Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 16:34, 24 August 2006

This article is currently under extended confirmed protection. Extended confirmed protection prevents edits from all unregistered editors and registered users with fewer than 30 days tenure and 500 edits. The policy on community use specifies that extended confirmed protection can be applied to combat disruption, if semi-protection has proven to be ineffective. Extended confirmed protection may also be applied to enforce arbitration sanctions. Please discuss any changes on the talk page; you may submit an edit request to ask for uncontroversial changes supported by consensus.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah (Template:Lang-ar) (b. August 31 1960, Burj Hammud, Beirut, Lebanon), is the current Secretary General of the Lebanese Islamist party Hezbollah.

Personal life

Hassan Nasrallah was born the eldest of nine children in East Beirut on August 31, 1960. His father, Abdul Karim, was a vegetable vendor from Bassouriyeh (Al Bazuriyah), a small village near the city of Tyre in South Lebanon. Although his family was not particularly religious, Nasrallah was interested in religious studies. He attended Al Najah school and later a public school in Sin el-Feel, Beirut.

In 1975, the civil war in Lebanon forced the family to move to their ancestral home in Bassouriyeh, where Hassan Nasrallah terminated his secondary education at the public school of Sour. Here he joined the Amal Movement, a political group representing Shiites in Lebanon. After a period of Islamic study in Iraq he returned to Lebanon, where he studied at the school of Amal’s leader Sheikh Abbas al-Musawi, later being selected as Amal's political delegate in Beqaa, and making him a member of the central political office. After the Israeli invasion in 1982, Nasrallah joined Hezbollah to dedicate himself to the resistance of the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.

Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah lived in South Beirut with his wife Fatima Yassin (who comes from the Lebanese village of Al Abbasiyah) and five children: Muhammad Hadi (d. 1997), Muhammad Jawad, Zeinab, Muhammad Ali and Muhammad Mahdi. In September 1997, his eldest son Muhammad Hadi was killed by Israeli forces in Jabal al-Rafei in southern Lebanon.

Nasrallah is a devoted Muslim and has spent periods of his life studying at religious centres in Iraq. In the mid-1970s he moved to a Shiite Hawza (Islamic Seminary) in the Iraqi city of Najaf to study Qura’anic divine sciences, completing the first stage of his studies in 1978 before being forced to leave by the Iraqi authorities. Despite his ongoing commitment to Hezbollah, in 1989 Nasrallah resumed his efforts to become a religious jurisprudent by moving to the sacred Iranian city of Qom to further his studies. 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 praises and prayers, rather it is a divine message that was designed for humanity, and it can answer any question man might ask concerning his general and private life. Islam is a religion designed for a society that can revolt and build a state.”

Nasrallah said once in an interview that he reads many books, particularly the memoirs of political figures, including Ariel Sharon's autobiography, “Memoirs of Sharon” and Benjamin Netanyahu's A Place Under the Sun, with the intention of getting to know his enemies.

Leadership of Hezbollah

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Nasrallah became the leader of Hezbollah after Israel assassinated the movement’s leader Abbas al-Musawi in 1992. Under Nasrallah's leadership, Hezbollah became a serious opponent of the Israel Defense Forces in Southern Lebanon, managing to improve the organization's military capabilities and increasing the killing rate to approximately two dozen Israeli soldiers per year. Hezbollah's military campaigns of the late 1990s were believed to be one of the main factors that led to the Israeli decision to withdraw from Southern Lebanon in 2000, thus ending 18 years of occupation.

Consequently, Nasrallah is widely credited in Lebanon and the Arab world for ending the Israeli occupation in Southern Lebanon, something which has greatly bolstered the party's political standing within Lebanon.

Nasrallah also played a major role in a complex prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hezbollah in 2004, resulting in hundreds of Palestinian and Hezbollah prisoners being freed and bodies returned to Lebanon. The agreement was described across the Arab world as a great victory for Hezbollah with Nasrallah being personally praised for achieving these gains .

In the aftermath of the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri the United Nations Security Council issued Resolution 1559 which called for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Lebanon. This referred chiefly to Syria, which had held suzerainty over Lebanon since its 1976 intervention in the country's nascent civil war. In response to UNSCR 1559, Nasrallah initiated several large demonstrations expressing support for the Syrian government. UNSCR 1559 also called for the "the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias" and "the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory." This referred directly to Hezbollah whose military wing, as an armed force not controlled by the Lebanese government, constitutes a militia. Hezbollah also maintains de facto control over parts of south Lebanon, preventing the Lebanese government from exercising a monopoly of force within the country and asserting its control over Lebanon's southern border with Israel. .

2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict

His home and office were destroyed by Israeli bombing raids during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict on July 14th 2006.

August 3, 2006: Hassan Nasrallah vowed to strike Tel Aviv in retaliation for Israel's bombardment of Lebanon's capital, Beirut. "If you hit Beirut, the Islamic resistance will hit Tel Aviv and is able to do that with God's help," Nasrallah said in a televised address. His forces were inflicting "maximum casualties" on Israeli ground troops."

Views on Israel

Speaking at a graduation ceremony in Haret Hreik, Nasrallah announced on October 22, 2002: "if they all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide." The New York Times qualifies this as "genocidal thinking", whereas the New York Sun likens it to the 1992 Hezbollah statement, which vowed, "It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth." Michael Rubin qualifies his goal as genocide too, quoting Nasrallah ruling out "co-existence with" the Jews or "peace", as "they are a cancer which is liable to spread again at any moment." The Age quotes him like so: "There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel."

Despite declaring "death to Israel" in his public appearances, Nasrallah said in an interview to The New Yorker, "at the end of the road no one can go to war on behalf of the Palestinians, even if that one is not in agreement with what the Palestinians agreed on." When asked whether he was prepared to live with a two-state settlement between Israel and Palestine, he said he would not sabotage what is a Palestinian matter. .

In another interview with the Washington Post, Nasrallah said "I am against any reconciliation with Israel. I do not even recognize the presence of a state that is called "Israel." I consider its presence both unjust and unlawful. That is why if Lebanon concludes a peace agreement with Israel and brings that accord to the Parliament our deputies will reject it; Hezbollah refuses any conciliation with Israel in principle." .

References

1. ^ "Profile: Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah". Al Jazeera. 2000-07-17. Retrieved 2006-07-30. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
2. ^ "Biographical sketch of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: "The Nasrallah Enigma"" (PDF). Al-Bawaba. 2003-11-10. Retrieved 2006-07-30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
3. The Brooking Institution - Hezbollah's Popularity Exposes al-Qaeda's Failure to Win the Hearts
4. "Hizbullah, Vanguard and liberator". 2004-03-04. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
5. "Hezbollah rallies Lebanese to support Syria". 2005-03-09. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
6. "Hezbollah threatens to strike Tel Aviv". 2006-08-03. Retrieved 2006-08-03. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
7. Nasrallah alleges "Christian Zionist" plot by Badih Chayban, The Daily Star, October 23, 2002
8. "Hezbollah leader targets Christians". WorldNetDaily. 2002-10-23. Retrieved 2006-07-30. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
9. Lappin, Elena (2004-05-23). "The Enemy Within". The New York Times. Retrieved 2006-07-30. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
10. Staff Editorial (2005-03-11). "Nasrallah's Nonsense". New York Sun. Retrieved 2006-07-30. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
11. Eradication First - Before Diplomacy by Michael Rubin, American Enterprise Institute, July 17, 2006
12. Markus, Andrew (July 15, 2006). "Little choice for a defiant Israel". The Age. Retrieved 2006-07-30. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
13. Hersh, Seymour M. (July 18, 2003). "The Syrian Bet". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2006-08-07.
14. Shatz, Adam (april 29, 2004). "In Search of Hezbollah". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 2006-08-07. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
15. "Said Hassan Nasrallah Q&A: What Hezbollah Will Do". The Washington Post. February 20, 2000. Retrieved 2006-08-08. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)

External links

• "Hizballah: A Primer", Lara Deeb, 07/31/06
• "Inside the Mind of Hezbollah", Washington Post, 7/16/2006.
• "Hezbollah: The Major Leagues of Terrorism?", 7/20/2006.
• Nasrallah: Israel temporary country YNET
• The Nasrallah Enigma, Al-Bawaba, 11/10/03
• Hassan Nasrallah: In His Own Words, CAMERA, 7/26/06

Speeches and interviews

• Interview with Al-Jazeera on July 20, 2006
• Speech on August 8, 2006
• Speech on August 3, 2006
• Speech on July 31, 2006
• Speech on July 14, 2006
• Speech on March 8, 2005

• Secretaries-general of Hezbollah
• 1960 births
• Living people
• Islamists
• Lebanese people
• Shi'a clerics
• Anti-Semitic people
• Holocaust denial