The journey of Hassan Nasrallah, charismatic leader of Hezbollah whose death was announced by the Israeli army

With his black turban, reserved for descendants of the prophet, his thin glasses and his big salt-and-pepper beard, Hassan Nasrallah has been the face of Hezbollah for more than three decades. At the head of this militia dedicated to the armed struggle against Israel, which had become a state above the Lebanese state, the Shiite leader held the destiny of the country of the Cedar in his hands, in war as in peace. The Israeli army announced that it had killed this charismatic leader, revered religiously by his supporters, and feared by his enemies as an outstanding political-military strategist, on September 27, in an Israeli strike on his stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Faced with Arab regimes criticized for having abandoned the Palestinian cause, the “sayyed” as he is nicknamed, embodied resistance to Israel within the Arab world. He is adored as a new Nasser or an Arab Che Guevara, since his forces forced Israel to withdraw from South Lebanon in 2000, after twenty-two years of occupation. An aura of hero enhanced in the summer of 2006, when Hezbollah defeated the troops of the Hebrew State in a brief thirty-three day war.

An object of fascination, the man enjoys dictating the history of the Middle East, with unparalleled verve, in long flowing speeches, imbued with religious references, punctuated with touches of humor and threats with a finger. survey. He is nevertheless a hunted man, said to be holed up in a bunker under the southern suburbs of Beirut, to escape Israeli assassination attempts.

Iranian influence

His personality was revealed throughout his rise within the militia party. Born on August 31, 1960 in a working-class neighborhood in eastern Beirut, into a Shiite family from southern Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah was the eldest of nine children. As a teenager, he began to attend mosques and admired Moussa Al-Sadr (1928-1978), the religious and political leader of Iranian origin, at the origin of the Shiite awakening in Lebanon, with his Movement of the Disinherited. When at the start of the civil war in Lebanon in 1975, Muslim families were chased out of their neighborhood by Christian militias, the Nasrallahs returned to live in their original village, Al-Bazouriye, near Tyre.

Hassan Nasrallah gives religion lessons. He joined the Amal party, founded by Moussa Al-Sadr, to counterbalance pan-Arab and left-wing nationalists. At 16, he left for Najaf, Iraq, to ​​pursue religious studies. Sayyed Abbas Moussaoui (1952-1992), a Lebanese like him, became his mentor. Mohamed Baqr Al-Sadr (1935-1980) recognized him as a brilliant student. The latter is one of the architects, with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989), of the concept of « Veliyat e-Faqih »the concept of primacy of religion over political power that the Islamic revolution of 1979 in Iran will impose as a model of government.

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