Days after Lebanon and Israel signed a framework agreement, supporters and opponents of the militia-party are still measuring the consequences of the devastating war.
Nahida Fakih sat in the shade of a tree in front of her home, which had been gutted by an Israeli missile, in Srifa, southern Lebanon. Wrapped in a black abaya, she smoked a hookah, her 5-month-old grandson at her side. The 55-year-old Lebanese woman said she was proud of the sacrifices she had made for the "resistance" led by the Shiite party Hezbollah against Israel. Her husband, Youssef, and her eldest son, Jaafar, were at the front. A nephew had been killed there. Her youngest son, Hussein, 21, was recovering from wounds he sustained in combat during the 2024 war.
"All our wealth, our sons and our families, sacrificed for the resistance, this is the path of Imam Hussein. He is our role model in the fight against injustice," she said. The commemoration on Friday, June 26, of Ashura – the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, killed in the Battle of Karbala in 680 – had the taste of "victory." "After the 2024 war, we were broken. Today, we feel victorious, despite the martyrs and the destruction. Thanks to Iran's support, a new balance of power has been established, and the resistance will continue as long as Israel occupies us," vowed Fakih, pointing to her other grandson, also named Hussein, age 5, "the next generation."
Within "Hezbollah's society," resistance to the Israeli occupation justified, according to some, the price paid in the war. That price was exorbitant: more than 4,200 deaths, the majority of them civilians; 60 villages in southern Lebanon razed and occupied by Israel; and hundreds of thousands of people displaced. The resilience of Hezbollah and the support of Tehran, which made an agreement with the US conditional on a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon, once again legitimized armed struggle, in their eyes. The Lebanese state's failure to secure these concessions from Israel during direct talks in Washington and in the framework agreement signed on Friday only reinforced their views.
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