Although it has been subsumed by other developments, the Israeli air force’s killing of the Hizballah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah in his underground bunker remains one of the remarkable feats of the present war. Nasrallah assumed his position in 1992, after Israel successfully eliminated his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, in another airstrike. It’s worth looking back at what Martin Kramer wrote after Musawi’s death about his role in founding Hizballah, and in shifting its focus from killing Americans and taking them hostage to doing the same to Israelis:
Musawi traded American hostages for a clear shot at foiling American policy, now heavily invested in the Arab-Israeli peace process. His attacks against Israel’s security zone [in southern Lebanon] constituted a jihad against the very idea of peace. The danger, as he saw it, was not Israel’s military presence in its security zone, but Israel’s willingness to withdraw from the zone altogether—in return for full peace with Lebanon. Hizballah’s mission has been to deny Israel that peace. If it could kill enough Israelis, perhaps Israel would settle for a combination of UN and Lebanese security guarantees—something far less binding and durable than a peace.
Much has changed since 1992, but Israel did withdraw under such circumstances in 2000, setting the stage for the 2006 Lebanon war—which concluded with a combination of UN and Lebanese security guarantees. As Kramer predicted, these guaranteed nothing, bringing us to the current war.
Read more on Sandbox: https://martinkramer.org/reader/archives/musawis-game/