A drone strike on the southern Beirut neighborhood of Dahiyeh this week killed several Hamas leaders, including Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy leader of the group’s political wing and founder of its military wing, the Qassam Brigades. The move represents a significant regional escalation in Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 22,000 people there so far. However, this was not the first time Israel carried out an assassination attempt in Lebanon.

Al-Arouri had been living in exile in Lebanon since 2015. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the killings, but it is highly likely that Tel Aviv ordered the attack.

For decades, Israel has targeted Palestinian leaders in Lebanon, a stronghold of Hamas ally Hezbollah. However, al-Arouri’s death comes after an 18-year lull in a long list of attempted and successful political assassinations.

Here are some of the key cases.

1972 – After the Lod Airport murders

One of Israel’s first targets was Lebanon Ghassan Kanafani, a well-known Palestinian author and poet who was murdered along with his 17-year-old niece in Beirut on July 8, 1972. There was a grenade attached to the ignition of his car. When he started the car, it detonated a plastic bomb placed behind the car’s bumper.

Kanafani was a spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). His assassination followed the mass shooting at Lod Airport (now Ben Gurion International Airport) on May 30, 1972, in which 26 people were killed and scores more injured. Three members of the Japanese Red Army were recruited for the shootings as the airport was already on high alert for possible attacks by Palestinians. Israel said Kanafani’s killing was in response to that attack, but it is believed the assassination was planned long beforehand.

Bassam Abu Sharif, who became spokesman for the PFLP after Kanafani’s assassination, was also the target of a package bomb in Beirut on July 25, 1972. Abu Sharif survived the attack, but suffered serious injuries – he partially lost his eyesight and hearing as well as four other fingers.

1973 – Reaction to the Munich kidnappings

On September 5, 1972, members of Black September, a faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), kidnapped eleven Israeli athletes at the Summer Olympics in Munich. The hostages were eventually killed in a botched rescue attempt by West German authorities.

In response, Israel launched an assassination campaign called Operation Spring of Youth to target the masterminds of the kidnapping. Israeli special forces traveled by boat from Haifa on an operation that would last from April 10 to 11, 1973, and landed on the beach in Beirut with their commander, later Prime Minister Ehud Barak, disguised as a woman.

They raided a high-rise building and private homes of PLO officials in Beirut and Sidon that they had previously surveilled, blowing open the doors with explosives and firing shots until their targets were dead. Three senior PLO officials were killed: Muhammad Youssef al-Najjar, a deputy to PLO leader Yasser Arafat; speaker Kamal Nasser; and Kamal Adwan, military leader for the West Bank.

1973-2001 – A long conspiracy to assassinate Yasser Arafat

On October 1, 1973, Israel attempted to assassinate Arafat and PLO members Khalil al-Wazir, Faruq al-Qaddumi, Hani al-Hassan and Wadi Haddad during a meeting in Beirut. However, bombs thrown at the building where the men were meeting failed to explode.

Plans to assassinate Arafat continued for years. Israeli intelligence devised several plans to shoot down commercial aircraft that could be carrying Arafat, but concerns about the possible political consequences of killing civilians in the attempt hampered these efforts.

Between June and August 1982, several attempts were made to eliminate Arafat. Salt Fish, an Israeli task force created solely for this purpose, launched several bombing raids on Arafat’s possible locations, but none succeeded in killing him.

In 2001, Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who viewed Arafat as a “Jew murderer,” is said to have finally decided to stop attempts to assassinate him.

1979 – Another reaction to the Munich kidnappings

On January 22, 1979, Mossad agents carried out an elaborate plan to assassinate Ali Hassan Salameh, 37, a leading PLO member believed to be the architect of the Munich kidnappings. Spies had signed up to his gym weeks earlier to befriend him, and a British-Israeli agent rented an apartment near Salameh’s home to monitor his movements. Salameh died when his car drove past a mined Volkswagen that was detonated remotely.

1988 – Attempt to kill Ahmad Jibril

On December 9, 1988, Israel attacked Palestinian bases in southern Lebanon, targeting Ahmad Jibril, then secretary general of the General Command of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP-GC). Commandos raided locations outside Beirut but encountered fierce resistance from Palestinian fighters. Several Palestinian activists were killed. It later turned out that Jibril was never in this place.

2006 – Sidon assassination attempt

On May 25, 2006, Mahmoud al-Majzoub, a senior leader of the Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad and a close ally of Hezbollah, was assassinated in the city of Sidon. A car bomb planted on al-Majzoub’s car door exploded when he opened it. Israel denied responsibility for the attack, but both Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah blamed Tel Aviv. His brother Nidal al-Majzoub was also killed.

2024 – The war against Gaza

On January 2, Saleh al-Arouri died in a drone strike in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut. Six other people, including senior Hamas military commanders Samir Findi and Azzam al-Aqraa, were also assassinated. The men were on the second floor of an apartment building.

Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati called the killing an “Israeli crime.” Hezbollah said the attack on the Lebanese capital “will not go without punishment.”