Mohammad Atout, a Palestinian resident of the Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp in Beirut, was eating with his children last Tuesday evening when the news broke across the Lebanese capital that Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau, had been assassinated.
“Someone told me there had been an attack [in Beirut]. Moments later the television said it was Arouri. Then people came out in the streets. It hit them very hard. He was an important leader for us,” Atout said.
In the coffee shop he owns, which opens on to a street decorated with Palestinian banners, his customers have been watching Al Jazeera foot-age of the war in Gaza.
“We never thought that the Israelis would dare to do this in Beirut,” Atout said. He believes the reason for Arouri’s killing was Israel’s failure to find and kill Hamas’s leaders inside Gaza, including the head of the
