‘Death Boats’ from Lebanon … Journey to the ‘European Dream’ or Bottom of the Sea https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3920641/%E2%80%98death-boats%E2%80%99-lebanon-%E2%80%A6-journey-%E2%80%98european-dream%E2%80%99-or-bottom-sea
‘Death Boats’ from Lebanon … Journey to the ‘European Dream’ or Bottom of the Sea
Lebanese people await survivors or victims of a boat sinking off the Arida crossing with Syria. (AFP)
Lebanon had transformed in the past two years into a platform for the departure of migrants to Europe. Over 85 journeys left the country in 2022 alone.
A Lebanese security source said the smuggling operations existed before the crisis that has been engulfing the country since 2019, but they have risen dramatically since.
Thousands of migrants from Lebanon and Syria and Palestinians have been literally throwing themselves in the sea in a gamble to reach Europe where they dream of leading a better life.
Travelers from 38 boats managed to reach European shores in 2021, while 46 have failed. Tragedy has also struck, taking hundreds of migrants to the bottom of the sea.
The Lebanese army has dedicated a unit to crack down on human traffickers. They collect the testimonies of smugglers and escapees to help them draw the complete picture of how the illicit operations take place along the Lebanese shore.
A Lebanese security source drew a bleak picture of despair to Asharq Al-Awsat. He spoke of how people were willing to risk their lives and that of their children to take the dangerous journey at sea. He also spoke of the greed of smugglers who recklessly risk the lives of people for a handful of dollars, which the migrants often collect by selling everything they own to pay for the perilous journey.
Italy is the destination of all these journeys.
Why Italy?
The source said: “Yes, the journey to Italy is longer, more difficult and more dangerous, compared to Cyprus, which can be seen by the naked eye from Lebanon.”
Lebanon and Cyprus have signed an agreement to prevent the smuggling of people from Lebanon, so that country has been ruled out by traffickers.
Greece, which is also close to Lebanon, has also been ruled out because its authorities have been brutally cracking down on migrant boats.
Italy, however, helps migrants and provides them with essentials, such as food and medical treatment, as soon as they arrive on its shores. Moreover, it does not detain the migrants, but rather allows them to roam the country and enter other parts of Europe until judicial rulings are issued.
The journey to Italy takes around eight to ten days, depending on the weather. It could take even longer if the boat is forced to maneuver around Cypriot or Greek patrols. At times, the boat may be forced to remain moored at sea for days.
Once the boat reaches regional waters, the captain would turn on the GPS and satellite telephones to call for rescue from the Italian coastguard. Once the message is received, the captain then begins to sink the vessel to destroy any evidence that gives away where the trip departed from.
Everyone onboard the boat then jumps into the sea to await the coastguard that takes them to dedicated gathering spots.
The migrants then refuse to present any identification papers, forcing Italian authorities to give them two options: Submit an asylum request in Italy or face a deadline to leave the country.
The second option is often chosen by the majority of the migrants, who have relatives or friends in other European countries, where they would choose to settle down with their help.
Smuggling scenario
The area stretching from Tripoli’s shores to the al-Abde at the border with Syria is chosen arena of the smugglers.
The smuggling operation begins with a “contractor” of sorts who gathers the travelers and agrees with them on the details of the trip and the payment that is made in installments. The first is an advance payment and the last is given to the smuggler in Lebanon through relatives or people trusted by the migrants and smuggler after the travelers reach Europe.
A passenger is charged between 4,000 and 5,000 dollars, but special prices are offered to families and groups. Discounts are offered to children, which only leads to more of them being placed in the boats.
The desperate migrants often sell their homes, gold, or properties to pay for the dangerous journey. If it is a failure, then they are left with nothing.
Passengers revealed that they have had to stay in the town of Bebnin on the eve of their journey. Their stay there is a boon for the residents. The town has become the destination of passengers from Lebanon and Syria as well.
This has led to cooperation between smugglers from Syria and those operating the migrant boats.
Rawan al-Mane, the relative of victim Mustafa Misto, said her cousin was convinced of embarking on the journey by a friend, who turned out to be close to major smuggler, Bilal Nadim Deeb.
Mustafa took out loans to pay 5,000 dollars per migrant and 5,000 dollars for his three children.
In the meantime, the smuggler would have completed the purchase of a fishing boat that will be used for the journey. The cost ranges between 35,000 and 50,000 dollars. The boat that recently sank off Syria’s Tartus cost 36,000 dollars.
The smuggler then transfers the ownership to one of the travelers, who would be granted a discount on the journey. The owner of the vessel is often pursued by judicial authorities once the trip is discovered, therefore allowing the smuggler to “remain out of the picture.”
The boat then leaves the fishing port legally. The necessary documents and identity of the sailor are verified by the security forces. Finding nothing suspicious, such as large amounts of fuel, life jackets and food, the vessel is allowed to leave.
The necessities for the journey are loaded later. They are first stored at houses that are located along the shore and their owners, of course, ask for a fee for keeping them.
The migrants are gathered in small boats dotted off the shore to avoid raising suspicions. They often do not carry any luggage, just a few bags or backpacks, meaning they could pass as regular boat passengers.
Once the migrant boat arrives, the surprises eventually begin to arise. The number of passengers often exceeds the capacity of the boat.
A boat usually has the capacity to hold 20 people, while an agreement would have been reached to load it with 50. But once the migrants are collected, the number would have crossed that figure by miles. The ill-fated boat that sank off Tartus carried over 125 people.
The boat “crew” consists of the captain, his assistant, mechanic and medic. Relatives and friends of the “crew” could take advantage of their connections and also join the journey. Rounding out the numbers are the migrants themselves.
The greater the load in the boat, the greater the danger. The weather only increases the risks and when a storm strikes, so does tragedy. Other factors that jeopardize the journey include the poor experience of the captain and his assistants and the greed of the smugglers.
The Lebanese army has been trying to crack down on smuggling throughout the year despite limited means. The security source said 46 operations were thwarted in 2022, while 38 made the journey. Two boat sinkings were reported. One vessel was rescued after suffering a malfunction at sea.
Lebanese authorities have largely managed to uncover the smuggling networks and are working on breaking them up as much as possible.
Bebnin used to be a fishing town, but the spike in smuggling has shifted the focus of the residents. Entire families are now involved in smuggling and trafficking.
The brother of detained smuggler, Bilal Deeb, also took up smuggling and headed one trafficking network. He embarked on a journey at sea with his family and is now living in Europe.
Arabs in Israel: A Dangerous Security Secret, Especially During Electionshttps://english.aawsat.com/features/5327937-arabs-israel-dangerous-security-secret-especially-during-elections
Arabs in Israel: A Dangerous Security Secret, Especially During Elections
Benjamin Netanyahu with his wife and Israeli President Isaac Herzog (AFP)
“We on the right and center-right represent about 65% of the electorate, so we will remain able to form governments in the future. I know I will lose support and may even alarm many of my good friends. But I believe we must tie our fate to that of the Arabs in Israel.”
Natan Eshel, known as Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest adviser, published those words on June 16, 2019.
His opinion piece appeared that day in two newspapers at opposite ends of Israel’s political spectrum: Haaretz, which the right sees as radically left-wing, and Makor Rishon, the newspaper of the pro-settlement right, which the left regards as a platform for the fascist right.
Anyone who knows the inner workings of Israeli politics understands that the article expressed Netanyahu’s own views. The governing right was addressing the entire Israeli public, from the far right to the far left, through the liberal center.
Its message: the right had the courage to change official policy toward Arab citizens, marked throughout Israel’s history by racial discrimination and the suppression of freedoms.
The article sent shock waves through Israel. The country was in a historic constitutional crisis, going through five elections in two and a half years. “The Arabs are not the problem, but the solution,” Eshel wrote in the same article.
What happened over seven years to make Netanyahu abandon that path and embrace its opposite, hostility and hatred?
And why is Israel’s Central Elections Committee, supposedly a model of integrity, now voting overwhelmingly to disqualify all Arab candidate lists, seeking to deny Arab citizens their basic right to run for the Knesset?
A closer look reveals that most Israeli parties are mired in racism. They treat the Arab minority with arrogance and condescension, just as Aryans in Europe treated Jews: excluding them, trampling on their rights and doing everything they can to diminish their standing.
The question remains: What drove Netanyahu to seek fair treatment for Arabs, then retreat so far that he now sees them as an “eighth front” in Israel’s wars, alongside Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iraq’s Hezbollah, Hamas in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Houthis in Yemen?
Mansour Abbas. AFP
The turn begins
Some trace the shift to 2016, when Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit decided to file indictments in three serious corruption cases.
These analysts see Netanyahu’s outreach to Arab citizens as a normal democratic step: an attempt to redress decades of racial discrimination and show that the right, in particular, could put them on a path toward equality.
He had approved Plan 922, allocating $5 billion to narrow some of the disparities caused by discrimination. The plan was developed with the Joint List, led by lawmaker Ayman Odeh, and the National Committee of Heads of Arab Local Authorities, led by Mazen Ghnaim.
But Netanyahu’s aides had a different calculation. They were building an alliance of right-wing parties to shield him against the judiciary, which was trying him on three corruption indictments.
The right was fragmented. Its far-right parties distrusted Netanyahu’s governments, which always included one or more centrist parties. He offered them a deal: a permanent alliance, in good times and bad, that would hold under any circumstances and support him in court.
When far-right leaders began throwing their weight around and imposing conditions, he turned to another tactic: an alliance with one of the Arab lists.
All the Arab parties had by then united under the Joint List. Netanyahu knew that bringing one into his coalition could break that unity. He would achieve three goals at once: divide his opponents, as he routinely did; secure a governing majority; and win respect in the West for ending the exclusion of Arabs and discrimination against them.
But the hard-line far right insisted he must not ally with Arabs. The opportunity collapsed.
His center-right rivals, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, seized it instead. In 2021, they formed a coalition with the United Arab List, led by lawmaker Mansour Abbas. That alliance gave them the numbers to form a government.
The government lasted a year and a half; too little time to fundamentally change Israeli policy. But it gave Arab parties political legitimacy and secured several gains for Arab citizens, foremost among them Plan 555, providing an estimated $10 billion in funding.
It began with Rabin
Abbas’ alliance with the Bennett-Lapid government was not the first to include Arabs.
In 1993, Shas, the party of ultra-Orthodox Jews of Middle Eastern origin, left Yitzhak Rabin’s government, reducing it to a minority. Rabin turned to the Arabs.
They were represented by two parties: the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, led by lawmaker Tawfiq Zayyad, with three seats, and the Arab Democratic Party, led by lawmaker Abdulwahab Darawshe, with two. Together, they formed the “blocking bloc,” preventing the right from toppling the government.
Rabin showed a sincere commitment to the alliance. He accepted two conditions: begin a process to achieve full equality for Israel’s Arab citizens and recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The alliance delivered on both fronts. The Oslo Accords were one of its fruits. But, as is well known, the Israeli right assassinated Rabin. Netanyahu then took power for his first term, from 1996 to 1999.
The process was derailed. Arabs were again excluded and pushed toward the political margins. Their parties resumed their struggle from the back benches of the Knesset opposition, in street demonstrations and through international pressure from United Nations bodies, the European Union and other institutions.
Netanyahu once again turned them into a bogeyman to frighten Jews.
Incitement long before Oct. 7
The impression that Netanyahu is exploiting the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, to fuel hatred of Arabs in Israel misses the longer history. Incitement against them began long before the attack. Netanyahu himself played a decisive role.
An Israel Democracy Institute poll showed how successful that incitement had been.
Conducted a week before his June 2019 call to bring Arabs into the coalition, it found that 81% of Jewish respondents opposed Arab parties’ participation. Just 13% supported it.
The Hamas attack, however, became a defining benchmark for Israeli policy and a fixation for an entire society. At its core lies hatred of Palestinians — all Palestinians, including Gaza’s children — and support for killing them alongside their mothers, daughters and elderly people. Even Palestinian citizens of Israel were cast as enemies.
Why? Did they join the Hamas attack? Did they approve of it?
Every Israeli politician and military official knows that Arab citizens stand in direct opposition to Hamas and wholly opposed its attack. Many were themselves killed or wounded.
Arabs opposed the attack
Arabs in the Negev were among the first hit by Hamas rockets during the attack. Six were killed.
The attackers also killed a Palestinian woman wearing a headscarf who tried to stop them from killing civilians. She told them their actions violated Islamic values. They shot her.
They also shot an Arab paramedic from Iksal, near Nazareth, who worked for Magen David Adom, as he treated a wounded Jew.
Even the Islamic Movement led by lawmaker Mansour Abbas condemned the Oct. 7 attack as “a massacre and an inhuman, unjustified act that does not reflect the values of the Palestinian people.” Almost every Arab politician in Israel did much the same.
To say that “after Oct. 7, no government may be formed that relies on Arab parties” is therefore a slur built on lies and ingratitude. Behind it lies blind racism.
The threat this policy poses to Israel’s future has ignited a struggle among Jews themselves over how to respond.
The majority, including liberal centrist forces led by Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, embrace this racist position without shame or hesitation.
Despite their positive experience of an alliance with Mansour Abbas, they bowed to Netanyahu’s campaign, disavowed that alliance and pledged to reject any government dependent on an Arab party.
Eisenkot tried to soften his opposition. At a meeting with voters in Jerusalem last Friday, he said: “Since this morning, my team has been dealing with the promise supposedly made to them that Mansour Abbas would be in the government. Anyone who knows me knows that I do not make promises.”
His answer still left him an opening. Every partner, he said, must accept three basic principles: that Israel is a Jewish, democratic and liberal state; the values of the Declaration of Independence; and the obligation to perform military or national service.
Last Tuesday, he told Radio 103FM he had added a fourth condition: anyone joining his government must support eliminating Hamas.
A liberal and left-wing current rejects this racist approach. It argues that the Jewish people, who once suffered racial discrimination in its most abhorrent forms, now practice it openly, explicitly and as official policy.
“Bringing Arab parties and Arab society into any future governing coalition is a strategic necessity to save Israel and defeat the right, which is destroying Israel,” said Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats party.
Yet Golan joined the racist right-wing parties in backing the disqualification of Sami Abu Shehadeh, leader of Balad.
Yair Lapid. AFP
A cautious Arab campaign
Arab parties are fighting cautiously, seeking to give the right no ammunition against them on any front.
The right has made the fight against these parties a central campaign goal, particularly as it watches its opponents fall into its trap. It is pursuing a legal battle to disqualify every Arab party and bar them from elections, arguing that they support terrorism and do not recognize Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
Arab party leaders grasped what the election battle meant for their community’s future. They chose the safest paths to greater political weight.
First, they sought to prevent any Arab votes from being wasted.
Three parties formed an alliance: the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, led by Professor Yousef Jabareen; the Arab Movement for Change, led by lawmaker Ahmad Tibi; and the National Democratic Assembly, led by Sami Abu Shehadeh. They also signed a surplus-vote agreement with the United Arab List, led by lawmaker Mansour Abbas.
Second, the two Arab lists signed a code of honor pledging a fair and clean election campaign. Their leaders agreed to cooperate in the Knesset afterward to secure the strongest possible parliamentary leadership positions.
Third, Abbas added a Jewish lawmaker, former police major general Yoav Segalovitz, to his list, giving him second place.
Segalovitz has an extensive record of fighting organized crime, now the gravest scourge facing Arabs in Israel. His presence on an Arab list undercuts those who would deem it illegitimate.
Abu Shehadeh’s disqualification
Fourth, they widened the battle with the right, involving international actors from the United Nations, the European Union and some groups in the United States to prevent the racist campaign against them.
The Elections Committee disqualified Sami Abu Shehadeh over an article he wrote on Oct. 8, 2023, the day after the Hamas attack on Israel.
The article glorified the attack as a successful act of resistance and an outcome to be expected under the physical principle that “for every action, there is a reaction.”
Abu Shehadeh repudiated its substance. Speaking before the committee on Wednesday, he said he had written it before learning of the atrocities committed during the Hamas attack.
Writing the article was a mistake, he said. If he wrote it today, he would write it differently.
He stressed that he rejected violence against any party, whether a state or individuals, and that his political record was full of support for a just peace. The proposal to disqualify him was therefore unfair.
The retraction did not save him. A decision was also made to disqualify even Abbas’ list, which had expressed willingness to join the government.
The Supreme Court adopted the same position. It told him it would disqualify him if he continued with the court proceedings, but advised him to withdraw and cancel his candidacy himself.
He did so. His action joined the earlier measures seen as part of a measured effort to pull the rug out from under the right.
First the parties, then citizenship
Arabs now see their struggle as fundamental and existential. Those seeking to disqualify their parties are, in practice, paving the way to stripping them of their status as citizens.
They see clearly how brutal views such as those of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich influence a range of Jewish actors: from armed militias threatening their existence to the terrorist professor at Bar-Ilan University who devised a plan for a Jewish terrorist organization to kill hundreds of Arabs and force them from their homeland.
Israel’s Scorn of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Highlights its Combative Relationship with UN Bodieshttps://english.aawsat.com/features/5327871-israel%E2%80%99s-scorn-nobel-peace-prize-laureate-highlights-its-combative-relationship-un
09 October 2026, Bavaria, Nürnberg: South African lawyer Navanethem "Navi" Pillay speaks at the Nuremberg Forum in Nuremberg following the announcement that she is the recipient of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. (dpa)
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Israel’s Scorn of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Highlights its Combative Relationship with UN Bodies
09 October 2026, Bavaria, Nürnberg: South African lawyer Navanethem "Navi" Pillay speaks at the Nuremberg Forum in Nuremberg following the announcement that she is the recipient of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. (dpa)
The decision to award this year's Nobel Peace Prize to veteran jurist Navi Pillay has exposed the vast gulf between Israel and global institutions charged with upholding international law, a rift that has widened over the war in Gaza.
Over a decades-long career, Pillay served at the highest levels of international organizations created in the wake of World War II to prevent a recurrence of its horrors. As a young lawyer in her native South Africa, she campaigned against apartheid and for the release of Nelson Mandela, and as an international jurist she helped sentence dozens of people convicted of taking part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
But her leadership of a UN-backed panel that determined Israel committed genocide in Gaza — allegations it vehemently denies — has led many in Israel to see the Nobel nod as a high-profile rebuke of the country just days after the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that triggered the war.
Allegations of genocide are particularly explosive in Israel, which was founded in part as a refuge for survivors of the Nazi Holocaust.
“Awarding Pillay the Nobel Peace Prize isn’t a recognition of justice. It’s the grotesque weaponization of an award to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and prejudice,” Israel's Foreign Ministry said on X. “Joseph Goebbels is certainly applauding from hell,” it added, referring to the Nazi propagandist.
The vitriol comes from the widespread perception in Israel that the United Nations and other international bodies are biased against it. The United States has echoed that criticism and announced a raft of sanctions aimed at dismantling the International Criminal Court hours after the Nobel Prize announcement.
But Pillay's findings over the years were largely consistent with those of major human rights groups and other international bodies, and the facts she cited in reaching her conclusions had been widely reported.
Pillay led a panel that accused Israel of genocide in Gaza
Pillay led a three-member expert panel commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council that concluded last year that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.
Their 22-page report cited the death toll; Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid that led to widespread hunger; a policy of “systematically destroying” the healthcare system; the direct targeting of children and “explicit statements” of intent by Israeli civilian and military authorities.
Human rights groups and many experts on genocide have reached similar conclusions.
The commission has also issued reports accusing Hamas of war crimes during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack, when gunmen killed some 1,200 people and abducted 251 others. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 74,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, maintains detailed records seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and many independent experts.
Israel has vehemently denied the allegations, casting them as an antisemitic blood libel. The Israeli military says it takes extraordinary measures to prevent harm to civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas because it operates in densely populated areas.
The International Court of Justice, the UN's top court, is investigating genocide allegations brought by South Africa, and the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Pillay currently serves as an ad hoc judge in the ICJ's ongoing genocide case against Myanmar and served as an ICC judge from 2003-2008.
Israel has rejected the commission since its inception
The commission was created after the 2021 Israel-Hamas war and is the first to have an open-ended mandate. Critics say such permanent scrutiny shows anti-Israel bias, while supporters say it's needed to keep tabs on injustices faced by Palestinians under decades of Israeli rule.
Israel has refused to cooperate with the commission or other UN-endorsed investigations. It has pointed to the presence of notoriously repressive countries on the 47-member Human Rights Council and accused it of relentlessly singling out Israel while ignoring violations elsewhere.
A member of the commission, Indian jurist Miloon Kothari, sparked controversy in 2022 when he referred to a “Jewish lobby” in a media interview and questioned Israel's UN membership, citing its alleged violations of member state obligations.
Pillay issued a letter at the time saying Kothari had been misquoted and that the commission does not question Israel's status or UN membership.
She addressed the wider criticism in an interview with The Associated Press last year after she and the other commission members resigned, citing personal reasons and the need for change. They have since been replaced.
“We’re an independent panel,” she said. “People who accuse us of being antisemitic ... they twist the facts, they invent facts, falsify facts. I would like to see them challenge the report: Which of the facts that we have set out are incorrect?” she said.
Pillay also investigated Israel's decades-long occupation of the West Bank
Even before the latest Israel-Hamas war, Pillay had repeatedly taken Israel to task over its open-ended military rule over millions of Palestinians.
In a report released more than a year before the Oct. 7 attack, the commission accused Israel of de facto annexation of the West Bank, which it captured alongside Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. The Palestinians want an independent state encompassing all three territories.
The International Court of Justice later issued a landmark ruling that Israel's occupation of the territories was unlawful.
The commission had said Israel's continuous expansion of Jewish settlements, its demolition of Palestinian homes and its fragmentation of Palestinian life were aimed at securing permanent rule over the territory, which is home to some 3 million Palestinians and 500,000 Israeli settlers.
Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli military rule, with the Palestinian Authority administering population centers. The settlers have Israeli citizenship, including freedom of movement and the right to vote.
Israel's UN mission rejected the report at the time of its release, calling it part of an “anti-Israel agenda” at the international body.
But Israel's current government and most of its political class is opposed to Palestinian statehood, and Netanyahu has repeatedly said Israel will maintain permanent control over the territories.
Israel views the West Bank as the biblical and historical cradle of Judaism, and says its withdrawal would pave the way for a Hamas-run state that would threaten its existence. The last substantive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down in 2009, after Netanyahu returned to office.
Pillay's commission had also raised concerns about Israel's potential annexation of Gaza, saying its efforts to carve out buffer zones and military corridors were “vastly disproportionate to any reasonable military objective.”
It said calls by Israeli officials for the “voluntary migration” of much of Gaza's population from the war-ravaged territory, if implemented, would amount to forcible transfer, a crime against humanity.
Nasrallah...The Legend That Was Buried With Himhttps://english.aawsat.com/features/5327420-nasrallahthe-legend-was-buried-him
Members of Hezbollah's al-Mahdi Scouts hold portraits of Hezbollah leaders Hassan Nasrallah and his cousin and successor, Hashem Safieddine, during a gathering marking the second anniversary of their assassinations in Israeli airstrikes, in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Members of Hezbollah's al-Mahdi Scouts hold portraits of Hezbollah leaders Hassan Nasrallah and his cousin and successor, Hashem Safieddine, during a gathering marking the second anniversary of their assassinations in Israeli airstrikes, in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
“Imagine if he had not died,” my interlocutor says over the phone from Beirut. He has close knowledge of Hezbollah and is in daily contact with its broader social environment.
He poses a hypothetical question: What if Hassan Nasrallah had survived and had been the one required to lead the confrontation?
He does not mean a military confrontation with Israel. “That is what the party is doing, and that is its playing field,” but rather “a confrontation with himself, his supporters and his community over this catastrophe he brought upon them.”
Would he have signed a ceasefire agreement? Would he have agreed to negotiations or opposed them as his successor does today? Would he have been able to return to the “If I had known” line he used after the 2006 July War?
A torrent of questions that will never find answers, and “an enormous void the size of the hole that swallowed him and his comrades in the southern suburbs,” says another source from southern Lebanon who witnessed all the Israeli wars on Lebanon, lost family members, friends and homes, and stands on the opposite political side from Hezbollah.
He continues: “Two years have passed, and the community and its surroundings are still in a state of shock and complete denial... a state of collective delirium. It is as if people did not lose a military commander or a religious leader, but rather the person who gave them a narrative about their circumstances.”
There is broad agreement over Nasrallah’s ability to “theatricalize” the war and its losses, transforming the costs borne by the afflicted, the grieving and the bereaved into an epic moment of euphoria and victory. That, it seems, is what his supporters and followers miss most today. It is as though their involvement in the war of support and the price they paid for it remains a detail compared with the absence of the person who could dictate its favorable narrative.
That rhetorical void is not due only to the fact that Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem lacks his predecessor’s ability, but also because Nasrallah himself had begun losing his public space, image and public presence well before his assassination. In this sense, “the moment of his assassination came as a rescue from many losses and enormous obligations.”
The source says: “Nasrallah actually died before the moment of his assassination... He died with the pager operation and the series of assassinations that followed. He died when he lost his ability to mobilize and justify, when he was no longer able to offer people a narrative, and when no one cared about his speeches or waited for them as they once did.”
Here, the source points to a role he considers more important than the organizational position Nasrallah held within the party. He “was neither a military tactician nor a religious man in the conventional sense, so much as a ‘man of mobilization’ who gave the party a power normally enjoyed by states, not parties or armed organizations.”
Such an overwhelming presence, of course, does not emerge overnight.
A supporter of Hezbollah, who was injured in the Israeli pager operation against the group, uses his phone whose back cover bears the image of slain leader Hassan Nasrallah during a ceremony held to mark the second anniversary of Nasrallah's killing in a strike by Israel, in Beirut's southern suburbs on September 27, 2026. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)
“As Though He Never Existed”
A sociologist and writer who follows transformations within Hezbollah and its social environment recalls Nasrallah between 2000 and 2006 and describes him as closer to a “party activist” before he gradually built a presence that, in his view, was consolidated with the assassination of Rafik Hariri, when his words acquired regional weight.
Since the 2000 liberation, Nasrallah had cultivated this aura and “worked tirelessly on it,” relying on the party’s full media apparatus to establish an image “closer to a legend and demigods,” thereby justifying the continuation of carrying arms.
Until quite recently, his television appearances were like “Umm Kulthum evenings. The streets would empty, people would sit transfixed in front of their screens, and they would be enthralled by what they heard.”
Paradoxically, those listening were not Hezbollah members, nor were they all part of its immediate social environment. At different stages, Nasrallah had become a public event: “His supporters listened to him, his opponents listened to him, neighboring countries listened to him, and everyone waiting to know what would happen the next day listened to him.”
Today, two years later, “it is as though he never existed.”
A woman from southern Lebanon belonging to a family with considerable social and religious standing traveled to Tyre and Nabatieh one day before the second anniversary commemorating the assassinations. She says: “I did not see his pictures on the streets or buildings as was customary. Had I not caught sight of a small picture of him, tucked away to the side in a small shop, I would not have noticed his complete absence from the public scene at all.”
She adds: “Even in private gatherings, no one talks about him anymore. What seemed even stranger to me was that this coincided with the anniversary... It may seem at first that there is indifference toward him, but I believe he has become that absent figure who is ‘not spoken of.’ He is now the quintessential Shiite ‘taboo.’”
According to the woman, who is close to the party’s social environment and trusted within its small community without being part of it, it seems that “there are no longer many who love the ‘Sayyed’ outside the hard core of party supporters and those on the party payroll.”
Even his former broad base of supporters did not go to the condolence gatherings, which are “a central ritual for Shiites.”
Ali Abbas, 14, who lost his right eye with severe damage to his right lower eyelid and lost some fingers in pager attacks across Lebanon on September 17, 2024, recovering at his home, in Barish, in the Tyre district, southern Lebanon, September 1, 2026. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
“Only the Guard Remains”
My interlocutor from the south brings me back to Nasrallah’s legacy, saying that “there is no one left to inherit him... even Hezbollah as we knew it died with him.”
To explain this view, he elaborates: “In politics, Nasrallah caused unprecedented political embarrassment for his closest allies by declaring the war of support after personally assuring Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri that he would do the opposite. Then, after the six rockets were launched, Berri made calls and tried to persuade the party not to issue a statement claiming responsibility for the rockets. He obtained another explicit commitment, which did not survive even a few hours before it too was broken.”
Until October 7, 2023, Nasrallah played a regional role with a relatively comfortable margin for maneuver. He was “the trusted intermediary between Iran and Lebanon, government, sects, people and institutions. He played roles in relations with the surrounding region and the outside world, sparing Tehran many direct confrontations with neighboring countries. He would pass on decisions and absorb the shocks in its place.”
But that, the source says, gradually began to change after October 7, and then fundamentally after Nasrallah was killed, to the point that “today, only the Revolutionary Guard remains. Nothing else. The Guard directly controls every part of the party, its leadership, fighters and strategy. Naim Qassem is unable to play the role of intermediary or messenger.”
As for the party’s structure, the source continues: “Hassan Nasrallah is the last black-turbaned figure in the secretary-general’s office. Naim Qassem wears a white turban, and that reflects a different religious hierarchy. His [reported] deputy is Mohammed Raad, a member of Parliament and not even a religious cleric.”
If we exclude the person who had been a candidate for the secretary-generalship before Qassem but was excluded, or removed himself, as some say, Ibrahim Al-Sayyed Amin, who was the closest to the position after Hashem Safieddine, one might turn to Nasrallah’s son, Mohammed Mahdi. He is a young cleric with a turban and an active party cadre.
“But he has not been prepared for that role and has not yet matured,” according to several sources who agree on the point.
People check the rubble of buildings which were levelled on September 27 by Israeli strikes that targeted and killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in the Haret Hreik neighbourhood of Beirut's southern suburbs, on September 29, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
Nasrallah’s Sons... The Burden of the Legacy
One source explains: “After his death and the deaths of those around him, we can see the importance of family ties within the circle of trust that surrounded him, and which turned out to underpin the party’s leadership.” According to the source, “what Nasrallah destroyed by choosing to remain in his position surrounded by these close leaders, and by waiting for the death that was inevitably approaching him, was the fabric of family, clan and party together. It is difficult, if not impossible, to repair.”
What is striking is that throughout all this, he did not include his sons or work to prepare any of them to succeed him.
According to the sociologist and writer, “historical leaders of this magnitude do not think about succession, perhaps because of some form of narcissism in them, leaving their children struggling with their identities and with managing the weight of the legacy on their shoulders.”
The sons, specifically Jawad and Mohammed Mahdi, who have increased their public presence recently, are “a phenomenon worth pausing over, particularly as each tries to humanize the father and imitate his image... but in reality, with little success.”
A close examination of the social media accounts the two young men have recently turned to shows a determined effort to borrow from their father’s behavior, from imitating the movement of his hand and his manner of speaking to something resembling a division of roles. One, for example, appears to emulate a religious authority in his turban, while the other invokes Guevara and the liberation of peoples at times, then the martyrs and the righteous, along with his certainty that his father will return with them, at others.
“The Spell of the Eyes”... Just a Bubble
Today, instead of building on that “legend,” “Nasrallah’s narrative has become a farce... and is now at the mercy of the wind,” one source says. He continues: “Two years after his death, all we have to do is look at the ease with which his immediate circle is handling his legacy to realize that there is no custodian of this legacy... All those narratives about his leadership charisma, his commanding presence and the spell of his eyes, the common comparison used to describe Nasrallah, drawn from descriptions of Gamal Abdel Nasser, have suddenly vanished. As if they were merely a bubble.”
“All it takes is for a marginal politician to claim on television that he used to sit with him for around seven hours. What kind of exaggeration is that? Or, for example, his son Mahdi talking about how he would prepare breakfast for him, or the video showing him driving around in a car in the southern suburbs, for which we do not know the context, date or source. Was it the party media? Al-Manar TV? Who decided that these stories should be made public today?”
The Loss of Voice and Image
More questions all point to the same issue: the opening up of the narrative that Nasrallah had monopolized. His narrative about himself and his party, whose rhythm he controlled through a committed media machine that did not depart from what he dictated.
Was that why the slogan of the anniversary was “We Remain Committed to the Pledge”? And was that why Qassem launched an institution to preserve and publish Nasrallah’s legacy?
Perhaps the aim was to “humanize” the man and make him an accessible figure, conveying a message to the grieving popular base that he was like them and among them despite his absence.
But in practice, the result was exactly the opposite.
The “void the size of the hole” and the leadership crisis are viewed by the sociologist through the lens of the mass of people that was once strongly present and has become “more obscure and closed than ever,” and “completely unknown to anyone outside its close members.”
He says: “It is as though the Shiites as a whole have withdrawn, leaving a void in the mechanisms of daily life, in their relationship with other parties, other sects and the broader Lebanese sphere.” Apart from the small number who appear on social media and fiercely defend the war of support, the social mass that Nasrallah once represented appears, in his view, less visible and less present.
He says: “It is as though, with the loss of Nasrallah, they lost the voice and the image.”
But what appears from the outside to be a decline reveals, within the narrow circles of trust, another ordeal.
A girl, a member of Hezbollah's al-Mahdi Scouts cries as she holds up a poster during a gathering marking the second anniversary of the assassinations of Hezbollah leaders Hassan Nasrallah and his cousin and successor, Hashem Safieddine, who were killed in Israeli airstrikes, in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Is “Shelter” Inevitably Coming?
The woman from southern Lebanon says that “the void in the party’s leadership today seems like a luxury compared with the void in the forces that drive daily life for southerners.” She continues: “It is as though Amal has inherited the streets and the scene in Tyre in particular instead of the party. What the party members once represented as a deterrent to the activists is no longer there today, so these people have become a de facto authority controlling everything... and there is much bitterness in that.”
Today, many people in southern Lebanon want to believe their new secretary-general’s statement that “shelter” is inevitably coming, and that Iran will not abandon them or stop supporting them with money, weapons and influence. But they remain silent about the fact that the money will not come, and that the mere use of the word “shelter” instead of the “decent housing and decent furnishings” Nasrallah promised them after the 2006 July War says a great deal about their circumstances.
Between denial and the deep mourning suffered by the party’s community, the greatest shock remains “the loss of the power and the ‘surplus of power’ they enjoyed for more than two decades and wielded as a daily weapon against the rest of the Lebanese... Therefore, their social contract today appears to be based on treating that narcissistic wound by directing all their anger at the agents.”
It is as though the excessive talk of traitors and agents compensates them for the deafening silence about everything else. In their view, these are the Lebanese, all Lebanese outside their own community, and everyone who did not support them in their support effort. So they erupt in anger whenever they are mentioned, seeking relief from their misery through more insults and threats.
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