While Hezbollah’s daily newspaper in Lebanon praised the New York Times and the Washington Post for their flattering obituary of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, most Arabs celebrated the end of someone they saw as a tyrant who had ordered the assassination of his Lebanese opponents and the killing and displacement of millions of Syrians.
Speaking from Beirut, writer and broadcaster Ronnie Chatah blamed Nasrallah and Hezbollah for the ongoing war, saying that Lebanon could have been neutral had Nasrallah let the Lebanese government enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Ronnie’s father, Muhammad Chatah, was a minister in the Lebanese cabinet when Hezbollah assassinated him in 2013.
Ronnie said his father and a dozen other victims of Hezbollah, including former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, were buried in downtown Beirut, where thousands of Lebanese, fleeing war, have now taken refuge. But perhaps fearing for his own safety, and thinking that Hezbollah will rebound after the war, Ronnie stopped short of expressing joy seeing Nasrallah gone.
Another Lebanese, veteran columnist Khairallah Khairallah, explained why he thought the end of Nasrallah offered Lebanon an opportunity for a new beginning. Before he launched his war on Israel on October 8, “Nasrallah and his lieutenants showed arrogance that eventually killed them,” Khairallah wrote, arguing that the Islamist regime in Iran realised that it is hard to defend its assets in Gaza and Lebanon and has therefore decided to relocate its proxy weight to Iraq.
Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, elected for the first time in 1992 and half a dozen times since, has been the junior Shia partner of Hezbollah. When receiving foreign officials, Berri often spoke on behalf of his ally – Nasrallah. On September 24 Berri told Washington and Paris that Lebanon refused an unconditional ceasefire with Israel, and that Hezbollah would only stop fighting if war stopped in Gaza.
Israel killed Nasrallah on the following Friday.
By yesterday, October 1, the savvy Berri had realised that Hezbollah was reeling and would unlikely recover. So he reversed course, saying in an interview that “Lebanon was ready to deploy the Lebanese Army to the border with Israel, abide by UNSC 1701” that ended the 2006 war, and “elect a president.” Nasrallah had blocked all three moves. Berri dropped any reference to a ceasefire in Gaza and framed his new stance as one that he had agreed on with Nasrallah before the latter’s death.
Interim Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati followed suit, echoing Berri’s position. A Lebanese newspaper described Mikati’s new position as “shocking.”
Elsewhere in the Arab world, the reaction to Nasrallah’s death was more about emotions – mostly revenge and some sadness – and less about what happens next.
Among the Arabs, the Syrians, having suffered the most on the hands of the Hezbollah militia that fought them on behalf of their tyrant Bashar Assad, were the most jubilant. “To hell Hassan went,” said Syrian poet Imadiddine Dahdouh.
“It’s official,” wrote Fadi, a Syrian, on X. “Nufouq the terrorist Hassan Nasrallah,” Fadi added, using the noun the Arabs use to describe the death of animals.
Sunni Islamists across the Arab world were divided in their feelings toward the death of Shia Nasrallah. In Jordan, some took to the streets, raising pictures of Nasrallah.
Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, however, did not issue a statement eulogising the Hezbollah chief. Sunni Islamists are emotionally divided over whether to like the Shia Iran regime and Nasrallah because they were both against Israel, or to hate them for killing tens of thousands of Sunnis during the Syrian civil war. Most went with hating Iran and Nasrallah.
In other Arab countries, such as predominantly Sunni Morocco, the few voices that regretted Nasrallah’s death provoked a storm against their stance. Moroccan Sunnis blamed Shia Nasrallah for massacring their Sunni brethren in Syria and accused Iran and Nasrallah of trying to train and arm a Polisario militia in Western Sahara. The Polisario is a separatist group that demands independence from Morocco.
On balance, outside of Iranian propaganda, Nasrallah was remembered as a tyrant in Lebanon, a butcher in Syria and a Shia fanatic who held a grudge against the Sunnis and “used the Palestinian cause as an excuse to hide his criminality.”
Only a few Lebanese seem to have realised so far that Hezbollah will not rebound and that they now have the opportunity to take sovereignty back from the hands of the Iran-backed militia. For the rest of the Arabs, Nasrallah’s death was only bad karma - or as the Arabic proverb has it: “Preach killers that they will be killed, even if after a while.”
Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). Follow him on X @hahussain
