BEIRUT (AP) — Sheikh Naim Qasem has since served as Hezbollah’s acting chief. Long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah He was killed as part of an Israeli attack that killed many of the Lebanese militant group’s top officials.
Qassem gave a defiant television speech On Tuesday, the group maintained that its military capabilities were intact and that Israelis would only suffer further if fighting continued.
Like Nasrallah, Qasem is one of the founding members of the Shi’ite political party and armed group, but is widely seen as lacking the charisma and eloquence of his former leader.
Still, priests with white turbans and gray beards often public face of the group. Even after Nasrullah went underground for fear of being assassinated by Israel, appearing only in televised speeches, Qassem continued to appear and sit at rallies and ceremonies. Interview with a foreign journalist.
Mohanad Haj Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center think tank who studies Hezbollah, said many people perceive Qasem to be “more radical” than Nasrallah, at least in public statements. He said there was.
But in reality, his power within the group was limited under Nasrallah. Hashem Saffieddin, Nasrallah’s cousin who oversees the group’s political affairs, rather than Qasem, was generally seen as the leader’s apparent successor. However, no announcement has been made and Mr Saffieddin has not appeared in public or made any public statements since Mr Nasrallah’s death.
Qasem is under sanctions from the United States, which considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
Born in the town of Kfar Fira in southern Lebanon, he studied chemistry at the University of Lebanon and then worked as a chemistry teacher for several years.
At the same time, he participated in the founding of the Lebanese Islamic Student Union, an organization aimed at pursuing religious studies and promoting religious support among students.
In the 1970s, Qassem joined the political organization Movement of the Dispossessed, founded by Imam Moussa al-Sadr, to promote greater representation of Lebanon’s historically overlooked and impoverished Shia community. The group morphed into the Amal movement, one of the main armed groups in Lebanon’s civil war, and is now a powerful political party.
He then joined the nascent Hezbollah, formed with Iranian support, after Israel invaded Lebanon and occupied the southern region in 1982.
From 1991, he served as the group’s deputy secretary-general, initially under Nasrallah’s predecessor Abbas Mousawi, who was killed in an Israeli helicopter attack in 1992.
