Israel arrests sisters of Hamas ‘number two’ killed earlier this month

O The Israeli army confirmed that it had detained the two women in the “village of Aroura”, on the outskirts of Ramallah, for “inciting terrorism against the State of Israel”.

Dalal al-Arouri, 52, and Fatmah al-Arouri, 47, were detained at home, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club announced.

Saleh al-Arouri, 57, also one of the founders of the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement, was killed in an air strike in the suburbs of Beirut.

According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, since October 7th, the Israeli army has arrested around 5,900 people (of which 1,970 were placed in administrative prison) in the occupied West Bank, where tensions have been high since the attacks carried out by Hamas commandos on October 7th. October in southern Israel, from the Gaza Strip.

The arrests of the al-Arouri sisters come just hours before a speech scheduled for early afternoon by the leader of pro-Iranian Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah.

In a first speech, the day after al-Arouri’s death, Nasrallah stated that this murder “would not go unpunished” and that a response was “inevitable”.

Since then, clashes on the border between Lebanon and Israel, which began the day after Hamas’ attack on Israel, have intensified.

Al-Arouri’s death has reignited fears of a regional spread of the conflict, especially since, on the 8th of this month, a Hezbollah military leader was killed in an Israeli attack in Lebanon. In reprisal, Hezbollah attacked a military base in northern Israel the following day.

Israel promised to “destroy” Hamas and eliminate its cadres after the unprecedented attack carried out by the Islamist movement on its territory, which caused the deaths of around 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.

Hamas commandos also took around 250 people hostage, more than 100 of whom were released in late November during a week-long truce.

In response, Israel has been bombing the Gaza Strip, a territory controlled by Hamas since 2007.

According to the latest data from the Hamas Ministry of Health, more than 23,800 people were killed, the majority of them women, teenagers and children.

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