Hezbollah on assassination of Saleh al-Arouri: This crime will not go unpunished

Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich responded to the assassination of a senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut on Tuesday, posting on X: "So may all your enemies perish, O Israel."

The communications minister also quoted the verse in a tweet: "'So may all your enemies perish, LORD! But may all who love you be like the sun when it rises in its strength.' Then the land had peace forty years." 

The prime minister's spokesman Mark Regev, when asked about a possible reaction by Hezbollah following the assassination, responded that while it is clear to everyone in Lebanon that there are many Hezbollah targets, whoever carried out this particular attack specifically aimed at a Hamas target because Israel is at war. 

Knesset Member Danny Danon, who serves on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, wrote on X: "I congratulate the IDF, the Shin Bet, the Mossad, and the security forces for killing senior Hamas official Saleh Arouri in Beirut. Anyone who was involved in the October 7 massacre should know that we will get to them and close an account with them."

This, despite the fact that the Cabinet Secretariat Tzahi Braverman had instructed Israeli Knesset members not to give interviews on the subject of the assassination.

In addition, all Likud party Knesset members were asked not to give interviews without prior approval in the next 24 hours or until further notice. 

Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli wrote on X: "I pursued my enemies and overtook them; I did not turn back till they were destroyed."

Knesset Member Boaz Bismuth wrote on X: "The act of injustice will not go unpunished. The list is long, but we will settle the score with all the heads of Hamas."

Chairman of the Jewish Power party, Yitzhak Kroizer, tweeted an image of Arouri and wrote in Arabic: "Every dog will have its day."

The Hamas and Hezbollah terror organizations also responded to the assassination.

A senior Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq said: "The assassinations that Israel carries out against Palestinian leaders and symbols will not succeed in breaking the will and steadfastness or stopping the resistance. The assassinations prove again and again the enemy’s failure to achieve its goals."

A senior Hezbollah official told the pro-Qatari newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the organization would respond to the assassination of Arouri.

Hezbollah said in an official statement: "We consider the assassination of Arouri and his companions in Beirut a serious act of aggression against Lebanon and the Lebanese people, including the security of Lebanon, its sovereignty and the resistance movement. We declare that this crime will not go unpunished and that the hands of the resistance are on the trigger and its forces are on high alert."