Hassan Nasrallah’s death will reshape Lebanon and the Middle East
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. THE SILENCE was deafening. By mid-afternoon on September 28th it had been almost 24 hours since Israel tried to assassinate Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah, a Lebanese Shia militia.
The Israeli army declared him dead that morning. But Hizbullah said nothing, neither about his fate nor about the enormous strike on its headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Even its media outriders, usually a pugnacious bunch, were stunned speechless.
The group finally confirmed his death at around 2.30pm. By then, Israeli jets had already carried out waves of additional air strikes across Lebanon. It said these were aimed at destroying more of Hizbullah’s rocket-and-missile arsenal, including anti-ship missiles that could be fired at natural-gas platforms in the Mediterranean.
Israel sees itself as being in a race against time to destroy what it can before its enemy can regroup. Hizbullah fired dozens of rockets at northern Israel the morning after Mr Nasrallah was killed, but that was no different from its tactics in previous days. The group is in disarray.
It is premature to speculate about how it might try to retaliate, because even its surviving leaders probably do not know the answer yet. But it is not too early to conclude that Mr Nasrallah’s death will reshape Lebanon, and the region, in ways that would have been unthinkable a year ago. Since October 8th, when Hizbullah started firing rockets at northern Israel in solidarity with Gaza, Mr Nasrallah thought he could sustain an open-ended but limited border conflict.
Read more on livemint.com
