Hasan Nasrallah, the Shiite raised among Christians who wants to expel Israel from Lebanon for the third time

Nasrallah grew up as a minority Bourj Hammoud. This small neighborhood of Beirut, on the other side of the Dahie where Hezbollah’s stronghold now resides, keeps a secret. In its streets, rumors circulate that it was an Armenian woman who breastfed him when he was a child. “That’s what the old people in the neighborhood say,” Krikor, a neighbor the same age as the Hezbollah leader, explains to EL ESPAÑOL. “But that didn’t matter before. At that time, we didn’t ask ourselves if someone belonged to this or that religion,” he recalls.

The period to which it refers Krikor It ended abruptly in 1975 with the outbreak of the civil war that shook Lebanon for fifteen years. Nasralá’s family, like other members of the neighborhood’s small Shiite community, decided to seek refuge in the city. In his mid-teens, Hasán changed his school to Without el-Fil – a predominantly Christian neighborhood – by Bazuriye, a small, predominantly Shiite southern town that was hit several times during the escalation between Israel and Hezbollah last year.

Although his family was not particularly religious, the young man quickly developed his interest in theology in his parents’ town. Not even a year had passed since his transfer from Beirut when he joined Amal – “Hope” – the “movement of the dispossessed” that would become the main Shiite militia in the new war. By the age of 15, he was already the party’s spokesman in the city, and after completing his secondary education, he entered the clerical seminary in Baalbek, the capital of the Becá Valley.

From this poor region on the border with Syria, Nasrallah went to the Ayatollah’s seminary al-Sadr In Iraq. He remained there until 1978, when Saddam Hussein’s government dismantled the Dawa school of ulama in which the student was initiated. In 1979, he returned to Lebanon and resumed his activism in Amal. With such success that, a few months after his repatriation, he became a member of the party’s political council and delegate of the movement for the Becá region. At the turn of the decade, he strengthened his friendship with Abbas al-Musawialso a student of Al-Sadr in Iraq.

In 1982, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon pushed al-Musawi found a new movement: The Party of God, or HezbollahAt this stage of the civil war, many Lebanese Shiites – particularly those living in the south of the country – felt that a more militant and radical group than Amal was needed to address the specific threat posed. IsraelMoreover, unlike the existing party, the new movement had the full support of an Iran where the Islamic revolution had just triumphed and was eager to launch its foreign policy.

Just as the Israeli invasion marked a change of mentality in his generation, Nasrallah quickly abandoned Amal and joined the new political-military project. Hezbollah said in its Open letter —its founding manifesto— 1985 that the pillars of the movement were two. First, the armed struggle against the enemy occupation in occupied Palestine. Second, loyalty to the Iranian spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, as faqih – hermeneut – or highest religious authority.

Nasrallah’s involvement in Hezbollah’s early years came from abroad. The cleric spent long periods in Iran to strengthen the Lebanese party’s relations with the Islamic republic. But he quickly took the reins of the movement: in 1991Israel assassinated al-Musawi and Nasrallah returns to Beirut become Secretary General of Hezbollah.

The party man

Since al-Musawi’s death in 1992, Nasrallah has been the sole leader of HezbollahAt 32, the cleric inherited the leadership of a young movement that was trying to wrest control of a swath of southern Lebanon that amounted to 10 percent of the territory from Israel. Over the next decade, he achieved two accomplishments that legitimized Hezbollah’s role as a political and military actor in Lebanon. First, he expelled Israeli troops from the south in 2000, after 18 years of occupation. Second, in 2004, he struck a difficult deal with Israel on a prisoner exchange. Lebanese and Palestiniansas well as the remains of deceased Hezbollah fighters, including those of his son Hadi, assassinated in 1997.

The successes of Feast of God the first five years of this century they won Nasrallah the admiration and recognition not only of Shiite Muslims, but also of a large part of the Lebanese population and many Arabs in the region. Perhaps the first setback to his leadership came in 2005, when Rafic Hariria Sunni prime minister critical of the Syrian government, was assassinated. Hezbollah was already a strong ally of Bashar al-Assad, and many Lebanese suspected their prime minister’s death was the work of Nasrallah’s men. At the time, the Hezbollah leader denied any involvement, calling the accusations a political attempt by the United States and Israel to smear his party.

But this crisis was an effective springboard to a new role. After Hariri’s death, it was confirmed that the Lebanese state was seriously wounded. In the absence of Lebanese social security, public schools or public hospitals, Nasrallah’s Hezbollah intensified the aid programs for members of the Shiite community that it had already launched years ago.

The rest of the Lebanese population was conquered after the 2006 war with Israel. In July of that year, Hezbollah kidnapped two soldiers from the enemy army. Israel responded with a military campaign against southern Lebanon. Within a month, the Government of Lebanon Defense Forces Ehud Olmert they killed more than 1,200 Lebanesedisplaced a million people and left entire regions destroyed. But after 34 days of operation, Nasrallah’s great feat happened: Israel withdrew.

The entire Arab world celebrated Hezbollah for a moment. The feat of expelling Israel was the best fuel for the popularity of the Party of God in a society demoralized since the 1967 war. Nasrallah also insisted on the fact that this victory was the work of an entire nation: “It is not the victory of a party, a sect, or a nation. category. “It is the victory of the true Lebanon, of the people and of all the faithful of this country.”

After the collective euphoria, Nasrallah felt that his party needed more than military power and that it deserved to have a permanent voice in the Lebanese government. After negotiations, confrontations and disagreements with the government of Fouad Siniora, the prime minister and the Party of God reached an agreement on Qatar: Hezbollah would have a right of veto over all decisions of the Lebanese cabinet of ministers.

But while in the 2000s Nasrallah consolidated himself as a legitimate political and military force in the eyes of the Lebanese and Arabs of all political persuasions and religions, the role played by Hezbollah in the war in syria This has tarnished the public image of the movement. Collaboration with the government of Bashar al-Assad This cost Nasrallah the dislike of the rebels and his sympathisers at a time when the so-called “Arab Spring” was spreading from Tunisia to Yemen. In Lebanon too, the arrival of a million and a half Syrian refugees has turned part of the population against the Party of God.

In recent years, Hezbollah’s weight in Lebanon has driven away investments from Gulf countries that are enemies of Iran. The economic crisis, the popular uprisings of 2019, the explosion of The Port of Beirut in 2020 and the Lebanese parliament’s failure to appoint a president have turned Lebanon into a failed state. And in the face of this institutional vacuum of power, Hezbollah has only grown and become one of the most important members of the movement. “Axis of Resistance” who is captain Tehran and which aims to combat Zionism and Western imperialism in the Middle East.

Following the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7 Nasrallah congratulated the armed group in Gaza. A day later, his men began attacking Israel from the northern border. In the name of Islam, but also of Lebanon, anti-imperialism and Palestine, Nasrallah showed himself ready to defy Israel and devoted all the efforts of his 100,000 fighters to attacking from across the border. Today, on the brink of war, the Hezbollah leader presents himself as a man of great achievements. The first, expel Israel twice from Lebanon. Second, give credit to your party, but do so on behalf of an entire country. In doing so, Nasrallah has led Lebanese people – supporters and non-supporters alike – to increasingly believe that Hezbollah is the only force in Lebanon capable of fighting Israel.