Hezbollah weakened but not neutralized in Lebanon

Exactly one year ago, Hezbollah launched its first rockets at Israel in support of Hamas and the October 7 attacks. One year later, where is the Islamist movement politically and militarily?

With the death of Hassan Nasrallah and several senior officials, is Hezbollah on borrowed time? Its tens of thousands of fighters have lost their leaders. However, the base of the armed movement, even disorganized, remains active. As proof, the rockets launched over the last two days on Haifa and its 280,000 inhabitants. Jamil El Sayed is the former head of Lebanese intelligence and deputy close to Hezbollah: “Nasrallah’s silhouette will always be there, so it’s not over, he said. There has been a weakness, but it is still in action in the South. In a resistance system, there is a certain freedom of maneuver. It is not an army, it is not a hierarchy which, when it loses its head, will collapse to the end.” he explains.

Politically, Hezbollah’s influence in institutions still remains powerful. With its allies, they hold 40% of the seats in the Assembly and also preside over Parliament. But in recent days, pressure from the opposition has been mounting on the Shiite party to accept a ceasefire and finally elect a president, after two years of deadlock. “There is a part of the Lebanese who blame Hezbollah for this lack of reconstruction of the State, analyzes Pascal Monin, professor of political science in Beirut. How many times have we heard that Hezbollah is a state within a state, it is a state at the expense of the state.”

However, voices are increasing in civil society to get Lebanon out of the crisis. Like that of the former president of Beirut lawyers, Melhem Khalaf. He has been sleeping inside Parliament for almost two years to warn about the political situation. “I have been in Parliament for almost 625 days. I live there night and day. It is not only to elect a president, it is to save democracy. It is a democracy that the world is going to lose,” he warns. A call for help now relayed to the highest level of the State. Nearly a week ago, the Prime Minister – Sunni -, the President of the Assembly – Shiite – and the historic leader of the Druze, Walid Jumblatt, called for a ceasefire and to relaunch the electoral process .

Hezbollah, for its part, is more isolated than ever while the Israeli army announced on Tuesday October 8 that it had “eliminated” a senior Hezbollah official in a strike near Beirut. In a press release, she presents Suhail Hussein Husseini as “the commander of Hezbollah headquarters”the place where is “supervised logistics within the terrorist organization”.