SIDON, Lebanon — Hamas operative Nidal Hleihel was sitting in his car last month outside an apartment block in this Lebanese port city when he heard a loud crack above him. Spooked, he said, he scrambled out of the vehicle. He had just reached a nearby stairwell when the Israeli missile struck.
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His sport utility vehicle went up in flames as a crowd began to gather. Hleihel, cut deeply by shrapnel but still alive, was rushed from the scene.
The attack was part of an intensifying Israeli assassination campaign against Palestinian militants in Lebanon — a war within a war that has been largely obscured by escalating exchanges of fire between the Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah. Most of the Palestinians targeted are mid-level members of Hamas, involved in finance or logistics, but a January strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs killed Saleh Arouri, a senior political figure who helped found the group’s military wing.
“All Palestinian factions in Lebanon should be aware that at any moment, anyone could be assassinated,” Ayman Shanaa, Hamas’s deputy political chief in Lebanon, told The Washington Post.
The IDF says it is targeting people involved in advancing attacks on Israel, either in collaboration with Hezbollah or independently, a testament to the long reach of Israeli intelligence. Officials and experts in Lebanon say the strikes have pushed Hamas closer to Hezbollah, the much larger group that is this country’s dominant military and political force.
“This is going to define the future of Hamas in Lebanon in a way which it is going to be even more dependent on Iranian and Hezbollah assistance and oversight,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
Hamas and Hezbollah share a common enemy in Israel and a common patron in Iran. But their ideological roots are divergent — Hamas is a Sunni militant group and Hezbollah is Shiite — and at times their alliance has been uneasy.
Hamas has maintained a presence in Lebanon since the 1990s, mostly confined to the country’s Palestinian refugee camps — dense, sprawling urban neighborhoods where Lebanese security forces are rarely seen. Operatives provide logistical support to fellow militants in the West Bank and Gaza and launch occasional cross-border attacks against Israel, though not on the same scale as Hezbollah, which has traded near-daily fire with the IDF for almost 11 months.
Since Oct. 7, when Hamas fighters killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and dragged about 250 hostages back to Gaza, analysts say the group’s popularity has surged among the Palestinian community here. Lebanon is home to an estimated 250,000 Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations. They are banned from applying for citizenship, owning land or voting, and they face barriers to employment. Many still live in camps, which provide militant groups with a steady stream of recruits.
The largest is Ein El Hilweh, on the outskirts of Sidon, where Hamas is strongest and where a number of assassinations have occurred. Thousands of mourners filled the camp’s narrow streets on Aug. 10 for the funeral of Hamas official Samer al-Hajj, killed the day before in an Israeli drone strike.
“With our blood and souls, we will sacrifice ourselves for you,” the crowds chanted. “We lost the most precious beloved.”
Just two weeks later, a missile strike in Sidon killed Khalil al-Maqdah, who Israel said worked with Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to plan attacks in the West Bank. Maqdah belonged to the armed wing of Fatah, Hamas’s chief political rival in the Palestinian territories, but he supported the “unity of fronts,” or cooperation between armed groups.
“This martyrdom is a badge of honor for all the resistance axis,” his brother Munir, also a Lebanon-based militant, said in a television interview hours after the strike.
Most of the Palestinians killed by Israeli drone strikes in Lebanon are “not high-ranking guys, they’re middle management,” said a former Lebanese security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters. “Israel is sending a message that its war against Hamas has no borders.”
Sidon’s mayor, Hazem Khodr Bdeir, said that he is concerned about the growing violence but that the country’s collapsing economy is a more pressing issue. “We don’t like it, but we are used to it,” he said.
Mohamad Karfakan, head of the city’s civil defense, said his team has responded to numerous drone attacks. Hezbollah members regularly show up, along with Lebanese military and other state security forces, he said.
The group often sets up the security perimeter, shooing away curious onlookers and sometimes first responders. After the drone strike that injured Hleihel, Karfakan said, he was whisked away by Hezbollah representatives, who appeared eager to control the narrative.
“They did not want anyone to take photos of the injured person or the area,” he said.
Israeli strikes since October have killed 21 Palestinian militants in Lebanon, according to a Post tally, a small fraction of the more than 400 Hezbollah fighters killed over the same period. But the IDF’s constant back-and-forth with Hezbollah has provided cover to go after Palestinian operatives on Lebanese territory, which would once have been seen as a major provocation.
“Before, we would have feared such a strike would cause a war, but we are already in a war,” said Yoram Schweitzer, head of the program on terrorism and low-intensity conflict at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. “The location doesn’t give them immunity anymore.”
Israel invested heavily in intelligence operations in Lebanon in the aftermath of its 2006 war with Hezbollah, including the development of robust files on Palestinian militants in the country, according to a Lebanese official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Hamas officials in Lebanon say they are urging members to limit their movements, as well as the use of cellphones, which they suspect are being used to track them.
As Israeli strikes drive Hamas leaders further underground, analysts predict the group will become more dependent on Hezbollah for security — but also more powerful as a fighting force within Lebanon.
“The assassinations will give Hamas more legitimacy,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a research director at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “More sympathy means they’ll be able to recruit more.”
Eventually, he said, “this campaign will backfire.”
