On October 7, 2023, the State of Israel sustained its worst ever failure in its fight against terrorism. But a week and a half before the anniversary of the outbreak of the Swords of Iron war is marked, the State of Israel has achieved its greatest ever achievement in its fight against terrorism: the destruction of almost all of the chain of command of Hezbollah, from its general secretary Hassan Nasrallah down to commanders of individual units.
First and foremost, of course, comes Nasrallah, killed in an Israel airstrike on the Dahiyeh neighborhood of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, on Friday night. Nasrallah had been general secretary of the organization since the killing of his predecessor in the role, Abbas al-Musawi, in 1992. Nasrallah was one of the core group of founders of Shi’te movement Hezbollah in 1982. In 1987, he was sent for religious studies to Qom in Iran, a city holy to Shi’ite Islam. Throughout his long terrorist career, he demonstrated his aspiration to turn Lebanon into a province of Iran, rather than a prosperous, independent country.
In May 2000, Israel withdrew from the buffer zone it had established in Lebanon, and instead of trying to rehabilitate the country, in October that year Nasrallah ordered the operation in which three Israeli soldiers were killed. Their abducted bodies were returned to Israel in an exchange of prisoners in 2004. The next abduction, of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in July 2006 led to the Second Lebanon War.
"Had I known that there was a one in a hundred chance that capturing the soldiers would lead to war, I would not have carried it out," Nasrallah said after he understood what destruction he had caused to Lebanon. The current fighting between Israel and Hezbollah brings home the fact that, while he may have accumulated an armory of some 150,000 rockets and missiles, according to the CIA’s estimate, Nasrallah chose the "axis of resistance" led by Iran, and took the position that "a ceasefire in Gaza will bring about a ceasefire in Lebanon," a policy that ultimately led to his killing. His maternal cousin, Hashim Safi Al Din, who heads Hezbollah’s Executive Council, is widely seen as Nasrallah’s likely successor.
Another Hezbollah commander, Hassan Khalil Yassin, who headed a unit in the organization's intelligence division, was reportedly killed in a further Israeli strike on Dahiyeh this afternoon.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on September 28, 2024.
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