Interview with Ziad Majed[1] in Mediapart, following the Israeli attack on the southern suburbs of Beirut, which killed the Secretary General of Hezbollah and dozens of Lebanese civilians.
Interview by Ilies Ramdani.
Mediapart: What do you think about the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah?
Ziad Majed: There are no red lines for the Israelis. They can kill whoever they want and strike wherever they want. The problem goes beyond the figure of Hassan Nasrallah. There is a state that crosses all boundaries and borders to murder and bomb, often with the complicity of the Western world.
Like many Lebanese, I have always been opposed to Hezbollah for political, cultural and ideological reasons, and over the past decade for its military involvement in Syria at the request of Tehran in support of the criminal regime of Bashar El-Assad. The party has also been accused of carrying out assassinations in Lebanon.
However, it enjoys popular legitimacy within the Shia community, which has been traumatized by successive Israeli invasions of Lebanon since 1978 (five years before the party was founded) and a long history of military occupation of the south (which lasted 22 years), followed by a war in 2006. As a result, Hezbollah has had a seat in parliament since 1992, runs elected municipal councils, holds ministries and runs its own social services.
The assassination on Friday of its secretary-general, Nasrallah, carried
out by Israeli officials who have themselves been accused of crimes against
humanity by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and dozens of
human rights organizations, is further proof of the 'exceptionalism' that
places Israel above international law. All the more so as the air raid
devastated an entire residential area on the outskirts of the Lebanese capital,
leaving dozens of civilians trapped under the rubble. Six multi-storey
buildings disappeared because of the power of the bombs.
So a large proportion of the Lebanese people are angry, like the Palestinians who have suffered decades of occupation, colonization and now a genocidal war in Gaza under the passive gaze of the 'international community'.