September 27, 2026, marks two years since Israel unleashed over 80 tons of bunker-buster bombs on a neighborhood in Beirut’s southern suburbs, assassinating Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and several other senior commanders.

The attack was part of Israel’s widescale escalation of aggression against Lebanon in September 2024 which included the infamous pager and walkie-talkie attacks, indiscriminate aerial bombardment, as well as a series of decapitation strikes on Hezbollah’s leadership amid the resistance group’s support front for Gaza.

This was not the first time Israel had resorted to targeting Hezbollah’s leadership.

In February 1992, Israel assassinated Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Abbas al-Musawi in an attempt to weaken the organization, but instead paved the way for the emergence of 32-year-old Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as his successor. 

During the funeral of Sayyed Abbas al-Musawi, Sayyed Hassan vowed: 

We will complete this path, even if we are killed, even if we are martyred, even if our homes are destroyed over our heads, we will not abandon the option of Islamic resistance.”

And this vow, he kept. 

Over his 32 years of leadership, Hezbollah grew into one of the world’s most formidable resistance organizations, with Sayyed Hassan guiding the group through some of the region’s most consequential confrontations with the Israeli occupation and broader Western imperialist projects across West Asia.

The 1993 and 1996 Israeli Offensives

Within his first four years as Secretary-General, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah confronted two of Israel’s largest offensives against Lebanon, Operation ‘Accountability’  in July 1993 and Operation ‘Grapes of Wrath’  in April 1996. 

On July 25, 1993, Israel launched Operation ‘Accountability,’ marking the most severe Israeli assault on Lebanon since the 1982 invasion. Over the course of seven days, southern Lebanon came under an intense Israeli offensive, with 1,124 air raids and some 28,000 artillery shells striking Lebanese territory. 

The bombardment killed an estimated 118 to 120 civilians and left nearly 500 wounded, while around 300,000 people were displaced. 

Known in Lebanon as Udwan Nisan (April Aggression), Israel’s seventeen-day Operation ‘Grapes of Wrath’ began on April 11, 1996, under Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Israel conducted more than 600 air sorties and fired approximately 25,000 artillery shells, displacing an estimated 400,000 people. 

On April 18, Israeli artillery struck the UNIFIL compound in Qana, where hundreds of civilians had sought refuge, massacring 106 people, including numerous children.

However, under Sayyed Hassan’s leadership, Hezbollah refused to capitulate to Israel’s overwhelming air and artillery campaigns, instead retaliating with sustained Katyusha and Grad rocket fire into northern Israel. 

The attacks drove residents from Kiryat Shmona, disrupted economic activity across the occupied Galilee and placed mounting political pressure on the Israeli government.

This sustained resistance would ultimately culminate in Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, with Sayyed Hassan stating: 

“…Among these occasions is the April 1996 aggression, the heroic steadfastness of the Resistance, the people, and the army, and the major victory achieved by imposing rules of engagement, a victory that altered the equations and paved the way for the triumph of 2000.”

The Liberation of Southern Lebanon 

On May 25, 2000, southern Lebanon was liberated after more than two decades under Israeli occupation, marking the first time Israel was compelled to unilaterally withdraw from an occupied Arab territory under the pressure of armed resistance.

The final days of the occupation saw Israel’s remaining positions rapidly unravel as the ‘South Lebanon Army’ collapsed and Hezbollah fighters and Lebanese civilians moved into areas abandoned by the Israeli-backed militia. 

The resistance then liberated the southern city of Bint Jbeil, before Lebanese civilians stormed Khiam Detention Center and freed the remaining captives. Celebrations erupted across Lebanon as residents returned to their homes and reclaimed their land.

The victory was followed by one of Sayyed Hassan’s most monumental speeches. On May 26, he addressed a large crowd at a stadium in Bint Jbeil where he proclaimed that Israel, despite possessing nuclear arsenal and the region’s strongest military, was “weaker than a spider’s web,” a line which still haunts the entity till this day. 

Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000 marked a turning point in the history of Hezbollah and the leadership of Sayyed Haasan Nasrallah. 

The end of the occupation was celebrated across the Arab and Muslim world as a symbolic rupture with decades of defeatism, which had taken root across the region amid Israel’s repeated military gains and territorial expansion.

The 33-Day War 

On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah launched Operation ‘Truthful Promise,’ capturing two Israeli soldiers in an effort to force the release of Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli jails. 

Sayyed Hassan maintained that the resistance had exhausted other avenues and that capturing Israeli soldiers was the only remaining means of compelling Israel to negotiate a prisoner exchange. 

Israel responded to the capture by launching a massive air campaign across Lebanon, targeting Beirut, southern Lebanon and critical civilian infrastructure. 

Over the following 33 days, Israeli bombardment killed more than 1,100 Lebanese people, wounded over 4,400 and displaced around one million, while causing extensive damage to homes, hospitals, schools, roads, bridges and other infrastructure.

Despite Israel’s overwhelming airpower, the campaign failed to force Hezbollah into submission. Israel subsequently launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, deploying thousands of troops in an attempt to eliminate the resistance and seize territory.

Hezbollah’s entrenched fighters used guerrilla tactics, fortified positions and anti-tank missiles to inflict significant losses on Israeli forces, most notably in the Battle of Wadi al-Saluki, where several Merkava tanks were destroyed. 

On the third day of the war, Sayyed Hassan announced during a televised address that Hezbollah had struck the Israeli naval vessel INS Hanit with a C-802 anti-ship missile. He urged viewers to look toward the western horizon, where the burning vessel could be seen,  turning the strike into a symbolic demonstration that Israel’s military superiority did not make its forces untouchable.

Hezbollah’s rocket campaign continued throughout the war, with missiles reaching Haifa and deeper into northern Israel. Sayyed Hassan articulated a retaliatory equation, declaring that if Israel bombed Beirut, Hezbollah would strike Tel Aviv. 

The resistance demonstrated that Israel’s air superiority could not prevent Hezbollah from launching attacks within Israel until the final day of the war.

The war exposed significant failures within Israel’s political and military leadership. Despite its vastly superior military capabilities, Israel failed to eliminate Hezbollah’s fighting capacity, halt its rocket fire or achieve its stated objectives before the ceasefire. 

The perception of Israel’s military invincibility was dismantled, while the assumption that asymmetric warfare was ineffective against a conventionally superior military was discredited as Hezbollah inflicted substantial losses on Israeli ground troops and withstood the offensive.

Addressing the masses on September 22, 2006, Sayyed Hassan described the war as a “divine, historic, and strategic victory” belonging “to all of Lebanon, all Arabs, all Muslims, and all free people of the world.”

His standing as a symbol of resistance against the Israeli occupation was further cemented by the 33-day war, extending beyond West Asia as international movements around the world expressed solidarity with Hezbollah. 

In his address, he added: 

The Lebanese resistance nowadays constitutes a source of inspiration for all resistors worldwide, for all freedom advocates worldwide, for all the decent souls worldwide and for all those who refuse to surrender to the Americans worldwide.”

The Syrian War

In 2011, Syria became the next target over its role as a land bridge in the Axis of Resistance, serving as a vital supply route for Lebanese and Palestinian resistance groups. The CIA Operation ‘Timber Sycamore’ armed, funded, and trained Syrian opposition forces aimed at toppling then-President Bashar al-Assad. 

Foreign Takfiri mercenaries, including Al Qaeda and ISIS, poured in from over seventy countries to participate in the NATO-Gulf backed regime-change war. Israel openly supported the opposition while also carrying out over a thousand airstrikes throughout the conflict.

Recognizing the threat of the insurgency spilling into Lebanon and for the Palestinian cause as a whole, Sayed Hassan prompted Hezbollah’s intervention, famously stating, “If Syria falls, Palestine will be lost.” 

As fighting spread toward the Lebanese frontier, terrorist groups established positions in villages and rural areas around Qusayr and launched attacks that increasingly threatened communities on the Lebanese side.

The campaign began with operations around Tell Mando, where Hezbollah helped drive extremist militants from the military site and 16 nearby villages within days. The momentum carried into Qusayr, where Hezbollah joined the Syrian Army in a prolonged battle to retake the city in 2013. 

Hezbollah subsequently expanded its operations into the Qalamoun Mountains along the Syrian-Lebanese frontier. The campaign culminated in the capture of Yabroud, a major base for insurgent factions and a hub for the movement of weapons and fighters across the border, helping secure the frontier and curb cross-border attacks into Lebanon.

Within the wider Qalamoun campaign, Hezbollah and the Syrian Army liberated Maaloula, a historic Christian town nestled in the mountains. After Al-Qaeda-linked militants seized parts of the town, Hezbollah helped restore government control and secure its churches and monasteries. 

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah rejected the portrayal of Hezbollah’s intervention as driven by sectarian interests, a narrative advanced by Western and Gulf propaganda campaigns. Instead, he pointed to what he described as the broader imperialist agenda behind the insurgency, warning that the threat extended across sectarian lines:

The takfiri and terrorist groups work for Israel, and those who think the takfiri groups will only target Shiites are mistaken… Those groups target Sunnis, Shias and Christians. They send suicide attackers to Sunni mosques as well as to churches.”

The Gaza Support Front

The decade-long accusations of sectarianism could not withstand when, on October 8, 2023, Hezbollah opened a support front along the Lebanese-Palestinian border following the Al-Aqsa Flood.

The group began targeting Israeli military positions in occupied Lebanese territory and along the border, declaring that its operations were intended to support the Palestinian resistance and pressure Israel to end its genocide on Gaza.

What followed was an 11-month war of attrition, with Hezbollah and Israel engaging in sustained exchanges governed by shifting, albeit largely calibrated rules of engagement. 

Hezbollah’s attacks forced the evacuation of communities across northern occupied Palestine and disrupted daily life throughout the area, while its rocket and drone capabilities eventually extended the threat deeper into Israel.

The sustained pressure on Israel’s northern front also required a substantial diversion of military resources. Sayyed Hassan stated that one-third of Israel’s forces and resources were being deployed on the northern front instead of towards Gaza, imposing significant military and strategic costs on Israel while reinforcing Hezbollah’s stated role in supporting the Palestinian resistance against the Zionist regime.

In televised speech on January 3, 2024, Sayyed Hassan declared:

“What has happened since Oct.7 and will continue to happen in the future has weakened Israel… and put it on the road to extinction.”

The careful balance Sayyed Hassan had maintained to protect Lebanese civilians and safeguard the country while continuing to inflict costs on Israel was ultimately shattered when Israel dramatically escalated its aggression in September 2024.

The Enduring Resistance 

The pager attacks, widespread bombardment, targeting of Hezbollah’s senior commanders and the assassination of Sayyed Hassan himself, all within the span of one month, did not subdue Hezbollah, as the Israeli entity had anticipated. 

Despite the scale of the assault, Hezbollah emerged capable of absorbing severe losses, preserving its organizational structure and sustaining its military pressure on Israel. The battle lasted over two months before a ceasefire was signed in November 2024. 

However, after Israel committed over 10,000 ceasefire violations in a fifteen-month span, the battle reignited in March 2026 and has since subsided into an uneasy cessation, despite Israel’s continued incursions. 

Since Hezbollah’s support front for Gaza, nearly 9,000 Lebanese have been killed by Israel, with nearly 30,600 wounded, and another one million displaced. 

Two years since the assassination of Sayyed Hassan, Hezbollah has persisted in its ardent resistance against the Greater Israel project. Referred to as the ‘Nation’s Martyr,’ his memory remains etched into the minds of his supporters who insist on continuing his anti-imperialist struggle. 

As Sayyed Hassan himself once explained: 

“The Resistance is not anymore a personal initiative. It is not anymore a group that exists as long as definite members or definite leaders exist. It has transcended the stage of establishment. It has its structure, pillars, school, leaders, cadres, fighters, intellect, doctrine… However… these leaders changed their Resistance to a school, to an institution, and to an entity beating with life and able to get along and continue the path no matter who is martyred in the midway.”