The illusion of a solution: kill Hassan Nasrallah

The ongoing Israeli operation against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia group so dominant in Lebanon, follows a standard pattern. Ignore root causes. Ignore context. The target group is managers and personnel. See things in traditional terms of a civilizational warrior versus a barbarian despot. Israel, the brave and courageous, fights against the forces of darkness.

The entire blood-woven tapestry of the Middle East offers uncomfortable explanations. In the region, false political boundaries were drawn and pronounced by foreign powers, fictitious countries were proclaimed, and entities were created based on the pure interests of the powers in Europe. These empires created shoddy cartographies in the name of the nation-state and preyed upon self-interest, ignoring the complexities of ethnicity and tribal dispositions. Tragically, such cartographic fictions tended to be accompanied by crime, dispossession, displacement, ethnic cleansing, and enthusiastic hatred.

Since Hamas turned the tables on October 7, when Israel's announced security apparatus killed over 1,200 of its citizens and smuggled over 200 hostages into Gaza, the historical realities have been present with an unpleasant resonance. While Israel falsely flaunted its credentials as a peaceful state with purely democratic credentials ravaged by Islamic barbarians, Hamas had tapped into a vein of history dating back to 1948. Dispossession, segregation and oppression should all be addressed, if only for a moment of avant-garde and cruel violence.

In the north, where Lebanon and Israel share another nonsensical border, October 7 brought change. Both the Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah took part in every bloodier tournament. It was a serious matter: 70,000 Israelis were expelled to the south; Tens of thousands of Lebanese also went to the north. (The latter are almost never mentioned in the West's vitriolic commentary.)

Israel's strategy in this latest phase has been made all too clear by the number of Hezbollah military commanders and senior operatives that the IDF has targeted. Added to this were the killings via pager-walkie-talkies as a prelude to a likely ground invasion of Lebanon. It was clear that Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was considered a prime target.

Hezbollah confirmed the death of its leader in a Sept. 27 attack on Beirut's southern suburb of Dahiyeh and vowed to “continue its jihad by confronting the enemy, supporting Gaza and Palestine, and defending Lebanon and its steadfast and honorable people.” Others killed included Ali Karki, commander of the organization's southern front, and several other commanders who had gathered.

Israeli officials were prematurely enthusiastic. Like deluded scientists obsessed with eliminating a symptom, they ignore the disease out of habitual obsession. “Most of Hezbollah’s senior leaders have been eliminated,” claimed a triumphant Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called the move “the most significant attack since the founding of the State of Israel.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu simply stated that killing Nasrallah was necessary to “change the balance of power in the region for years to come” and allow displaced Israelis to return to their homes in the north.

Various reports swallowed the Israeli narrative. Reuters, for example, called the killing “a major blow to the Iran-backed group, which is suffering from an escalating campaign of Israeli attacks.” Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr said it “will be a major setback for the organization.” But the death of a being is never a guarantee of the death of an idea. The body only offers a period of stay. Ideas are transferred, grow and multiply, and take hold in other organizations or units. The assassination rocket is a poor substitute for addressing the reasons why such an idea arose.

A dead or mutilated corpse offers only the reassurance that power may have triumphed for a moment, a situation that brings only brief joy to military strategists and journalists keeping tabs on the latest innovations at the morgue. So it's easy to ignore why Hezbollah became a haunting consequence of Israel's botched invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982. It is also easy to ignore the 1985 manifesto, which spoke of the organization's determination to fight Israel and those it supported, such as the Christian Phalangist allies in the Lebanese Civil War and the elimination of the Israeli occupying forces.

Such superficial notions as “degrading” the effectiveness of an ideological, religious group hardly address the broader problem. The consequences of a wild pruning can prove to be increasingly powerful. The assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Abbas al-Musawi along with his wife and son in 1992 only led to the rise of Nasrallah. Nasrallah proved to be a more impressive, imaginative and eloquent proposal. He also pushed other figures to the fore, such as the recently assassinated Fuad Shukr, who became a key figure in acquiring the group's extensive arsenal of long-range missiles and precision-guided missiles.

Ibrahim Al-Marashi of California State University, San Marcos summarizes the efforts of Israel's high-profile killing strategy as short-sighted miscalculations. “History shows that every single Israeli assassination attempt on a high-ranking political or military actor, even after it was initially hailed as a groundbreaking victory, ultimately resulted in the slain leader being replaced by someone more determined, skilled and bellicose.” Another Nasrallah is certain to be in tow, and several others are in the making.