Beirut:

The killing of Hezbollah’s powerful leader Hassan Nasrallah a month ago has marked a fundamental shift for the Iran-backed Lebanese movement and revived calls for it to surrender its vast weapons arsenal.

“The death of Nasrallah marked the end of an era,” said analyst Sam Heller of the US-based think tank Century Foundation.

After decades at the helm, Nasrallah’s death “will necessarily mark a shift for the organisation”, Heller added.

Nasrallah’s influence extended far beyond his loyal Shiite Muslim support base in Lebanon.

He was a key pillar in Iran’s “axis of resistance” against the United States and Israel, which includes other armed groups in the Middle East as well as Syria.

Israel dealt Hezbollah a seismic blow when it assassinated Nasrallah on September 27 in a huge air strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs that has thrust the movement into a new age.

Hezbollah was already mired in a year of cross-border exchanges of fire with Israel, which it began in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas after the October 7, 2023 attack.

Last month, Israel ramped up strikes on Hezbollah strongholds and sent in ground forces while killing one member of the group’s top leadership after another.

Nasrallah, who had led the group since 1992, spearheaded operations against Israel for decades, and gained cult status among his supporters during the 2006 war.

According to Heller, “he was the foremost decision-maker in the organisation as it rose to prominence in Lebanon and regionally.”

The group’s governing Shura Council has yet to appoint a successor.

Hashem Safieddine, a cleric tipped for the post, was killed by Israel just days after Nasrallah.

Home turf

Hezbollah is now run by a group of leaders, according to its deputy head Naim Qassem.

Lebanese officials, including Prime Minister Najib Mikati, have said that their contact with the group has been cut off for weeks.

Nabih Berri, Lebanon’s parliament speaker who heads the Hezbollah-allied Amal Movement, is tasked with speaking on the group’s behalf, Qassem said in a recent speech.

Berri is believed to be pushing for a ceasefire, according to local media reports.

Hezbollah had long linked a ceasefire in Lebanon to an end to fighting in Gaza, a position it has yet to formally reverse.

Even with the group appearing on the back foot, its fighters continue to fire dozens of rockets daily into Israel, some reaching major cities like Haifa and Tel Aviv.

This week, Hezbollah claimed a drone strike on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in the coastal town of Caesarea.

The group says Israeli forces have not been able to take full control of any village in Lebanon, weeks into a ground invasion.

Israeli forces operating in Lebanon “face very fierce resistance and are forced to retreat under heavy blows”, said a source close to Hezbollah.

“The maximum depth the Israelis have reached is estimated at about two kilometres (1.2 miles),” said the source, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Hezbollah, he said, has the advantage because it is fighting on its own terrain, knowing which “trees and rocks” to hide behind.

‘Disarm’

Hezbollah is widely believed to be better armed than Lebanon’s national military, and remains the only group that did not surrender its weapons after the 1975-1990 civil war.

After years of dominating political life in Lebanon, Hezbollah is facing new calls from its critics within the country to change.

Lebanese computer engineer Elie Jabbour told AFP he believes the only way forward is for Hezbollah to give up its weapons.

“The war cannot end before Hezbollah is disarmed,” he said.

“When that happens, it can join state institutions as a political party only,” said the 27-year-old.

A ceasefire in Lebanon has been tied to the implementation of a UN resolution that ended the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006.

UN Security Council Resolution 1701 states that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should deploy in areas south of the Litani River — an area Hezbollah has long operated in.

But Lebanon is grappling with a prolonged crisis, leaving the country rudderless until a president is elected after a two-year void.

Many in Lebanon blame Hezbollah for blocking the vote.

Samir Geagea, leader of the Lebanese Forces party and a longtime Hezbollah opponent, said any new president must not “leave any group or weapon outside the framework of the state”.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Thursday that only the state should carry weapons.

But in a country long wracked by division, attempts to “marginalise Hezbollah politically will… invite a violent response” from the group, Heller said.

It “will end in intra-Lebanese conflict,” he added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

On September 27, Hassan Nasrallah, who led Hezbollah for more than three decades, was assassinated by Israeli airstrikes on Beirut.
| Photo Credit: AFP

When Hassan Nasrallah, then 32, became the Secretary-General of Hezbollah in 1992, after the assassination of the group’s leader and co-founder Abbas al-Musawi, one of the first things he did was to order rocket attacks into northern Israel. A car bomb hit the Israeli embassy in Turkiye, killing a security officer, while a suicide bomber blew himself up at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 29 people.

Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to push the Palestine Liberation Organisation out of the country. It did so, but the war led to the rise of Hezbollah, which turned out to be a greater security challenge than the PLO. In 1992, when Israel killed Mr. Musawi, what it wanted to do was deal a lethal blow to Hezbollah. But Mr. Musawi’s successor sent a message in unmistakable terms that he would double down on Hezbollah’s resistance.

The rocket attacks and embassy bombings were just the beginning of Hezbollah’s violent resistance under Mr. Nasrallah, who would turn the organisation, which was largely a guerrilla militia when he took over, into a multifaceted movement, with a military wing that is more powerful than the Lebanese Army. On September 27, Mr. Nasrallah, who led Hezbollah for more than three decades, was assassinated by Israeli airstrikes on Beirut.

Mr. Nasrallah “has joined his fellow martyrs”, Hezbollah said in a statement on Saturday (September 28, 2024), confirming his death. Martyrdom is a central ideological and religious theme of Shia political activism. It is the supreme sacrifice. In September 1997, after Mr. Nasrallah’s eldest son Muhammad Hadi was killed in an Israeli ambush near Mlikh, a mountain village in southern Lebanon, he said, “I am proud to be the father of one of the martyrs”.

Born and raised in a working-class suburb of Beirut, Mr. Nasrallah undertook his religious studies in Baalbek in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley and then in Iran. When the Iranian revolution took place, which gave a new meaning to Shia political Islam and radicalised youths across the region, Mr. Nasrallah was 19. He saw the power of religion and martyrdom. He witnessed the devastation brought by the civil war in Lebanon. He also saw the aggression of Israel in 1982, which had hit the marginalised Shia community the hardest. He was initially part of the Amal party, a Shia movement. When the radical sections of Amal split from the party and formed Hezbollah, Mr. Nasrallah joined them.

After he assumed leadership of the movement, his focus was on resistance against Israel’s continuing occupation of southern Lebanon, where they had carved a buffer called ‘security zone’. Hezbollah, with rocket attacks and ambushes, had turned the security zone into an ‘insecurity zone’. Amid growing violence, in 2000, 18 years after it started the Lebanon invasion, Israel decided to withdraw troops from the south. Mr. Nasrallah termed it “the first Arab victory against the Zionist entity”. In 2006, a cross-border raid by Hezbollah triggered the wrath of Israel, which launched a ground invasion and massive air strikes. The war went on for a month, causing great damage to Hezbollah. But Israel, despite its firepower, failed to defeat Hezbollah or deter its rockets from southern Lebanon. When Israel withdrew from Lebanon after reaching a ceasefire with Hezbollah, the group claimed another victory.

Another pivotal moment of Mr. Nasrallah’s leadership was the civil war in Syria, an ally, where the regime of Bashar al-Assad was threatened by a multitude of rebel and jihadist groups, including the Islamic State. “If Syria falls in the hands of America, Israel and the takfiris (a reference to IS and al-Qaeda jihadists), the people of our region will go into a dark period,” Nasrallah said in 2013, confirming that Hezbollah was fighting in Syria alongside the troops of the Assad regime. Hezbollah, along with other Iran-backed Shia militias and Russia, played a crucial role in turning around the Syrian civil war.

The “obliteration” of Israel and the liberation of Jerusalem were two of the main declared objectives of Hezbollah. When Israel launched its retaliatory war on Gaza following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack in Israel, Hezbollah started firing rockets into Israel “in solidarity with the Palestinians”.

Editorial | Rogue state: On Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah

Ever since, Hezbollah has been fighting a limited war, turning northern Israel into a no-man’s area. But earlier this month, Israel decided to escalate the war dramatically. Within days, Israel launched back-to-back attacks without letting Hezbollah recover from the effects. It triggered pager and walkie-talkie explosions first and then launched waves of massive airstrikes, taking out Hezbollah’s senior commanders.

On September 27, by assassinating Mr. Nasrallah, Israel dealt the heaviest blow to Hezbollah and its ally, Iran. Mr. Nasrallah led the group through wars. And he was killed in a war. Israel might be hoping that Hezbollah would take time to recover from its punches. Hezbollah says it will continue its “holy war against the enemy”. West Asia will remain on edge.

United Nations peacekeepers suffered light injuries on Sunday. File
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

Three United Nations peacekeepers suffered light injuries Sunday (August 18, 2024), the United Nations said, after a blast near their vehicle close to Lebanon’s southern border, where Hezbollah and Israel have traded near-daily fire.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah group has exchanged cross-border fire with the Israeli army in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on Israel sparked the Gaza war.

“Earlier today, three peacekeepers on patrol were lightly injured when an explosion occurred near their clearly marked UN vehicle in the vicinity of Yarine, in south Lebanon,” the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said in a statement.

Also Read: Explained | What is the U.N. Peacekeeping mission?

“All peacekeepers in the patrol returned safely to their base. We are looking into the incident,” it added.

Earlier Sunday, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency had reported that “Israeli enemy warplanes” struck the village of Dhayra, about one kilometre (0.6 miles) from Yarine, “resulting in injuries”.

A UNIFIL source said that the explosion that injured the peacekeepers was probably a nearby air strike, but “not a direct hit”.

Earlier in August, Under Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix told AFP that UNIFIL was today “more important than ever” amid the ongoing cross-border clashes, because it was “the only liaison channel between the Israeli side and the Lebanese side in all its components, such as Hezbollah”.

In April, a judicial official told AFP that an ongoing Lebanese army investigation determined that a landmine wounded three UN military observers and a translator the previous month, while Israel implicated Hezbollah.

UNIFIL’s mandate, which expires at the end of the month, is set to be renewed by the UN Security Council for another year.

The cross-border violence has killed 582 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but including at least 128 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.