Hezbollah was preparing a strength show Sunday with an elaborate and tentular funeral for its assassinated leader, Hassan Nasrallah, an event that the militant group supported by Iran Spera Relive his image porn in Lebanon After the last war with Israel.
Tens of thousands of people from all over the country and in the region are expected on Sunday afternoon, including dignitaries from Iran. It will begin from the largest sports stadium in Lebanon on the southern suburbs of the capital, Beirut, which has been adorned with two -storey high posters of Nasrallah and slogans that promise to carry on the Shiite Muslim resistance that led against Israel.
After the stadium service, Mr. Nasrallah will be buried in a dedicated site nearby that will be transformed into a sacred sanctuary for the leader killed, according to Hezbollah officials.
Mr. Nasrallah’s funeral “is not a day of pain or a day of farewell, but a day of loyalty and renewal of our alliances and commitments to our leader,” said Hussein Haj Hassan, a member of Parliament affiliated to Hezbollah, Saturday in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
He said that the funeral would be a moment to show “allies and our enemies and opponents that we do not have and will not weaken or weaken”.
“And if the challenge increases,” Hassan continued, “we will reply with determination”.
The funeral arrives five months after Israel killed Mr. Nasrallah on September 27, dropping 80 bombs in several minutes on his bunker just south of Beirut. In killing Mr. Nasrallah, Israel has eliminated a leader who enjoyed an almost mythical status among Lebanon’s Shiite Muslims. His death was one of the fundamental moments of the clash between the delegates of Iran and Israel, which Hezbollah emerged from significantly weakened.
In the months that followed, the group was hit by the Israeli forces and its iron socket on Lebanon’s politics was canceled with many Lebanese who blamed the group for dragging the country into one of its most fatal and destructive wars.
Hezbollah and Israel accepted a fire in November in November which forced Hezbollah to withdraw from southern Lebanon and abandon his strongholds along the border with Israel. While Israel agreed to retire from Lebanon as part of that truce, the Israeli forces remained in some parts of the southern Lebanon beyond the deadline to do it.
Now, Lebanon is in a flex point.
After decades of consolidated power, Hezbollah entered the war as the most dominant political and military force in the country. But he became a shadow of his former self.
For the first time in 20 years, there is a momentum among Hezbollah’s political opponents within Lebanon to grasp power from the group. The new president of the country, Michel Aouun, has promised to disarm Hezbollah and return the monopoly to military power to the state.
Last week, the new Lebanese cabinet adopted a political declaration that took a direct shot to Hezbollah, establishing that the state alone had the right to defend the territory of Lebanon. It was the first political declaration since the country’s civil war ended in 1990 that it did not mention the law of the Lebanese people to resist Israeli employment – a line that had long contributed to legitimizing the existence of Hezbollah.
Mr. Nasrallah’s funeral is destined to reflect the struggle for power that takes place in Lebanon, with Hezbollah who takes him as an opportunity to reaffirm himself as a political force.
With the crowd of supporters who should flood the streets to show their loyalty to Mr. Nasrallah, Hezbollah is trying to send a message: even if his leaders have been killed, his drained coffers, his Syrian ally, Bashar al-Assad, Inverted and its patron, Iran, weakened, the group is here to stay.
“The funeral is a launchpad,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, an elderly member of the Carnegie Middle East Center of Beirut. “They are trying to reinvent themselves” and use the death of Mr. Nasrallah “as a mobilization tool to gather people around their cause, who has had great success”.
The funeral on Sunday will also honor Hashem Safiedine, who actually led Hezbollah for a week after the death of Mr. Nasrallah before he was also killed by Israel.
The war between Hezbollah and Israel broke out after the Lebanese militia began to shoot in Israeli military positions in solidarity with its Palestinian ally, Hamas, in Gaza. Hezbollah joined shortly after the shock of the attack led by Hamas to Israel in October 2023 and the exchanges of strikes that followed downhill tens of thousands of people on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border.
The conflict clearly intensified last September, with the Israeli forces that invade great bands of southern Lebanon and launched an intense bombing throughout the country which lasted about two months before the ceased the fire was reached at the end of November.
Inside Lebanon, Hezbollah was widely seen how to have undergone a pungent defeat in war.
“Hezbollah forced the whole country in this war, but was not powerful enough to fight,” said Ali Mraay, 34, who works as a driver of deliveries to Beirut. “The South – the most beautiful part of the country – is destroyed due to Hezbollah. All those who died at war is because of this Hezbollah war. “
The group is facing questions difficult by its supporters on the fact that it will be able to provide the billions of dollars necessary to reconstruct the cities and villages that have been flattened at war.
Provided that the reconstruction support will be essential to revive the support of the group among the followers whose faith in Hezbollah has been tested by this war. After his last war with Israel, in 2006, Hezbollah immediately responded with locks in bank cash from Iran. But his answer was slower this time.
The main terrestrial bridge of the group for receiving money from Iran through Syria was cut after Assad’s dictatorship – an important ally at both at Iran and Hezbollah – was overturned by the rebels in December.
And last week, Lebanon stopped Iranian flights to Beirut after the Israeli army accused Tehran of using civil planes to smuggle money in Hezbollah – feeding indignation and triggering protests among Hezbollah supporters.
The loss of Mr. Nasrallah was also devastating for the public image of the group. Mr. Nasrallah took charge when the group was an underground guerrilla force that fought the Israeli occupation of the southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000 and led the organization while formally entered the Lebanese policy.
He has held many roles in the life of the members of Hezbollah, acting as a religious leader, political strategist and commander in chief. Its charm-a rarity among the leaders of the region-it is also the key to unify the followers of Hezbollah, with Mr. Nasrallah who aroused support in frequent speeches for their anti-Israeli struggle and convince them that the victory was guaranteed.
Before the death of Mr. Nasrallah, Hezbollah had not cultivated other leaders with the stature of Mr. Nasrallah. The current leader of the group, Naim Qassem, lacks Mr. Nasrallah’s charisma and constant ability to reassure the followers of Hezbollah.
However, experts warn that they have not written Hezbollah.
The continuous presence of Israeli forces in southern Lebanon offers Hezbollah leverage, actually giving a new force behind Raison d’êre of Hezbollah: armed resistance against Israeli occupation.
And the group’s beer showdown with the new government has many in Lebanon to the limit.
Hezbollah, whom the United States designated as a terrorist organization in 1997, showed his will to sacrifice anyone – including Lebanese politicians and journalists – who challenges his authority.
One of the most clear examples of this was in 2005, when a self -bomb in Beirut killed the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and another 22. A team of international investigators later concluded that Hezbollah was responsible.
“We know they were treated, but at the same time they have not yet been disarmed,” said Sami Nader, director of the Political Sciences Institute at the University of Saint Joseph in Beirut, referring to Hezbollah.
“They lost their battle with Israel,” he added. “But now there is a concern what they will do later. If they can’t use the arms against Israel, will they use them against those inside Lebanon? This is concern. “
Dayana Iwaza Contributed relationships.