The killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is undoubtedly the highest-profile assassination carried out by Israel.
Far less equivocal is how the death of Israel’s arch-foe will change the dynamics of the country’s numerous confrontations with adversaries on its borders that the charismatic leader of the Lebanon-based Shia militant group either commanded or lent his support to.
“This is not the first political leader assassinated in the Middle East, and this has never stopped anything or fixed anything at all,” said Dimitri Diliani, a Palestinian activist from East Jerusalem and a spokesperson for the Fatah Reformist Democratic Faction.
An Israeli observer framed it differently, but nonetheless, echoed a similar note of caution.
“It’s a major blow,” said Yoram Schweitzer, a former Israeli lieutenant-colonel and intelligence officer who’s now with the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an Israeli think-tank.
“But I don’t want to underestimate the capability of Hezbollah to try to recover because it has large depots of ammunition and [the organization] is still not destroyed.”
Key figure behind Hezbollah’s growth
Nasrallah, 64, led Hezbollah — which Canada and many other Western countries have labelled a terrorist entity — for more than three decades.
Nasrallah inherited the top job in 1992 after Israeli Apache helicopters unleashed missiles on the motorcade of his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, resulting in his death.
With armaments, extensive fundraising and political support provided by Iran’s anti-Western Islamic government, Nasrallah would go on to build Hezbollah into the most powerful militia in the Middle East — often referred to as a state within a state — packing a potent arsenal of long-range weapons and becoming a key part of the political fabric of Lebanon.
After Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, Nasrallah vowed his support for their cause. As Israel launched powerful air attacks against Gaza and then followed up with a ground invasion, Hezbollah joined the fight, albeit in a limited way, by targeting military facilities in Israel’s north.
Israel claims that in the past year, Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets, missiles and shells across the border into northern parts of Israel, forcing roughly 60,000 Israelis from their homes.
Amir Atari and his family are among the approximately 60,000 Israelis who have been displaced from their homes in the north due to Hezbollah rocket fire that followed the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.
Two weeks ago, Israel’s war cabinet made the decision to shift its major theatre of military operations from Gaza to the north, making the return of those residents one of its new war aims.
It began with an unprecedented stealth operation that caused thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies across Lebanon and parts of Syria to explode, many of which were used by Hezbollah members.
At least 32 people were killed and over 3,000 Lebanese people were injured, including children, according to the UN Human Rights Office, in the attack that prompted widespread international criticism and was labelled by opponents as an act of terror.
That operation was followed up by an intensive series of airstrikes that killed over a dozen senior Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon and Beirut, but also left more than 720 people dead, many of them civilians, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
Fears leader’s killing will lead to ‘retaliation’
The final blow came Friday night as Israeli warplanes flattened a cluster of apartment buildings in southern Beirut, where Nasrallah and at least some of his remaining commanders were meeting deep underground.
It’s still unclear how many civilians were killed in the building’s collapse, but by mid-afternoon Israel time on Saturday, Hezbollah confirmed the body of Nasrallah had been found amid the rubble.
“Nasrallah was one of Israel’s greatest enemies of all time,” said Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, spokesperson for Israel Defence Forces (IDF). “His elimination makes the world a safer place.”
While Iran-backed Hezbollah is primarily Shia, Nasrallah had aligned the group with the Sunni-dominated Palestinian struggle for statehood and ending Israeli occupation of the West Bank. He also had a loose alliance with Hamas, in Gaza, which both saw Israel as a common enemy.
“We are not in the business of being sad or happy,” Diliani, the Palestinian activist, said in regards to Nasrallah’s death.
“It will not affect anything on the ground because there is more than one capable leader who will come and take [Nasrallah’s] place. But it will lead to retaliation and to more innocent people being victimized.”
Within hours of Hezbollah confirming Nasrallah’s death, there were already indications his cousin, Hashem Safieddine, current leader of the group’s executive council, was preparing to take over the top position.
As well, across northern Israel, air raid sirens screamed throughout the day, with the IDF confirming more than 70 incoming attacks from Lebanon.
Other assessments from outside the immediate region also cautioned against writing the group off.
“Hezbollah will not vanish overnight as a significant actor inside Lebanon and the region despite the pummelling it has endured,” said Burcu Ozcelik from Britain’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a military and strategic think-tank based in London.
“The militant group may believe it is no longer restrained given the targeting of its senior command structure and that it must act decisively, otherwise it may not survive.”
Hezbollah is thought to still have dozens of highly destructive long-range ballistic missiles and thousands of other missiles that can easily attack Israeli communities, but it has yet to launch them, either out of fear of an even worse Israeli retaliation or because of damage from Israeli bombing.
The most immediate consequence of Nasrallah’s death may be a rethinking of a possible Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon, which numerous high-ranking Israeli military officials have hinted could be imminent.
As tensions grow along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, a top Israeli military official says troops are preparing for a potential ground invasion targeting Hezbollah military outposts. Andrew Chang explains what a full-scale invasion would look like and why many world leaders are fearing the worst.
Images supplied by Getty Images and Reuters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Hezbollah must be pushed back north of the Litani River, which runs through Southern Lebanon and has been for years been the subject of contentious negotiations with the United Nations and Lebanon’s government.
Schweitzer, a senior research fellow at INSS, said killing Nasrallah could lessen the chance of Israeli soldiers crossing the border.
“If Israel … is effective and continues with these kinds of successes and hitting these targets, it may reduce the need for a ground manoeuvre, definitely not a deep one,” he told CBC News in an interview.
Gaza residents react to Nasrallah’s death
Iran, which has invested billions of dollars over decades in building up Hezbollah’s capabilities, will also have to decide its next steps.
“Iran’s interests are much wider than Hezbollah and Hezbollah works for Iran — it’s not the other way around,” said Dilani.
He considers it highly unlikely Iran will opt to engage with Israel directly.
In Gaza, where a year of Israeli bombing has killed more than 41,000 people and flattened vast tracts of the territory, several people told a videographer working for CBC News that while they were disappointed Nasrallah had been killed, they didn’t think it would change much for them.
“I don’t think killing Nasrallah will change any equation in the war with Gaza,” said Marwan Siba, 41. “Israel is fighting them independently.”
Others said Palestinians have lost a key ally.
“Nasrallah has been standing on the same side and has never let down the Palestinian people,” said Moati Abu Musabah, 45. “This is a big loss.”