Mossad analysts decided he could become one of the “potentially more open and progressive Arab leaders who might rule with a broader vision of the world.” That hope steadily faded. On foreign policy issues above all, in his determination to cast Syria as the Arab champion of resistance to American and Israeli dominance, Bashar al-Assad had, in Meir Dagan’s words, “clearly shown he has his father’s political DNA.” Bashar al-Assad had, it was broadly assumed, approved the Syrian-inspired assassination of the former Lebanese leader, Rafiq Hariri. The murder led to violence in Beirut and had forced Bashar to pull Syria’s troops out of Lebanon. In a defiant speech in Damascus, the president made it clear the withdrawal was not permanent. His other ambition was to reoccupy the Golan Heights.
The men on the plane suspected Iran’s president Ahmadinejad would have no hesitation in dispatching one of his death squads to murder the Fatah delegation as further proof he would do anything to ensure he remained on track for achieving his aim to “wipe Israel from the face of the earth.” The Fatah quartet had taken great care to ensure that Hamas’s volatile leader in Gaza, Mahmoud Zahhar, was unaware of what was afoot. The day before, each man had slipped quietly out of Gaza and through Ezez, the main Israeli checkpoint crossing from the Gaza Strip into Israel. Behind them they left men who smoked the
The Fatah group had been brought to Ben Gurion airport in a taxi provided by the Israeli government, who were aware there was also one other powerful group who would violently oppose what they hoped to achieve with that “back door channel.” It was Hezbollah. The organization represented the divide between two great branches of Islam that stretches back to the early history of the religion. While the Sunnis were the major branch throughout most of the Islamic world, the Shias had a larger number of followers in Iraq and south Lebanon and were dominant in Iran.
The division extended to the terror organizations. Osama bin Laden is a Sunni, al-Qaeda is predominantly Sunni and continues to be financed by Saudi Arabia, which is a Sunni society. Hezbollah is a Shia organization, which relies heavily on organizational support from Iran, who continues to supply it weapons. In the wake of Hamas’s political victory, Iran had further fostered its common cause against Israel with Hezbollah. While Jibril Rajoud was secretly meeting with Uri Saguy in safe houses provided by Mossad, Mahmoud Zahhar met with Hezbollah’s leader in Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah, the chief power-broker of the 1.4 million Shia community in the country. Intelligent, charismatic, and a born street orator, Nasrallah’s entire career had been shaped by Israel’s repeated interventions in Lebanon from the civil war in the mid-1970s to when the Israeli Defense Force had unilaterally withdrawn from southern Lebanon after years of failing to subdue Hezbollah.
Just as his brother’s death had led to Bashar al-Assad becoming Syria’s president, it was an assassination that had paved the way for Nasrallah’s rise to absolute power. In 1992 an Israeli gunship killed Nasrallah’s mentor, his predecessor Abbas Moussawi. Since then Nasrallah has survived similar attempts by Mossad to kill him with explosives planted in both his home and his office in Beirut. Each failure to assassinate him has enhanced his status across the Arab world. Feted in Damascus and Tehran by its leaders, his photograph was displayed in the teeming streets as an example “of being able to take the blows dished out by Israel and remain standing” (he told the author).
Born in August 1960, the eldest of nine children, Nasrallah aspired to be a cleric from an early age. In his teens he was sent to the great Shia theological center in Najaf in Iraq. During his two-year study he met Moussawi and became an early disciple. He returned to Lebanon during the Israeli invasion of the country in 1982 and became a commander in Hezbollah. He showed an aptitude for military tactics, which went with his by now well-honed political skills. When Israel withdrew in May 2002, Nasrallah was by then firmly established as Hezbollah’s leader and was hailed in the Muslim world as the Arab warlord who had triumphed over Israel. In 2005, he orchestrated Hezbollah gaining twenty-nine seats in the Lebanese parliament following the departure of Syrian troops twenty-nine years after they had first arrived in the country.
