| Hasan Nasrallah |
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Hassan Nasrallah ( political party and resistance group Hezbollah . BACKGROUND Nasrallah was born in the East Beirut neighborhood of Bourj Hammoud in 1960 , the eldest of nine children. His father was a grocer and no one in the family was particularly religious. In 1975 , the Lebanese Civil War forced his family to return to their ancestral home in the South Lebanese village Bazouriyeh where Nasrallah joined the Amal movement, a political and paramilitary organization representing Shi'a in Lebanon. From South Lebanon, young Nasrallah then moved to Najaf , Iraq to study at Shi'a seminary. In 1978 , Nasrallah and other Shi'a clerics and students considered by the Ba'athy government to be radical were forced to leave Iraq and return to Lebanon. There, Nasrallah studied and taught at Amal leader Sheikh Abbas Al-Musawi 's school. In 1982 , after the Israeli Invasion , Nasrallah followed Musawi out of Amal and into an umbrella organization of radical Iranian and Lebanese called Hezbollah. LEADERSHIP OF HEZBOLLAH Following the Israeli military's assassination of Hezbollah leader Abbas Al-Musawi , his wife, and 3 year old daughter by helicopter-fired Hellfire missiles in February of 1992 , Nasrallah was appointed as Secretary General of Hezbollah. Under Nasrallah's leadership, Hezbollah became a serious opponent of the Israel Defense Forces in Southern Lebanon . His own standing in the country was strengthened after the death of his son Hadi in 1996. Hezbollah gained national and international legitimacy after the massacre of Qana when the Israeli army bombed a United Nations base in 1996, killing around 120 Lebanese citizens who were seeking refuge in this area. As a result, the April understanding between Lebanon, Syria, US, France and Israel recognized Hezbollah as a national resistance and allowed its operations with specific constraints --See April Agression . Hezbollah 's warfare also improved, killing about two dozen Israeli soldiers per year, and Hezbollah attacks on the Israeli Defense Forces were an important factor in Israel's decision to leave Lebanon . Consequently, Hezbollah is widely credited in Lebanon for the liberation of the South; a patriotic achievement that has greatly bolstered the party's national political standing. After the Israeli withdrawal, Nasrallah completed a complex exchange of prisoners with Israel, resulting in hundreds of Palestinian and Hezbollah militants being freed and bodies of militants returned to Lebanon. Hezbollah's position, along with that of Syria and the Lebanese government, is that the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon is not complete, with Lebanon claiming sovereignty over the Shebaa Farms . These Farms occupied by Israel were confirmed as part of the Lebanese territory by all Lebanese leaders grouped in the National Dialogue conference in April 2006. Nasrallah lives humbly in South Beirut with his wife and three children. He is said to follow Israeli politics and to have read Ariel Sharon 's autobiography, as well as Binyamin Netanyahu 's ''A Place Under the Sun''. Nasrallah has been heavily involved in the aftermath of the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Al-Hariri , sometimes referred to as the Cedar Revolution or Lebanon's '' Cedar Spring ''. Nasrallah has called several large demonstrations expressing the rejection of foreign intervention. EXTERNAL LINKS |
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