Hezbollah has elected its deputy secretary general, Sheikh Naim Qassem, as its new head, ending a month-long vacuum after the group’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed by Israel.
Since Nasrallah’s death, Qassem has filled in for him, giving a public address earlier this month in which he vowed that Hezbollah would continue fighting Israel in what it described as a war of attrition, despite painful losses.
At the same time, Qassem said he supported the efforts towards achieving a ceasefire in Lebanon, without linking the country’s fate to a ceasefire in Gaza, which Hezbollah had previously said was a precondition to a cessation in hostilities with Israel.
Qassem has been the group’s deputy secretary general since 1991 and one of its most public-facing officials, often speaking on behalf of the group at rallies and in interviews. Beirut-raised, though his family is from south Lebanon, Qassem was at first involved with the Lebanese Shia Amal movement before becoming a founding member of Hezbollah in the early 1980s.
His election has ended a succession crisis within Hezbollah and is among the signs that the group is reconstituting itself after a series of blows from Israel. The last presumed successor to Nasrallah, Hashem Safieddine, has been missing for almost a month after Hezbollah said he was killed in Israeli bombing in the southern suburbs of Beirut on 3 October.
Qassem has inherited a group that is on the back foot from a ferocious Israeli offensive and is diminished from the status it once enjoyed in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has been rocked by explosions that targeted its communication devices, which injured thousands of its members last month, and hundreds of Israeli strikes targeting its weapons caches across the country. Almost all of its senior military leadership has been killed by Israel over the last three months.
The group is engaged in fierce fighting in south Lebanon with Israeli forces, who have been conducting what Israel has described as a “limited” operation along the Lebanese-Israel border since 30 September.
The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, Unifil, has been caught in the crossfire of this fighting. On Tuesday, Unifil said that a rocket hit its headquarters in Naqoura, south Lebanon, fired “likely by Hezbollah or an affiliated group”. Eight Austrian peacekeepers suffered minor injuries and a garage was set on fire. Its base in Naqoura has previously been hit by rocket fire over the last year in incidents Unifil has said were likely the result of Hezbollah or linked militias’ activity.
The Austrian foreign ministry “condemned the attack in the strongest terms”; Unifil says it has opened an investigation into the incident.
Unifil has come under fire over a dozen times in the last month. It has accused Israel of deliberately targeting and in some cases injuring its peacekeepers.
Israel has said it has killed hundreds of Hezbollah members since 30 September, while Hezbollah has stopped issuing public funeral notices for its fighters for operational security reasons. Hezbollah has claimed to have killed 90 Israeli soldiers, while Israeli media puts the figure at approximately 37.
Shortly after his appointment, the Israeli government’s Arabic-language account warned on X that Qassem’s tenure “may be short if he follows in the footsteps” of Nasrallah and Safieddine, and called for Hezbollah to disarm.
While Hezbollah and Israel trade blows in south Lebanon, Israeli warplanes continue to bombard swathes of the country.
On Tuesday, Israel bombed a medical centre run by the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Center in Nabatieh, destroying it completely. No casualties have yet been reported.
The night before, Israel carried out more than 37 airstrikes in Baalbek, in the Bekaa valley, killing at least 67 people and wounding more than 120, according to the area’s governor. More than two-thirds of the dead and wounded were women and children. It was the bloodiest day for the area since fighting between Hezbollah and Israel began a year earlier.
Videos from the Baalbek town of Brital show a street with collapsed buildings and smoke plumes emanating from areas where bombs fell the night before.
Baalbek is famed for its archaeological sites, chief among them the Baalbek temple complex, designated as a Unesco world heritage site in 1984. Monday night’s bombing damaged one of the gates of Baalbek castle, though the interior of the temple complex was undamaged.
The Bekaa valley has historically been an area where Hezbollah enjoys support and the group has weapons caches there. However, it is one of the largest geographic areas of Lebanon and is politically and religiously diverse.
Since Israel started its intense aerial campaign in Lebanon on 23 September, the Bekaa valley has been one of the most consistently struck areas outside south Lebanon. More than 2,710 people have been killed and at least 12,600 have been wounded by fighting in Lebanon since fighting began on 8 October 2023.
