Beirut, Lebanon – The killing of Hezbollah Secretary-Common Hassan Nasrallah has left a vacuum inside Hezbollah, which has seen a lot of its management beheaded because of months of Israeli assassinations.
However on Friday evening, Nasrallah’s dying throughout an enormous Israeli assault on south Beirut marked not solely the passing of a figurehead but additionally the consultant of the Lebanese Shia motion within the eyes of his supporters and the broader area. individual’s dying.
In 1992, when he was in his 30s, Nasrallah turned Hezbollah’s secretary-general and led the motion for a lot of its existence. For Hezbollah, discovering a alternative of comparable standing will likely be tough because it anticipates continued Israeli assaults and presumably even a floor invasion of southern Lebanon.
Nevertheless, there are two primary figures thought-about as doable successors to Nasrallah: Hashim Safieddine and Naeem Qasim. Here is what you must find out about them.
Hashim Safieddin
As head of Hezbollah’s govt committee and Nasrallah’s cousin, Safiedine is extensively thought-about the favourite to turn into the motion’s subsequent secretary-general.
Safieddin was born in 1964 within the southern village of Deir Qanunnar close to Tire, and studied theology with Nasrallah within the two primary facilities of Shia non secular studying, the Iraqi metropolis of Najaf and Qom, Iran. . Each males joined Hezbollah in its infancy.
Safiedine comes from a revered Shia household that has produced non secular students and Lebanese parliamentarians, whereas his brother Abdullah serves as Hezbollah’s consultant in Iran. Safieddin has shut ties with Iran. His son Redha married the daughter of Qassem Soleimani. Lack of life.
Along with main the chief committee, Safieddin can also be a key member of the group’s Shura Council and head of its Jihad Committee. This significance makes him an enemy of Hezbollah’s overseas adversaries. The USA and Saudi Arabia have labeled Safieddin a terrorist and have frozen his belongings.
Naim Qasim
The 71-year-old is Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general and is commonly known as the motion’s “quantity two”.
He was born in Kaffakira, Nabatiyah governorate, a village in southern Lebanon that has suffered quite a few Israeli assaults, particularly since final October.
Qasim has an extended historical past of Shiite political activism. Within the Nineteen Seventies, he joined the proletarian motion of the late Imam Moussa al-Sadr, finally turning into a part of the Lebanese Shiite group Amal Motion. He later left Amal and helped discovered Hezbollah within the early Nineteen Eighties, turning into one of many group’s founding non secular students.
Certainly one of Qasim’s non secular mentors was the extensively revered Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, and Qasim himself taught non secular programs in Beirut for many years.
The secretive nature of a gaggle like Hezbollah signifies that not all of his function within the group is public. Nevertheless, at one time he oversaw elements of Hezbollah’s academic community and was concerned in overseeing the group’s parliamentary actions.
In 1991, Qasim was elected deputy secretary-general below then-Secretary-Common Abbas al-Musawi, who was additionally assassinated by Israel.
Over time, he performed an necessary public-facing function in Hezbollah and was a member of the group’s Shura Council.
In 2005, he revealed a e-book known as “Hezbollah, the Story of the Coronary heart,” which has been translated into a number of languages.
