal leader. Within less than twelve hours after the Beirut bombing Haniyya was confirmed killed, along with a member of his security detail, in the Iranian capital Tehran. Haniya had traveled to Tehran to attend the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, this past Sunday.
The loss of a senior leader is a serious and painful blow to any organization, and Hizballah and Hamas are no exceptions in this regard. In Hizballah’s case more than for Hamas, there is the additional question of how Israeli intelligence was able to locate its target with precision, assuming Shukr was indeed at the scene of the attack, at such a sensitive political and operational moment. This is because Shukr operates clandestinely, while Haniyya did so publicly.
After the recent killing of 12 Syrian children in Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights, which Israel blamed on Hizballah and Hizballah on Israel, Israeli leaders – along with their Western sponsors led by the United States – began claiming the children were Israeli citizens and were killed in northern Israel. They weren’t, but it set the stage for Israel to vow that it would avenge its dead. Its chorus of flunkies and apologists began repeating their usual mantra about Israel’s right to defend itself and choose the manner in which it would do so.
According to multiple news reports the United States, France, and others passed messages to Hizballah through the Lebanese government and the office of Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri to inform it that Israel would attempt to strike a painful blow at Hizballah, but that it had no intention of escalating the situation to the level of a full-scale war. The messengers therefore requested that Hizballah absorb the blow and refrain from a response that could lead to a spiral of escalation unleashing a full-scale regional conflict.
Their biggest concern is that, in contrast to Israel’s genocidal onslaught on the Gaza Strip, Iran may decide to directly intervene in any Israeli-Lebanese conflict. This in turn could precipitate a US-Iranian confrontation. Instead of warning Israel not to attack Lebanon, Hizballah was counseled by Israel’s Western sponsors to accept being attacked in response to a massacre it strenuously denies it had any connection with.
Instead of Israel’s Western messengers insisting upon an independent international investigation to determine responsibility for the Majdal Shams killings, they gave Israel a green light to do as it saw fit, including setting the entire Middle East aflame. And they continue to reject making that phone call to Israel about Gaza that would put an end to this horror show.
In other words, Israel was implicitly, and perhaps – or more than perhaps – explicitly during Binyamin Netanyahu’s recent sojourn to the United States, assured that there would, as ever, be no repercussions for Israel in response to its actions, at least not from the West.
Hizballah of course took a very different position on the matter, and replied that it would respond forcefully to any Israeli attack that constituted an escalation in the current Israeli-Lebanese confrontation. It also made clear that in doing so it would not distinguish between a large-scale or more limited Israeli attack or escalation. Bombing Beirut, and doing so in order to kill one of the organization’s most senior leaders, clearly constitutes such a significant Israeli escalation. That it targeted a single building and killed a small number of civilians rather than hundreds, is in this context wholly irrelevant as far as Hizballah is concerned.
A further reason one should expect a forceful Lebanese response is that Hizballah is convinced that if it does not do so it would be inviting Israel to carry out further such attacks. It may also believe that Israel is determined to provoke it into a major war, and that attaching a significant price to Israeli provocations may be its best bet to prevent one.
Alternatively, less likely, Hizballah may have come to the conclusion that Israel’s constant stream of threats against Lebanon demonstrate that a major war is inevitable, and that it is best served to be done with it when Israel is experiencing unprecedented crisis and weakness. But engaging Israel in a full-scale war would also undermine Hizballah’s role as a Support Front (or Solidarity Front) for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The purpose of Lebanon’s and other such fronts is to tie up Israeli resources and strengthen Hamas’s negotiating position. Consistently announcing that attacks from the various Support Fronts on Israel will automatically cease once Israel’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip comes to a halt strengthens the Palestinian position. Engaging Israel in a war independent of developments in the Gaza Strip makes it more difficult to link the actions of the Support Fronts to Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip. With respect to Haniya he played a very different role in Hamas than did for example Yasir Arafat in Fatah or George Habash in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Haniya, who hails from the Shati’ (Beach) Refugee Camp in Gaza City, had been active in Hamas from its very early days. He served as personal assistant to its founder, Shaikh Ahmad Yasin, before beginning his rise through the movement’s ranks. After Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian Authority (PA) legislative elections, he assumed the post of Prime Minister, and was elected (in internal Hamas polls) to its Politbureau. In 2017 was elected as the movement’s leader. According to various reports Iran, whose relations with Hamas had ruptured after the latter took a position opposing the Syrian government during that contry’s civil war, had insisted that Haniyya’s predecessor, Khalid Mash’al, be replaced as a condition for reconciliation.
Mash’al had been in charge of the movement when it broke with Damascus and relocated its headquarters from Syria to Qatar. Not long after assuming the leadership of Hamas Haniyya relocated from Gaza to Doha. So while his assumption of office reflected the shifting center of gravity within the movement to the Gaza Strip, where it ruled, his departure to Qatar removed him from the central role in his organization that Arafat and Habash played within theirs throughout their tenure.
Yahya Sinwar is officially the leader of the Hamas branch of the Gaza Strip, but has been more powerful and consequential within the movement than was Haniyya. Even if Haniya had been the central operational figure within Hamas his removal will not have a particularly significant impact. In 2004 Israel assassinated the movement’s founder, Yasin, and his successor, Abd-al-Aziz Rantisi, within the space of two months. This didn’t really affect the movement’s continued growth and development, either politically or militarily.
Israel has for decades been quite effective at killing leaders and senior cadres, but is a genuine failure when it comes to defeating their movements. It seems to believe that these movements are dependent upon individuals rather than constituencies, and that removing this or that leader will eliminate opposition. Israel’s other problem is that those organizations it hits hardest with assassinations are also those who have become most adept at quickly replacing those killed with individuals ready to assume their roles. As it was with their predecessors, so it will be with Haniyya and – if he was indeed killed – Shukr. The damage of their killings is primarily in terms of morale and symbolism rather than operational capacity or capability.
In Haniyya’s case the fact of his assassination in the Iranian capital is at least as significant, and arguably more important, than the assassination itself. It demonstrates, conclusively, that Israel is dead set on a confrontation with Iran. With Biden still in the White House, it seems to believe it can successfully do so, and with a bit of luck also engineer a direct US-Iranian confrontation. Those within the US administration determined to stop this slide into regional war are powerless to stop it in the face of Biden’s continued unconditional support for Israel, while their colleagues who think Israel is doing the US a favor believe their moment has finally arrived.
It is going to be at least as difficult for Iran to turn the other cheek and not respond directly to an Israeli attack in its capital city as it is for Hizballah. Fasten your seatbelts. Israel’s determination to unleash a multi-front war may prove as irrational consequential as Germany’s nearly a century ago.
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