Israel’s massive bombardment of Beirut has killed Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, taking the Middle East to the brink of regional war, reports Michael Lavalette

Hezbollah has confirmed that its leader Hassan Nasrallah was martyred by a massive Israeli attack on the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut on Friday night.

Israel dropped 85 one ton bunker-buster bombs on the suburb, causing huge destruction. The explosion was felt in homes across the city. The area where the ‘precision’ bombs landed were marked with huge craters and there are hundreds of people dead, injured or buried under the rubble, many will have simply disappeared in the explosion.

Despite the mainstream media outlets reporting this as a ‘targeted’ strike, it is worth noting that the use of bunker-buster bombs in residential areas is considered to be a war crime – another Israeli war crime to add to the growing list.

Today thousands of Lebanese families will have been directly affected by the attack through loss, injury or loss of home and community networks. 

Nasrallah has been leader of Hezbollah for 32 years. He is immensely popular amongst Lebanon’s Shia population and over his time as leader he has successfully remade Hezbollah from a small resistance organisation into a large political party, with elected politicians, and a network of welfare organisations providing health, welfare and educational services for the Shia population in Lebanon. It has also grown and developed its armed wing into a formidable resistance network in the region.

Nasrallah was also a very significant leader in the Iranian-backed ‘network of resistance’ operating in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. His death will have repercussions across the region.

Those repercussions will be felt most dramatically in Lebanon. Lebanon remains a deeply divided society. The sectarian divisions in the country were built into the fabric of the country by the French colonial masters when modern Lebanon was established in 1920. Yet the killing of Nasrallah, the targeting of Shia districts and the scale of attacks is drawing the people of Lebanon together against the Israeli attacks.

Nasrallah’s death has significantly increased tensions in the region making all out war much more likely. 

There is no doubt that the martyrdom of Nasrallah is a significant blow to Hezbollah. Similarly the attacks of the last week, and the security breaches in Hezbollah’s networks, represent a very significant setback to the organisation. But they do not mark the defeat of Hezbollah, or a decline in its popular support. 

It also marks the point of no return in the present Lebanese-Israeli war. There will undoubtedly be retaliatory strikes against Israel both from Hezbollah and the network of resistance.

As of Saturday, there is no indication that Israel is going to step back from the brink. The bombardment of Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and the South of the country continued apace in the hours after their claim of killing Nasrallah with the Israeli armed forces gloating about their attacks and now seemingly confident of inflicting mortal defeat on Hezbollah and ‘reorganising’ the state settlement in Lebanon, perhaps suggesting that a ground invasion is imminent.

The killing of Nasrallah brings Israel closer to its objective of provoking a regional war. It’s up to the anti-war movement to respond by taking to the streets and building the pressure on our government to break with Israel, to stop arming the terror state and to demand that Israeli gets its hands off Gaza and Lebanon.