Saleh al-Arouri, the second-in-command of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, who was killed today by an Israeli drone strike in Beirut, had long expected a murderous attack on him.

“I am waiting to be a martyr, I think I have lived long,” he had said in August, urging Palestinians in the occupied West Bank to take up arms and rise up.

Al-Arouri’s killing – nearly three months after Hamas unleashed a bloodbath on Israeli soil that left an estimated 1,200 dead and 240 hostages – marks a turning point in Israel’s war to destroy Hamas.

Israel has for years accused him of deadly attacks against its own citizens. However, a Hamas official said Saleh al-Aruri was “at the heart of negotiations” to end the war in the Gaza Strip and release hostages, citing diplomatic initiatives by Qatar and Egypt.

“Whoever did this managed a surgically precise blow to the leadership of Hamas,” commented Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel does not usually confirm its involvement in such attacks.

Although less influential than Hamas leaders in Gaza, Saleh al-Aruri was considered a prominent figure in the Palestinian Islamist movement, directing its operations in the West Bank from exile.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniya tonight confirmed the killing of al-Arouri and two commanders of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the movement’s military arm, underlining that the Beirut attack constituted a “terrorist act”, a violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty and an escalation of Israel’s hostile actions against the Palestinians. For their part, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Lebanon’s Hezbollah vowed that the murderous attack “will not go unpunished.”

Within Hamas, Saleh al-Aruri was seen as an advocate of reconciliation between rival Palestinian factions and maintained good relations with Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, which holds power in the West Bank.

Hamas and Fatah have been at odds for years, and clashed in 2007 when the Palestinian Islamist movement seized power in the Gaza Strip.

However, when it came to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Saleh al-Arouri was always considered a hardliner, spearheading the establishment of Hamas’s military arm, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.

Israel considered him the mastermind of the 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank, after which the Israeli armed forces launched a seven-week military operation in Gaza that killed 2,100 Palestinians.

Against the background of the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, Al-Arouri argued that “there is no other option” than resistance at the collective level. He played a leading role in the spread of Hamas activity in the West Bank, where its fighters have launched a series of attacks against Jewish settlers over the past 18 months. Several attacks took place last year, shortly after Saleh al-Aruri made threats against Israel in television appearances.

With the leaders of Hamas in Gaza – Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Marwan Aisha – in hiding after the war began on October 7, Saleh al-Aruri took an active part in the negotiations, declaring in December that no more hostages would be released until until there is a complete ceasefire.

As a member of Ismail Haniya’s Qatar-based Hamas politburo, he was used to initiatives for dialogue – even if indirectly – even with his sworn enemies, the Israelis.

In 2011, soon after his release from Israeli prisons, he was one of Hamas’ negotiators in a prisoner swap deal with Israel, which the movement wanted to repeat with the hostages it kidnapped in the October 7 attack.

Born in Arura in the West Bank in 1966, Saleh al-Aruri joined Hamas in 1987 during the first Intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

He was imprisoned in 1992, a year before the Oslo Accords, in which the Palestine Liberation Organization recognized Israel’s right to exist and abandoned the armed struggle in favor of negotiations to create an independent Palestinian state.

Hamas rejected this approach, and Saleh al-Aruri returned to the movement’s armed struggle after his release. He was deported following a decision of the Supreme Court of Israel and stayed for three years in Syria. He later traveled to Turkey, before moving to Qatar and then settling in the Lebanese capital, where he was killed today.