Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah is the only person in Lebanon with the power to wage war or make peace, but he lives in hiding to avoid assassination by his movement’s arch enemy, Israel.
A wave of Israeli strikes on Friday hit Hezbollah’s main stronghold in south Beirut, and Israeli broadcasters said Nasrallah was the target.
A source close to Hezbollah denied these reports, saying he was “fine”.
Nasrallah enjoys cult status among his Shia Muslim supporters, is equipped with a far larger and more modern arsenal than the national army, and dominates Lebanon’s institutions.
Nasrallah has been rarely seen in public since his movement fought a devastating war with Israel in 2006.
In 2011, the leader appeared at a religious procession in Beirut’s southern suburbs and briefly greeted supporters before addressing the crowd on video from an undisclosed location.
In a 2014 interview with Lebanon’s pro-Hezbollah newspaper Al-Akhbar, Nasrallah said that “the Israelis are pushing this idea… that I live far away from the people, that I don’t see them or interact with them. Doesn’t communicate.”
He said he regularly changed sleeping locations, but denied that he lived in a bunker.
“The point of the security measures is to keep movements secret, but that doesn’t stop me from moving around and seeing what’s going on,” he said.
Nasrallah is still sometimes photographed with other leaders of Iran-backed armed groups in the Middle East.
It is believed that very few people know where he lives. Officials and journalists who met Nasrallah in recent years described tight security measures that prevented them from knowing where they were being taken.
Most of his speeches over the last two decades have been recorded and broadcast from secret locations.
– Support of Hamas –
A gifted public speaker, Nasrallah, 64, is a master of rhythm, from humor to belittling his enemies to anger to rousing his 100,000-strong militia.
The bearded, bespectacled cleric is never seen without the traditional attire and black turban that marks him as a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed.
He is married and has four living children.
He was elected Secretary General of Hezbollah in 1992 at the age of just 32, after his predecessor Abbas al-Musawi was killed by an Israeli helicopter gunship.
Hezbollah is the only group that has refused to give up its weapons since Lebanon’s 15-year civil war ended in 1990, and Nasrallah insists that Israel remains an existential threat.
Since Hezbollah’s Palestinian ally Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, Hezbollah has fought Israeli troops almost every day along the Lebanon-Israel border.
– political power –
Born in Bourj Hammoud, a poor northern suburb of Beirut, on August 31, 1960, he was one of nine children of a poor grocer from the small southern village of Bazouriyeh.
Nasrallah studied politics and the Quran for three years at a seminary in Iraq’s Shia holy city of Najaf, before being expelled in 1978 when the Sunni-dominated government attacked Shia activists.
He then became deeply involved in Lebanese politics and gained much of his early experience in the Shia Amal militia during the civil war.
But when Israeli troops invaded Beirut in 1982, he defected from Amal and became one of the founders of Hezbollah.
After Israel withdrew its troops from south Lebanon under sustained attack from Hezbollah in May 2000, ending a 22-year occupation of the border strip, he achieved cult status in Lebanon and throughout the Arab world.
Nasrallah’s years at the helm of Hezbollah, or the Party of God, have seen the group expand from a guerrilla faction into the country’s most powerful political force.
Hezbollah is praised by many Shias in Lebanon for supporting local charities, building health and education services in its strongholds, and aiding the needy among its supporters.
But in divided Lebanon, the movement is also widely hated, including by those who dream of a nation free of sectarianism and where the rule of law prevails.
Nasrallah’s personal popularity soared across the Arab world after a UN-brokered ceasefire ended the 2006 conflict with Israel, after suffering a setback when he supported President Bashar al-Assad in the war since 2011. Sent fighters to neighboring Syria to support the regime.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
