Hassan Nasrallah
Hassan Nasrallah (Arabic: حسن نصر الله [ħasan nasˤrɑɫɫɑh]; born 31 August 1960) is a Lebanese cleric and the secretary-general of Hezbollah, a Shia Islamist political party and militant group.
This article is about the Lebanese secretary-general of Hezbollah. For other uses, see Hassan Nasrallah (disambiguation).
Hassan Nasrallah
Born into a Shia family in the suburbs of Beirut in 1960, Nasrallah finished his education in Tyre, when he briefly joined the Amal Movement, and afterwards at a Shia seminary in Baalbek. He later studied and taught at an Amal school. Nasrallah joined Hezbollah, which was formed to fight the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. After a brief period of religious studies in Iran, Nasrallah returned to Lebanon and became Hezbollah's leader after his predecessor was assassinated by an Israeli airstrike in 1992.[1][2]
Under Nasrallah's leadership, Hezbollah acquired rockets with a longer range, which allowed them to strike at northern Israel. After Israel suffered heavy casualties during its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, it withdrew its forces in 2000, which greatly increased Hezbollah's popularity in the region, and bolstered Hezbollah's position within Lebanon. However, Hezbollah's role in ambushing an Israeli border patrol unit leading up to the 2006 Lebanon War, was subject to local and regional criticism. During the Syrian civil war, Hezbollah fought on the side of the Syrian army against what Nasrallah termed "Islamist extremists".
Early life and education
Hassan Nasrallah was born the ninth of ten children into a Shia family in Bourj Hammoud, Matn District (an eastern suburb of Beirut), on 31 August 1960.[3] His father, Abdul Karim Nasrallah, was born in Bazourieh, a village in Jabal Amel (South Republic of Lebanon) located near Tyre and worked as a fruit and vegetables seller.[4] Although his family was not particularly religious, Hassan was interested in theological studies. He attended the al-Najah school and later a public school in the predominantly Christian neighborhood of Sin el Fil Beirut.[1][3]
In 1975, the Lebanese Civil War forced the family, including Nasrallah who was 15 at the time, to move to their ancestral home in Bazourieh, where Nasrallah completed his secondary education at the public school of Sour (Tyre). There he attended secondary school, and briefly joined the Amal Movement, a Lebanese Shia political group.[1][3]
Nasrallah studied at the Shia seminary in the Beqaa Valley town of Baalbek. The school followed the teachings of Iraqi-born Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr, who founded the Dawa movement in Najaf, Iraq during the early 1960s.[5]
In 1976, aged sixteen, Nasrallah travelled to Iraq where he was admitted into Ayatollah al-Sadr's seminary in Najaf. Al-Sadr is said to have recognised Nasrallah's qualities and is quoted as saying "I scent in you the aroma of leadership; you are one of the Ansar [followers] of the Mahdi ...". Nasrallah was expelled from Iraq, along with dozens of other Lebanese students, in 1978. Al-Sadr was imprisoned, tortured and brutally murdered.[6][3] Nasrallah was forced to return to Lebanon in 1979, by that time having completed the first part of his study, as Saddam Hussein was expelling many Shia,[3] including Ruhollah Khomeini (Ayatollah Khomeini) and Abbas Musawi.[7]
Back in Lebanon, he studied and taught at the school of Amal's leader Abbas al-Musawi, later being selected as Amal's political delegate in Beqaa, and making him a member of the central political office. Around the same time, in 1980, Saddam Hussein had Sadr executed.
Early activities
Nasrallah joined Hezbollah after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.[1] In 1989, Hassan Nasrallah traveled to Qom, Iran, where he furthered his religious studies.[3][8][9]
Nasrallah believes that Islam holds the solution to the problems of any society, once saying, "With respect to us, briefly, Islam is not a simple religion including only prayers and praises, rather it is a divine message that was designed for humanity, and it can answer any question man might ask concerning his general and personal life. Islam is a religion designed for a society that can revolt and build a community."[1]
In 1991, Nasrallah returned to Lebanon and replaced Musawi as Hezbollah's leader after the latter was killed by an Israeli airstrike the following year.[10]
Memorandum of Understanding with Free Patriotic Movement
Nasrallah negotiated a Memorandum of Understanding with the Free Patriotic Movement headed by Michel Aoun, the former premier and a Maronite Christian. Aoun described the ten-point MoU in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal published in July 2006. Hezbollah agreed to disarm upon the return of its prisoners and the occupied Shebaa Farms. It also agreed to the pardon and return of fugitive South Lebanon Army (SLA) members.[20]
The Free Patriotic Movement in turn agreed to work for reform of the confessional electoral system of the Parliament of Lebanon and move it in the direction of one man, one vote. Aoun made the point that the political process was in effect disarming Hezbollah without any loss in lives from unnecessary wars.[21] Critics of this agreement say that is not very clear concerning the disarmament, and that it served to strengthen Hezbollah internally, giving it a non-Shiite cover inside .
Syrian Civil War
On 25 May 2013, Nasrallah announced that Hezbollah is fighting in the Syrian civil war against "Islamist extremists" and "pledged that his group will not allow Syrian militants to control areas that border Lebanon".[29] He confirmed that Hezbollah was fighting in the strategic Syrian town of Qusair on the same side as the Syrian army.[29] In the televised address, he said, "If Syria falls in the hands of America, Israel and the takfiris, the people of our region will go into a dark period."[29]
In July 2014, Nasrallah's nephew was killed fighting in Syria.[30]
Personal life
Nasrallah lives in South Beirut with his wife Fatimah Yasin, who comes from the Lebanese village of Al-Abbasiyah, and four of his children: Muhammad Javed, Zainab, Muhammad Ali and Muhammad Mahdi.
On the night of 12 September 1997, four Hezbollah fighters were killed in an Israeli ambush near Mlikh. One of the dead was eighteen-year-old Muhammad Hadi, Nasrallah's eldest son. Five Lebanese soldiers and a woman were killed in a simultaneous airstrike north of the security zone. The attacks were seen as a response to the operation a week earlier in which twelve Israeli commandos were killed. Nasrallah was quoted as saying on receiving the news of his son's death: "I am proud to be the father of one of the martyrs".[31][32]
When the IDF released photos of his son's body and offered to exchange it for body parts of those killed in the earlier ambush, Nasrallah responded: "Keep it. We have many more men like Hadi ready to offer themselves to the struggle". There was a seven-day mourning period held in south Beirut, which was attended by an estimated two hundred thousand people daily.[33][32]
According to Syrian opposition media, Nasrallah is the brother-in-law of Hezbollah commander Wissam al-Tawil, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in January 2024.[34]
On 25 May 2024, Hezbollah media stated that Nasrallah's mother, Hajja Umm Hassan, had passed away.[35]
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By playing a key part in ending the Israeli occupation, Nasrallah became a "national hero".[76] The New York Times article reported that an Arab politician called him as the "most powerful man in the Middle East" and the "only Arab leader who actually does what he says he's going to do".[77] Al Jazeera compared him to other Arab leaders such as Yasser Arafat and Gamal Abdel Nasser, and leftist revolutionaries like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro,[78] while journalist Annia Ciezadlo described him as an "emblem of Islam and Arab pride".[79] Professor Amal Saad-Ghorayeb said that he is "passionate" but also "plainspoken and practical".[79]
Nasrallah is often referred to as "al-Sayyid Hassan" (السيد حسن), the honorific "Sayyid" denoting a claim of descent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad through his grandson Husain ibn Ali.