Hamas leader's assassination won't shake Palestinian group: Ex-Israel premier

The assassination of Hamas deputy Chief, Saleh Al-Arouri, will not shake the Palestinian group, former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, said, Anadolu Agency reports.

It is wrong to believe that the assassination will shock Hamas and that the group will not be able to replace him

Barak told Israeli Channel 13 Wednesday evening.

Whoever believes that his replacement will be less talented is also wrong.  There is a successor to Arouri, and every person (in Hamas)

the former premier said.

Arouri was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Hamas office in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, Tuesday evening.

He was the highest Hamas leader to have been killed by Israel since the outbreak of the conflict in the Gaza Strip on 7 October.

READ: Israel MK calls for occupying Gaza, demolishing all houses

Israel has not officially claimed responsibility for the Hamas leader’s death.

Hamas and Hezbollah have vowed to retaliate for Arouri’s assassination.

Israel launched relentless air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip since Hamas’s 7 October attack, killing at least 22,313 Palestinians and injuring 57,296 others, according to Gaza’s health authorities, while nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

The Israeli onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with 60 per cent of the enclave’s infrastructure damaged or destroyed, and nearly 2 million displaced residents amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicines.

READ: Hezbollah targets Israeli military sites, causes casualties