Past them lies what is known here as the land of resistance – the villages where the Shia militant group Hezbollah controls hearts and minds.

From here, its fighters battled Israel in a fierce conflict in 2006 and now the portraits of Hezbollah fighters killed in that war look down from the roadside billboards.

Some look straight at Israel, which stretches just a couple of hundred of yards away beyond the barbed wire.

Hezbollah’s turn

During the war in Gaza, Israeli officials warned Hezbollah that after Hamas it would be their turn. And so what is happening on the other side of the border concerns everyone in Lebanon.

In Yareen, a small village, a mullah’s voice echoes through the dusty narrow streets. He describes the suffering in Gaza and calls on his followers to pray for the Palestinians.

But it has not been just about the prayers. Twice in the last week, unknown militants launched rockets across the border and Israel retaliated with artillery fire.

It is not clear who was behind the attack. What is clear is that it is a response to Israel’s actions in Gaza.

High up in the hills, surrounded by olive groves, UN peacekeepers patrol the patch of land from where rockets were launched.

Little boys from the nearby village hide in bushes and shoot their toy guns at the peacekeepers. “Ciao” – they laugh and shout to the Italian soldiers.

Peacekeepers

For the past two years, 13,000 peacekeepers from 28 countries have been deployed in South Lebanon.

They are working together with the Lebanese army.

Since the conflict in Gaza began, they have found several small stockpiles of rockets. After the first attack, they deployed additional troops.

“We’ve intensified the patrols that we are conducting with the Lebanese army to keep this area safe,” says Yasmina Bouzeian, a spokesperson for the UN force, Unifil.

But the measures that the UN and the Lebanese army are taking failed to prevent a second attack just days later.

Harsh rhetoric

Hezbollah – which always claims responsibility for its actions – says it is not behind these rockets, and some analysts believe that whoever is behind the attack may be trying to drag Hezbollah into the fight.

Nevertheless, the party’s rhetoric has been harsh and militant.

In Beirut last week, tens of thousands came out to celebrate the Shia festival of Ashura and to show their support for the Palestinians in Gaza.

Helzbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah addressed the crowd via a videolink. He announced that he was ready for another war, and Israel too has said that its prepared to fight the group.

So far Hezbollah has clearly restrained its fighters from taking military action. But if hostilities break out, it is not only Mr Nasrallah’s supporters who say they will stand behind him.

“I am a Sunni, and I thought that Hezbollah was wrong to fight the 2006 war but if Nasrallah goes to war now, I will support him. What has happened in Gaza is not human,” said one man who lost his family in 2006 and who did not want to be named.

Anger and fear

But while there is a clear sense of anger here, in the South there is also plenty of fear.

Seated on a low plastic chair in front his house, Hajj Rakhal cut up firewood throwing branches in the floor in front of him.

He told me many of his neighbours had packed up and left after the rockets were launched.

“I don’t know who is behind these attacks, whoever it is wants to drag us into the war. We are very worried,” he said.

“If these attacks continue Israel will start another conflict,” he says.

For the people of Southern Lebanon, the threat of violence is never far, and the war in Gaza has brought it closer.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Lebanese fear Israel’s next step

Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority security forces, they noted, had stepped up their crackdown on Hamas supporters and figures in the West Bank since the beginning of Operation Cast Lead.

The latest anti-Hamas measures in the West Bank, which are being carried out in coordination with the IDF and under the supervision of US security experts, are designed to foil any attempt by the movement to overthrow the PA.

Earlier this week, Israeli security officials expressed satisfaction with the coordination between the PA security forces and the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) in fighting Hamas in the West Bank.

The officials praised PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s forces for employing an “iron-fist” policy against Hamas since the beginning of the military offensive.

On the instructions of the PA leadership in Ramallah, protesters are banned from expressing solidarity with Hamas by hoisting the movement’s flag or chanting slogans in its favor.

The PA has also banned demonstrators from marching toward IDF checkpoints or settlements to avoid friction.

In the past three weeks, dozens of Hamas supporters have either been detained or summoned for investigation by the PA’s much-feared Preventive Security Force and General Intelligence Service.

Hamas claims that the PA had already arrested more than 400 of its supporters in the West Bank prior to the IDF offensive in Gaza.

In the Nablus area alone, more than 200 Hamas supporters were rounded up by the PA in the past two weeks, a Hamas representative in the West Bank said.

Most of the detainees were university students affiliated with pro-Hamas tickets in campus political races, he said.

The PA has also banned pro-Hamas activities at universities and schools. According to sources close to Hamas, the PA Education Ministry recently fired a number of teachers who voiced sympathy with Hamas.

Several Palestinian journalists have also been targeted by the PA security forces in recent weeks. In Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah, policemen beat a number of Palestinian reporters and photographers who were covering protests against the IDF operation. Other journalists have been receiving threats almost on a daily basis from the PA security forces in the West Bank.

One journalist said he was told by PA security officers that they would break his arms and legs if he dared to report about pro-Hamas demonstrations. Another journalist complained that policemen confiscated his camera and assaulted him while he was covering a demonstration in Bethlehem.

In Ramallah last week, the PA deployed more than 1,000 policemen to stop a relatively small number of demonstrators from identifying with Hamas.

In Tulkarm, PA security officers detained a Hamas spokesman shortly after he appeared on an Arab satellite TV station. In Hebron, several demonstrators who hoisted Hamas flags during a recent protest were dispersed by policemen who fired tear gas at them.

Some Hamas members who are being held in PA prisons told their relatives that they were severely beaten by policemen and security officers who were “celebrating” the beginning of the IDF operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinians said the PA policemen responsible for the massive crackdown received special training in Jordan and the West Bank as part of a security plan engineered by the US. They claimed that these forces report directly to PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad, and not to Abbas.

The anti-Hamas campaign in the West Bank is taking place not only on the ground, but also in the PA-controlled media that continues to blame Hamas for the “massacres” in Gaza.

Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a senior aide to Abbas, on Thursday accused Hamas of holding the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip hostage. “Hamas is attempting to become the main decision-maker on the Palestinian arena,” he said. “Hamas is exploiting the Israeli massacres against our people to strengthen its position.”

Abdel Rahim expressed hope that Hamas would not be invited to any Arab summit or gathering to discuss the situation in the Gaza Strip. “Hamas launched a coup against the legitimate authority of the Palestinians and as such it does not have the right to represent the Palestinians at any summit,” he said.

The PA’s psychological war against Hamas reached its peak this week when a number of senior officials in Ramallah began talking about a split between the Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip and their colleagues in Syria.

Several Fatah-controlled news Web sites also carried reports about how Hamas militiamen were stealing fuel and food in the Gaza Strip. They also mocked the Hamas leaders for abandoning their constituents by going underground.

On Thursday, Hamas called for a “day of rage” in the West Bank against the ongoing IDF offensive. Hamas is hoping that large-scale protests will embarrass or perhaps undermine the PA leadership and hasten its collapse.

So far, the PA security forces have been successful in containing the protests inside the cities, which are under its control. Most of the clashes between Palestinians and the IDF have been taking place in the rural areas of the West Bank, where overall security is in the hands of Israel.

The IDF has also been helping the PA security forces by arresting dozens of Hamas men in the West Bank.

In some cases, Hamas members were detained by the IDF only hours after they were released from PA detention centers, in what appears to be a clear sign of security coordination between the PA and Israel.

Just last week, the IDF arrested three top Hamas representatives: legislators Abdel Jaber al-Fukaha and Basem al-Za’arir and former Hamas minister Issa Ja’abari.

PA and Fatah officials in Ramallah said on Thursday they had evidence that Iran and Syria were pushing Hamas to continue fighting Israel. Damascus and Teheran were also trying to incite the Palestinians in the West Bank against the PA leadership, they added.

They pointed out that Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal, based in Damascus, has repeatedly appealed to the West Bank Palestinians to launch a third intifada against the PA leadership.

Fatah cracks down on Hamas in West Bank | Confronting Hamas | Jerusalem Post

“That is … a very alarming, very disturbing and troubling situation,” Ban told reporters in the Jordanian capital on the first day of a week-long tour of the Middle East.

Ban said that U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, were investigating the rocket attacks launched from inside Lebanon. The incident took place on the 19th day of Israel’s offensive against Hamas militants in the Gaza strip.

“I again strongly urge all the parties concerned in this region … to refrain from taking such violent actions which will destabilize the situation,” Ban said.

“We are now going through a very difficult process to bring a ceasefire, to bring stability back to Gaza. Such actions are just unacceptable,” Ban said.

He added that he would discuss the latest Lebanese rocket salvoes — the second such attack from Lebanon in a week — with Israeli leaders in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Thursday and with Lebanese officials in Beirut later in the week.

Security sources in Lebanon said five rockets were fired, though two fell in Lebanon. Witnesses in southern Lebanon said Israel responded with artillery fire but there were no reports of casualties or further Israeli military action.

Israel fought a month-long war in 2006 against Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. Hezbollah has denied responsibility for last week’s rocket attacks against Israel.

PLEA

Earlier Ban discussed an Egyptian proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza with Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo and later with Jordan’s King Abdullah in Amman. Ban said he would continue to renew his calls for a ceasefire in Gaza in meetings with Israeli leaders in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Thursday.

Ban did not comment on statements from a Hamas official working with Egyptian mediators in Cairo indicating that Hamas might be willing to accept some kind of a ceasefire.

The U.N. chief was asked if he was disappointed that both Israel and Hamas had ignored a U.N. Security Council resolution adopted last week that called for an immediate end to the Israeli offensive and rocket attacks against southern Israel.

“It is more than disappointment,” Ban said, adding that he wanted an “an immediate and durable ceasefire.”

This, he said, was a message he would bring to Israel on Thursday when he meets with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

“Hamas rocket attacks must stop and at the same time I have been condemning the excessive military operation by the Israelis,” he told an earlier news conference in Cairo with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said 1,010 Palestinians had been killed and 4,700 wounded by Israel so far. The Israelis say on their side 10 soldiers, and three civilians hit by cross-border Hamas rockets, have been killed.

Ban also called on “all those who have influence with any parties to this conflict” to use that influence to help put an end to the fighting — indicating an acknowledgement that his own ability to influence events was extremely limited.

The U.N. chief, whose tour will also take him to Israel and Syria, said he was unlikely to visit the Gaza Strip, partly because of the dangerous situation there.

U.N. alarmed by Lebanon rocket attacks on Israel | Reuters

There was no initial claim of responsibility for the attack, which triggered warning sirens in parts of northern Israel, and police said no one was hurt.

On Thursday, a similar salvo hit northern Israel but Lebanese and Israeli officials were quick to play down that incident, blaming not the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement, an ally of Gaza’s Hamas, but smaller, Palestinian groups in Lebanon. Israel and Hezbollah fought a month-long war in 2006.

“Three rockets fired into Israel landed outside the city of Kiryat Shmona,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said about Wednesday’s incident in the Galilee.

Security sources in Lebanon said five rockets were fired and two fell in Lebanon. Witnesses in south Lebanon said Israel responded with artillery fire. There were no immediate reports of casualties or further Israeli military action.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Cairo at the start of a major diplomatic push to end the war in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has been battling Hamas Islamists for 19 days in a bid to end their rocket fire on its towns.

Israeli troops edged closer to the heart of the city of Gaza on Wednesday morning and international organisations expressed growing concern about the plight of children trapped there.

The Palestinian death toll rose to 971, Gaza’s Health Ministry said, counting some 400 women and children among those killed. Israel says 10 Israeli soldiers and three civilians hit by Hamas rockets fired across the border have been killed.

Sporadic explosions, machine gun fire and the wail of ambulances pierced the night after Israel’s senior general said more work lay ahead for his troops in their stated mission of stopping the Hamas rocket attacks.

Israeli aircraft attacked about 60 targets, including Hamas police headquarters in the city of Gaza, eight squads of gunmen, five rocket-launching sites and some 35 weapons smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border, the military said.

Three rockets fired from the Gaza Strip landed in southern Israel, causing no casualties, emergency services said.

RED CROSS APPEAL

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) visited the densely populated Palestinian enclave on Tuesday and said what he saw was shocking.

“It is unacceptable to see so many wounded people. Their lives must be spared and the security of those who care for them guaranteed.” ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger said.

He urged both sides to spare civilians and let aid workers do their work.

The chief U.N. aid official for Gaza appealed to the international community to protect Gaza’s civilians, saying nowhere in the territory of 1.5 million people was safe any longer with the conflict becoming “a test of our humanity”.

Trying to end the bloodshed, Ban planned to meet leaders in Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Syria. He has indicated he will have no direct contact with Hamas.

U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said Ban also would “demand that urgent humanitarian assistance be provided without restriction to those in need”.

In Cairo, a Hamas delegation resumed talks on a ceasefire plan proposed by Egypt, which borders the Gaza Strip and Israel and has made peace with the Jewish state.

Hamas says Israel must pull back all its troops under a ceasefire and end the blockade of the Gaza Strip that it tightened after the group seized the coastal enclave from forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.

Israel has rebuffed as “unworkable” a U.N. Security Council ceasefire resolution last week and said a truce must ensure Hamas cannot rearm through tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.

Israeli tanks have moved closer to the densely populated downtown area of the city of Gaza, but have not entered, residents said.

Human rights groups have reported shortages of vital supplies, including water, in the Gaza Strip. A fuel shortage has brought frequent power blackouts.

Israel has permitted almost daily truck shipments of food and medicine. But Human Rights Watch said Israel’s daily three hour break in attacks to facilitate the supply of humanitarian aid to Gazans was “woefully insufficient”. (Additional reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem, Beirut bureau and Patrick Worsnip at the United Nations; Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Rockets from Lebanon hit Israel amid Gaza fighting | International | Reuters

Its fighters launched dozens of Katyusha rockets and mortars at Israel and seized two more soldiers and killed eight others in cross-border raids.

It was seen as a dramatic gesture of solidarity with the Palestinians, but Israel’s response was far more dramatic and devastating to Lebanon.

Hezbollah said it wanted to exchange the two soldiers for thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli detention.

What it got was a 34-day onslaught from the Israeli military, costing more than 1,000 lives, mostly Lebanese civilians.

About 160 Israelis were killed, mostly soldiers, in fighting and rocket fire from Hezbollah. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were displaced on either side.

Events in Lebanon during the summer of 2006 ended up completely overshadowing what had been going on in Gaza.

Intense speculation

We are now nearly two weeks into Israel’s campaign to hit the Hamas militant movement in Gaza, an attempt to reduce rocket fire by Palestinian militants.

The news of rockets being fired from Lebanon will have raised alarm of a possible serious escalation in this bloody New Year period.

Intense speculation has focused on whether or not Hezbollah was responsible for Thursday’s rocket fire or whether it was Palestinian militant groups in exile in refugee camps in Lebanon.

Most analysts have concluded it is unlikely to be Hezbollah – despite recent fiery rhetoric from the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah about the possibility of renewed conflict with Israel.

For a start, there has been no Hezbollah claim of responsibility, which is not the group’s usual style.

It has a reputation, even among Israelis, for being the most credible conveyor of information about its activities – when it chooses to convey such information.

Political timing

There is also the question of the scale of the attack – so far it is much smaller than in July 2006, and it is widely thought that Hezbollah would be capable of a much heavier blow if it had wanted.

The rockets seem to be short-range, and probably were fired from south of the Litani river, which is under control of the Unifil peacekeeping force and the Lebanese regular army.

It has been like this since the 2006 ceasefire which determined an end to all armed activity by militants between the Litani and the Israeli border.

It is widely assumed that Hezbollah still operates under cover in this area, but it is doubtful at this time that they would attempt such a blatant challenge to UN authority.

This is because the group is now part of the Lebanese government – with a power of veto on legislation – so it would be unlikely to want to jeopardise that position.

Another question regarding such attacks is whether Hezbollah somehow assisted, as they are launched from an area where – by reputation – not a leaf can move without its people knowing about it.

If so, the latest attack may be a way for Hezbollah to show solidarity with Gaza without provoking a massive Israeli retaliation.

After all, last year Israeli officials threatened that any attack from Hezbollah would trigger that would a retaliation against all of Lebanon that would make 2006 seem mild.

Difficult terrain

So who would attack Israel like this? Lebanon plays host to 400,000 Palestinian refugees, a reservoir of anger and militancy fuelled by 60 years of exile from what they consider as their land.

There are large refugee camps around Tyre and Sidon in southern Lebanon and militant groups have been known to launch rockets at Israel.

The last occasion of rocket fire was in January 2008, which was linked to the visit of US President George W Bush to Israel.

Hezbollah denied responsibility for that attack and the Israeli military blamed an unnamed Palestinian organisation.

But the incident showed the Unifil/Lebanese army regime was not in total control south of the Litani – notoriously difficult terrain to secure completely, as the Israeli army found to its cost during its long occupation of the area.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Who is behind the Lebanon rockets?

The rockets, presumably launched in support of Hamas, could presage the opening of a second front. The Israeli Army, in a brief statement, said it “responded with fire against the source of the rockets,” which landed near the town of Nahariya. Two Israelis were slightly wounded, the police said.

Lebanese security sources told Reuters that they believed it was unlikely that the rockets were fired under instructions from the militant group Hezbollah. But there was no confirmation or denial from Hezbollah itself.

In 2006, after the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier just outside Gaza, a large Israeli operation there was overshadowed by Israeli’s massive response to an attack in the north by Hezbollah, which turned into what is known as the Second Lebanon War.

On Wednesday, Israel had said that it would send senior officials to talk with Egypt about halting the conflict in Gaza, but there were no immediate signs of a diplomatic breakthrough, and fighting between Israel and Hamas militants continued after a three-hour lull for humanitarian aid to be distributed.

International pressure for a negotiated cease-fire intensified after Israeli shells killed some 40 people at a United Nations school in Gaza on Tuesday. Israel said Hamas militants had fired mortar shells from the school compound prior to Israel’s shelling.

Israel suspended its military operations in Gaza for three hours on Wednesday to allow humanitarian aid and fuel for power generation to reach Gazans, who used the afternoon break to shop.

But fighting resumed soon afterward. In the evening, the Israeli Army dropped leaflets warning the citizens of Rafah, next to the border with Egypt, to leave their homes. Israel has been bombing the tunnel networks through which arms and consumer goods are smuggled from Egypt into Gaza.

The rockets from Lebanon fell in residential areas. Shimon Koren, head of the northern district police, instructed residents of Nahariya and Kabri to enter bomb shelters and he instructed residents in nearby localities to open their shelters. School was cancelled in Nahariya and nearby Shlomi. The Israeli government said it welcomed the efforts of France and Egypt to work out a durable cease-fire. It said it would end its assault if Hamas stopped firing rockets into Israel and ended the smuggling of weapons from Egypt. It said that if a durable cease-fire took hold, it would reopen border crossings into Gaza for goods and people. But Israeli and Hamas officials both denied an assertion by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, that a cease-fire had been agreed upon.

“There is an agreement on general principles, that Hamas should stop rocket fire and mustn’t rearm,” a senior Israeli official said Wednesday evening. “But that’s like agreeing that motherhood is a good thing. We have to transform those agreed principles into working procedures on the ground, and that’s barely begun.”

The government spokesman, Mark Regev, said that “the challenge now is to get the details to match the principles.”

There were early signs that a formal diplomatic negotiation could begin after 12 days of fighting. Egypt’s chief of intelligence, Omar Suleiman, is expected to serve as a go-between for Israel and Hamas. Two Israeli officials — a senior aide to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Shalom Turgeman, and a senior defense official, Amos Gilad — are expected to go to Egypt on Thursday to begin discussions, Israeli officials said.

The United States has been involved behind the scenes, senior Israeli and French officials said, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “constantly on the phone” with Mr. Olmert, according to one Israeli official.

In Washington, the White House spokeswoman, Dana M. Perino, said of talks about a cease-fire: “As I understand, the Israelis are open to the concept, but they want to learn more about the details; so do we.”

At the United Nations, several Arab delegates said Wednesday night that they thought they now had enough votes to approve a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire. That would likely put the United States and other Western powers, which oppose a binding resolution, in the awkward position of having to veto a cease-fire.

A senior French official in Paris said that Mr. Sarkozy’s earlier comment about an agreement on a cease-fire was misunderstood: “The plan is not a cease-fire; the plan is a road map toward a cease-fire.” One crucial aspect of any deal is how to prevent new smuggling tunnels from being built under Egypt’s border with Gaza.

The senior Israeli official raised the possibility of reaching “tacit agreements” with Hamas to end rocket fire, while also persuading Egypt to allow American and perhaps European army engineers to help seal its border with Gaza above and below ground.

Hamas is insisting that any new arrangement include the reopening of border crossings for trade with Israel and the reopening of the Rafah crossing into Egypt for people.

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has said that a 2005 agreement on the Rafah crossing, reached with Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, must be respected. That agreement called for a Palestinian Authority presence at the crossing, supervision by European Union monitors and Israeli video surveillance of who entered and left.

Hamas wants to control the crossing itself and is not eager to cooperate with Fatah, its -rival.

In Washington, President-elect Barack Obama said Wednesday that upon taking office he would “engage immediately” in the Middle East crisis and that he was “deeply concerned” about the loss of life on both sides.

“I am doing everything that we have to do to make sure that the day I take office we are prepared to engage immediately in trying to deal with the situation there,” he said at a news conference. “Not only the short-term situation but building a process whereby we can achieve a more lasting peace in the region.”

In Gaza, John Ging, the director of Gazan operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, visited the school in the Jabaliya refugee camp where Israeli shells fell Tuesday. He denied that Hamas militants had fired mortar shells from within the school compound and called for an international investigation into the attack, which he said had killed 40 people.

Israeli officials said they were continuing to investigate, but reiterated that Hamas had been using the school as a base. Mr. Gilad, the defense official, told Israeli Army radio: “This school served as a base for Hamas men whose identity we know. They fired from inside the school compound, and the army fired back at the source. The time was after school hours, and this school is an example of the cynical and cruel use Hamas does with civilian facilities.”

Casualty figures are hard to verify, but officials at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and the Gazan Ministry of Health said 683 Palestinians had died since the conflict began Dec. 27, including 218 children and 90 women. They said 3,085 had been wounded. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza said 130 children age 16 or under had died. The United Nations estimated a few days ago that a quarter of the dead were civilians.

But Palestinian residents and Israeli officials say that Hamas is tending its own wounded in separate medical centers, not in public hospitals, and that it is difficult to know the number of dead Hamas fighters, many of whom were not wearing uniforms.

Israel says it has killed at least 130 Hamas fighters. Ten Israelis have been killed during the offensive, including three civilians. Most of the seven dead Israeli soldiers were killed in so-called friendly fire.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was born the ninth of ten children in East Beirut’s Bourj Hammoud neighborhood on August 31, 1960. His father, Abdul Karim, was born in Bazouriyeh, a village in Jabal Amel (South Lebanon) located near Tyre. Although his family was not particularly religious, Sayyed Hassan was interested in theological studies. He attended an-Najah school and later a public school in Sin el-Fil, Beirut.

In 1975, the civil war in Lebanon forced the family to move to their ancestral home in Bassouriyeh, where Hasan Nasrallah completed his secondary education at the public school of Sour (Tyre). Here he joined the Amal Movement, a Lebanese Shi’a political group.

Sayyed Nasrallah studied at the Shi’a seminary in the Beqaa Valley town of Baalbek. The school followed the teachings of Iraqi-born Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr, who founded the Dawa movement in Najaf, Iraq during the early 1960s. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had Sadr executed in 1980. After a period of Islamic study in Najaf, Nasrallah returned to Lebanon in 1978 when Iraq expelled hundreds of Lebanese religious students. He studied and taught at the school of Amal’s leader Abbas al-Musawi, later being selected as Amal’s political delegate in Beqaa, and making him a member of the central political office.

Sayyed Nasrallah joined Hezbollah after the Israeli invasion in 1982. His fiery sermons drew the admiration of Shiite followers who joined Sayyed Nasrallah in organizing Hezbollah. In 1987, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah traveled to a seminary in Qom, Iran for religious studies. He returned to the war in Lebanon in 1989 and later that year, went back to Iran to represent Hezbollah.

In 1991, Musawi became secretary general of Hezbollah and Sayyed Nasrallah returned to Lebanon. Nasrallah replaced Musawi as Hezbollah’s leader after the latter was killed with his wife and child by Israeli forces. Nasrallah lived in South Beirut with his wife Fatimah Yasin (who comes from the Lebanese village of Al-Abbasiyah) and five children: Muhammad Haadi (d. 1997), Muhammad Jawaad, Zainab, Muhammad Ali and Muhammad Mahdi. In September 1997, his eldest son Muhammad Haadi was killed by Israeli forces in Jabal al-Rafei in southern Lebanon.

In the mid-1970s, Nasrallah moved to a Shiite Hawzah (Arabic for seminary) in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf, completing the first stage of his studies in 1978. He was then forced to leave by the Iraqi authorities.

Despite his ongoing commitment to Hezbollah, in 1989 Nasrallah resumed his efforts to become a religious jurist by moving to the Iranian city of Qom to further his studies. Nasrallah believes that Islam holds the solution to the problems of any society, once saying, “With respect to us, briefly, Islam is not a simple religion including only praises and prayers, rather it is a divine message that was designed for humanity, and it can answer any question man might ask concerning his general and private life. Islam is a religion designed for a society that can revolt and build a state.”

Leadership of Hezbollah

Nasrallah became the leader of Hezbollah after Israel assassinated the movement’s leader Abbas al-Musawi in 1992. Hezbollah’s military campaigns of the late 1990s were the main factors that led to the Israeli decision to withdraw from Southern Lebanon in 2000, thus ending 18 years of occupation. This move greatly increased Hezbollah’s popularity in Lebanon and across the Islamic countries.

Consequently, Nasrallah is widely credited in Lebanon and the Arab world for ending the Israeli occupation in Southern Lebanon, something which has greatly bolstered the party’s political standing within Lebanon.

Nasrallah also played a major role in a complex prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hezbollah in 2004, resulting in hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners being freed and the dead body of his son with many more returning to Lebanon. The agreement was described across the Arab world as a great victory for Hezbollah with Nasrallah being personally praised for achieving these gains.

A December article in the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat reported that command of the organization’s military wing was transferred from Nasrallah to his deputy, Na’im Qasim in August 2007. Hezbollah has refuted this claim, declaring it an attempt “weaken the popularity” of the movement.

For now, the Shi’ite Hizballah appears to be confining its protests to fiery rhetoric and street demonstrations. In a widely-watched televised address Sunday night, Hizballah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah directed his anger more toward Arab governments, Egypt in particular, for complicity in the onslaught against Hamas than toward Israel itself. “Some Arab regimes… are helping by all means to impose the conditions of surrender on the resistors of the American-Zionist project,” he said. “The 2006 July war occurred under Arab approval, even Arab request… They told the Israelis to get rid of Hizballah. They are doing the same thing in Gaza, they are asking the Israelis to destroy Hamas and the resistors.”

The black-turbaned cleric added that Israeli military movements along the border with Lebanon could be a “defensive measure,” but warned that “the enemy, with Arab collaboration, the financial crisis and the transition period in the United States, might take advantage of the situation to launch an attack on Lebanon.” He added: “We are not concerned nor afraid… We are ready to face any attack on our country.”

The Lebanon-Israel border long has served as a locus of Arab retaliation against Israel during periods of heightened violence. But since the 2006 war between Hizballah and Israel, the border has remained calm with the Shi’a militants concentrating their efforts on a military build-up for what they believe is an inevitable future encounter with their Israeli foes. “I think Hizballah has to keep it quiet along the border. The rules have changed since 2006,” says Timur Goksel, a university lecturer in Beirut who served from 1979 to 2003 with the United Nations peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, known as UNIFIL.

But there is no shortage of other players in Lebanon who could disrupt the tense stability along the frontier. Some of Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps are home to Al-Qaeda-inspired militant groups who are suspected of having launched rockets into Israel on two occasions since the end of the 2006 war. On Sunday, the mood in Ain al-Hilweh, the largest and most lawless of the camps, located outside the southern port city of Sidon, was one of fury and mourning. “All that the Israelis are doing, these massacres, killings and bombings, is creating a new generation of suicide bombers,” says Mounir Moqdah, a veteran warlord with the Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He and his rivals in Hamas agreed, however, that military action against Israel from south Lebanon would not serve the Palestinian cause. “At this time, we will not retaliate from south Lebanon,” says Abu Ahmad Fadel Taha, the leader of Hamas in Ain al-Hilweh. “We are counting for now on the support of the Arab people to stand beside us in our ordeal.”

Still, the prospect of rogue attacks along the border has spurred the Lebanese army to cancel all leave and step up patrols in south Lebanon alongside UNIFIL peacekeepers. The heightened security measures occurred after eight Katyusha rockets were discovered by a farmer on Thursday in a valley two miles north of the border with Israel. The rockets, a mix of 120mm and 107mm calibers, were fitted with timers and set for launching late on Thursday night. Lebanese security sources suspect the presence of the rockets was intended as a “message” to Israel rather than an actual attack. They note that the rockets were old and were propped against items of furniture, rather than fitted inside tubed launchers, which would have rendered them highly inaccurate.

Lebanon long has been a graveyard for Israeli military ambitions. The 2006 war helped ruin the political career of Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Israeli prime minister. But with less than two months before leaving office, Olmert and his cabinet appear to have absorbed some of the lessons of the bungled attempt to destroy Hizballah in 2006. In that conflict two and a half years ago, Hizballah defied Israel’s aerial onslaught to maintain relentless barrages of rockets into northern Israel. Olmert found himself bogged down in an unwinnable conflict.

This time, however, the Israeli government is earning praise in the Israeli media for its handling of the assault against Hamas. In particular, analysts cite the months of intelligence gathering and high level of secrecy in planning the air strikes. The timing of the first raids on Saturday appears to have caught Hamas by surprise, accounting for the high number of casualties among the militants.

That perceived early success is benefiting two of the leading candidates for the premiership in the upcoming Israeli election scheduled for early February. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were trailing in the polls behind their hawkish Likud rival, Benjamin Netanyahu. But the aerial assault against Hamas has given a lift to Barak and Livni, at Netanyahu’s expense.

Still, the rival candidates would do well to recall the outcome of an earlier military offensive waged during an Israeli election campaign. In April 1996, then Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres was floundering in a stiff electoral battle with the very same Netanyahu. Peres, who initially was considered a certainty to win the election, found his dovish reputation was working against him amid a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings and deadly Hizballah attacks against Israeli troops then occupying south Lebanon. In an attempt to create a tough-guy image, he ordered an air and artillery blitz against Hizballah in Lebanon, an operation dubbed Grapes of Wrath. However, Grapes of Wrath turned into a political disaster for Peres when a week into the assault Israeli artillery gunners shelled a UNIFIL base in south Lebanon killing over 100 Lebanese civilians sheltering there. The operation fizzled out a week later in a U.S.-brokered ceasefire that gave further cover to Hizballah’s war against Israeli troops occupying south Lebanon. Pilloried for the failure of the operation, Peres lost to Netanyahu in the election a month later.

Attacking Gaza, Israel Worries About Lebanon – TIME

In a televised address at a religious gathering marking the Shiite Day of Ashura south of Beirut, Nasrallah said “I have asked the brothers in the resistance in the south specifically to be present, on alert and cautious because we are facing a criminal enemy and we don’t know the magnitude of the conspiracies.”

“What is happening today is a Palestinian copy of the July war,” Nasrallah said, drawing a comparison between the Israel Defense Forces offensive in the Gaza Strip and the 2006 Second Lebanon War, which Hezbollah waged against Israel in southern Lebanon.

“This is exactly what happened with us. The possibilities and the same possibilities, the conspiracy is the same, the battle is the same battle, and the result, Allah willing, will be the same result,” the Hezbollah leader told the crowd.

Speaking about IDF preparations in northern Israel, at the border with Lebanon, Nasrallah said that he does not rule out the possibility that Israel fears a Hezbollah assault, “but there is another possibility,” he said, “that at this terrible timing, in the shadow of the Arab conspirators and the American political vacuum, between Bush and Obama, there is the possibility that the enemy will take advantage of the situation and attack Lebanon. They need it because of the elections, or to improve their power of deterrence. We need to be careful and not take what is happening lightly.”

The Hezbollah leader also mentioned the missiles recently discovered by the Lebanese army, which it said were aimed at Israel and had timers set for launch, saying that Israel, or someone working on Israel’s behalf, planted them. “Who put them there before a war?” he asked.

“When they found them, they said ‘people in Lebanon.’ We in the Hezbollah have the courage to take responsibility for every action and we won’t hide, like some others. Would it have been difficult for Israel to infiltrate southern Lebanon and put them there? The many Israeli agents, lone and institutional, could do this to give themselves an excuse to attack Lebanon.”

In his televised address, Nasrallah criticized some Arab countries whom he accused of colluding with Israel and America, saying “I’ll call things by their name. We need the word of truth and we need every nation to shoulder its responsibility in the face of what is happening.”

“After Egypt and Jordan signed so-called ‘peace agreements’ all that remains is the Palestinian people, Lebanon and Syria,” Nasrallah went on to say. “The Americans and the Zionists want to reach an agreement to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict on American and Israeli terms. They want the Arabs to capitulate to these terms without any conditions. They want to force these terms on the Arabs, with pressure, isolation, siege, civil war, media warfare, psychological warfare, assassinations and wars.”

“There are those who speak of the Arab silence. This is not true. There is an Arab partnership. But not all the Arabs and not all the regimes ? there are those who cooperate with the enemy. Especially those who signed deals known as peace agreements with Israel. They help the American-Zionist project coerce its terms of submission on all the other resistance fighters, in every way – political, psychological and military,” the Hezbollah leader continued.

“Just so we are very clear,” Nasrallah declared. “The war against us was waged with Arab consent, and sometimes at the demand of Arabs. We are facing a conspiracy on their part regarding everything that is happening in the region.”

Hezbollah: Israel may take this opportunity to attack Lebanon – Haaretz – Israel News

Other targets were a guest palace used by the Hamas government and the house next to Gaza Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s home in a refugee camp adjacent to Gaza City. He was not home, as Hamas leaders have gone into hiding.

In the southern town of Rafah, Palestinians said a toddler and his two teenage brothers were killed in an airstrike aimed at a Hamas commander.

IAF warplanes bombed the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza on Monday, the first air strike that targeted a government building in Israel’s offensive, the Palestinian faction said.

No immediate word was available on whether there were any casualties.

At first light Monday, strong winds blew black smoke from the bombed sites in Gaza City over deserted streets. The air hummed with the buzz of pilotless drones and the roar of jets, punctuated by the explosions of new airstrikes.

IAF warplanes pounded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip for a third consecutive day on Monday and Israel prepared to launch a possible invasion after killing 307 Palestinians in the air raids.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said the military action would go on until the population in southern Israel “no longer live in terror and in fear of constant rocket barrages”.

“(The operation could) take many days,” said Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Avi Benayahu.

At least 51 civilians in the Gaza Strip have been killed in Israeli air strikes since Saturday, according to a tally by a UN aid agency.

“It is likely to be conservative and it is certainly rising,” UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness said on Monday. He said the estimate was based on visits by UNRWA officials to hospitals and medical centres across the Gaza Strip.

Israel News