While all eyes are on Lebanon, Hezbollah and Hassan Nasrallah, the reaction to Arouri's assassination may surprise and come from the Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem sectors, a sector that was the protégé of the late arch-terrorist many years before October 7.
The first time Arouri's name was etched into the Israeli collective memory as a symbol of evil and cruelty was about ten years ago, during a time of shock and severe trauma – the abduction and murder of the three youths from Gush Etzion. Arouri, on behalf of Hamas, claimed responsibility for this incident and since then has not ceased his involvement and terrorist initiatives throughout Judea and Samaria.
While still sitting in Turkey with the Hamas leadership, as a guest of President Erdogan, Arouri planned to abduct Israelis abroad, carry out a series of infiltration attacks into Israeli communities, detonate car bombs in population centers in Israel, and attack the light rail and the Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem.
In the previous decade, he even tried to undermine the PA regime in Judea and Samaria and planned a coup there. The Shin Bet and the IDF effectively saved Mahmoud Abbas' rule. Then-Shin Bet chief Yoram Cohen met with the PA chairman, presented him with intelligence proof of the planned coup against him, and informed him of the arrest of 94 Palestinians, most of them Hamas members, suspected of participating in this plan.
The past few years have brought further improvement and upgrade in Hamas' capabilities in Judea and Samaria, and Arouri was the one who conducted the situation from afar. The first major change, and perhaps the most significant, was the construction of joint terrorist infrastructures with other organizations, including rival organizations, and the establishment of supra-organizational terrorist militias. The Jenin Battalion was the model, and was intended to be the model to be implemented in other areas of the West Bank.
The battalion included terrorists from the Hamas Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, operatives from Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Islamic Jihad terrorists, and PFLP operatives. Israel was exposed to this cooperation when it discovered last summer that among the 12 terrorists killed in the major military operation in Jenin, all four of these terrorist organizations were represented. Against this background, Arouri himself clarified that "the only option to deal with the occupation is unity on the battlefield, so that the 'resistance fighters' will lie together in one trench against the enemy and the Zionist project."
Fateful meeting
The second significant change was the relocation of the Gaza model of digging tunnels and launching rockets to the West Bank. Here, too, Jenin was the model. It was planned to be followed by other cities. In the military operation launched by the IDF in the Jenin refugee camp in early July, an extensive terrorist infrastructure was exposed and neutralized, including headquarters and hiding places, warehouses and laboratories for manufacturing weapons, and, for the first time, tunnels and underground shafts, including under the Al Ansar Mosque, which the terrorists had turned into a fortified compound.
The third significant change, which Arouri took almost as a personal project, was the challenge of producing substantial and larger than usual IEDs, but mainly a rocket array based on the Gaza model. The large IED weighing 80 kilograms that was activated against an IDF armored vehicle a few months ago in Jenin was just one example. The rocket launches from the Jenin area by the Al Ayash Battalion at Israeli communities (despite being primitive rockets) were also the work of Arouri, which he described as an experiment.
When Arouri was asked how he explained the focus of the "resistance" specifically on the Jenin area, he noted that the struggle in that area developed rapidly and significantly as a result of Israel's withdrawal from the area in the 2005 disengagement
A month before the massacre, Arouri was interviewed on the website of Al Jazeera TV (translation courtesy of MEMRI). He said the ultimate goal of the "armed resistance in the West Bank" was "to continue developing until it is capable of launching effective rockets at Israel." When asked how he explains the focus of the resistance specifically in northern Samaria, and whether it is expected to spread to the rest of the region, Arouri explained that the resistance in this area developed rapidly and significantly as a result of Israel's withdrawal in 2005, during the disengagement. He noted positively and as a "good thing" the "schism in Zionist society," which would lead (along with other background factors) to a broad, comprehensive and very dangerous confrontation. Arouri defined the future campaign in Judea and Samaria as a "war of attrition" that would be waged with the support of the other arenas, "whether from within Palestine or from outside it." He promised to continue developing the same resistance in the Gaza model.
Aruri, who had been imprisoned in Israel for 18 years, was released on condition that he leave the country. First he moved to Jordan, then Syria, and later to Turkey, Qatar and Lebanon. In any case, he acted against Israel. Western intelligence sources estimate that in a meeting that Arouri held with Nasrallah on 2 September, the terrorist attack that was carried out a month later was discussed, and that a few days earlier, on 31 August, at a meeting of the Hamas leadership headed by Arouri with Ziad Nahaleh of Islamic Jihad and Iranian Foreign Minister Abdollahian, the terrorist plan was discussed.
A watchful eye for Al Aqsa
Arouri built on the rifts and rifts within Israeli society. He never hid it. In an interview in Hebrew with journalist Gal Berger, shortly after the Shalit deal, Arouri surprised by saying that he would have been happier if Israel had not agreed to release Shalit in exchange for more than a thousand security prisoners. Berger found it hard to believe his ears, and Arouri explained to him that as an enemy, he would prefer that Shalit not be released so that Israeli society would continue to be torn apart from within by the difficult debate. The tearing up of Israeli society, Berger felt at the time, was more important to Arouri than the release of his friends.
The rift in Israeli society, over the past year, has also played into the hands of Hamas in general and into the hands of Arouri in particular, in much the same way. Some of the Nukhba terrorists captured after the massacre testified to this in their interrogations and, in fact, illustrated the extent to which Hamas built on the rift and division in Israeli society, in exactly the same spirit in which Arouri spoke more than a decade ago.
Since the beginning of the fighting, the IDF has arrested more than 2,500 suspected terrorists and terrorist attacks throughout Judea and Samaria, about 60 percent of them Hamas members, and the rest mainly Fatah. Arouri, although unpopular in the territories like life prisoner Marwan Barghouti, was a kind of consensus. The fact that Fatah, a political rival of Hamas, declared a general strike the day after the assassination attests to this. The defense establishment is now preparing for the possibility that the riots and stone and Molotov cocktail throwing in dozens of locations, and even a few shooting attacks yesterday and yesterday, may be only a prelude to another wave of attacks in Judea and Samaria, mainly but not exclusively "lone wolf attacks."
Today, Friday, the eye is also open to what is happening on the Temple Mount and the Al Aqsa Mosque, a constant focal point of tension and conflict. From there, too, a deterioration could begin after the killing of Aruri, who in recent months has also spoken extensively about "Israel's crimes at Al-Aqsa."
The likelihood that the "revolt" scenario in the Palestinian Authority, even partially, will materialize following Aruri's assassination is currently defined by security officials as low. But even that is being prepared, although officially they refuse to comment on the scenario. The potential for such a reversal is particularly high in the Nablus, Tulkarm, Hebron and Jenin areas. Today will probably be a test day, which will teach us about the trends for the future, after Aruri's assassination, in Judea and Samaria as well.
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