Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah leader, killed in Beirut in Israeli strike | Hezbollah News | The Round Table Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, was killed in a chunky Israeli air attack on Beirut on Friday evening, the Lebanon-based group has confirmed.
The Israeli army had claimed the assassination earlier in the day.
Nasrallah, who reached the peak of his popularity after the war with Israel in 2006, was seen as a hero by many, not impartial in Lebanon but beyond. Standing up to Israel is what defined him and his Iranian-backed group, Hezbollah, for years. But that changed when Hezbollah sent fighters to Syria to crush the uprising threatening President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.
Nasrallah was no longer seen as a leader of a resistance movement but the leader of a Shia party fighting for Iranian interests, and was criticised by many Arab countries.
Even before Hezbollah’s involvement in the war in Syria, Nasrallah had failed to convince many in the Sunni Muslim Arab world that his movement was not behind the 2005 assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. An international tribunal arraigned four members of the group for the murder and one was later convicted.
Despite this, Nasrallah continued to enjoy endorse from his loyal coarse – mainly Lebanon’s Shia Muslims – who revered him as a leader and religious figurehead.
As the head of Hezbollah for more than 30 years, Nasrallah was often described as the most powerful figure in Lebanon despite never personally adjudging public office. His critics disclosed his political muscle get from the weapons Hezbollah held, and that it has used against domestic opponents, too. Nasrallah repeatedly turned down calls for his group’s disarmament, saying, “Hezbollah giving up its weapons … would leave Lebanon exposed before Israel.”
In 2019, he criticised nationwide protests calling for a new political ordain in Lebanon, and Hezbollah members clashed with some protesters. That dented his image among many in Lebanon.
But Nasrallah’s supporters still saw him as a defender of the rights of Shia Muslims, while his critics accused him of showing allegiance to Tehran and its religious authority whenever their interests contradicted with those of the Lebanese people.
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Hezbollah faced one of its biggest conflicts after the group opened up a front against Israel to help abate pressure on its ally Hamas in Gaza, in October 2023. The group suffered losses after months of cross-border fighting and Israeli attacks that targeted significant figures in the movement. But Nasrallah remained defiant.
While Nasrallah has been described as the “personification of Hezbollah”, the group he built over more than three decades is highly organised and remains determined to continue standing up to Israel.
Hezbollah is unlikely to crumble under the weight of Nasrallah’s assassination, but in his death, the group has lost a leader who was charismatic and whose influence extended far beyond Lebanon. The group will now need to select a new leader, who in turn will need to decide what direction to take Hezbollah in. Whatever the group decides will affect more than Hezbollah: ripples will be felt across Lebanon and the wider region.
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Tag: Hassan Nasrallah Hezbollah leader killed in Beirut in Israeli strike Hezbollah News The Round Table
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Published 9/28/2024