One year after killing of leader Nasrallah, Hezbollah says no to disarming

One year after Israel killed his predecessor, Hassan Nasrallah, in an airstrike on southern Beirut, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem has declared that the armed Lebanese organization will not surrender its weapons.

Qassem promised to keep Hezbollah’s military capabilities, which have been severely weakened by its recent conflict with Israel, to the thousands who had gathered at Nasrallah’s tomb in Beirut on Saturday.

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He continued, adding that Hezbollah would continue to “confront any project that serves Israel,” adding, “We will never abandon our weapons, nor will we relinquish them.”

His remarks follow a statement from the new Lebanese administration that it would disarm the Iranian-backed organization.

Tensions soared between Hezbollah supporters and opponents in Lebanon as he approached the one-year anniversary of his charismatic predecessor’s passing.

Despite Nawaf Salam’s orders, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam directed, the images of Nasrallah and his heir apparent, Hashem Safieddine, who was killed in an Israeli air strike just weeks after his boss, were projected onto rocks off the coast of Beirut this week.

On Saturday, hundreds of men, women, and children in black marched toward Nasrallah’s gravesite, many of whom carried portraits of the slain leader. Ali Larijani, the Supreme National Security Council secretary in Iran, also took part in the observance.

Fatima, whose husband was killed in Israel’s conflict last September, told everyone in Lebanon that Hezbollah is still strong.

Ali Jaafar, a 21-year-old university student, told the AFP news agency that he thought Hezbollah would not be disarmed.

The enemies’ internal and external desires are the same as theirs, but handing over the weapons will continue to be a dream, he said.

When Israel dropped a number of bunker bombs on a Hezbollah complex in southern Beirut on September 27, 2013, Nasrallah was killed. He had over 30 years’ experience leading the movement.

Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians who were attacked in the coastal enclave after Israel launched its war against Gaza following the deadly Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023.

Hezbollah suffered a serious blow from the explosion of explosives secretly planted inside thousands of pagers that members of the organization used to communicate a year after joining the conflict with Israel. The indiscriminate pager blasts claimed the lives of numerous Lebanese civilians, including an eight-year-old girl.

In addition to launching massive aerial bombing campaigns against Nasrallah and other senior leaders, Israeli forces also sent thousands of troops across the border to occupy southern Lebanon and devastate towns and villages.