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BEIRUT: This time last year, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was consumed by rage over Israel’s detonation of pagers worn by members of his group throughout Lebanon, according to his son. Days later, Nasrallah himself was assassinated by Israel.
The pager explosions and Nasrallah’s killing in an Israeli air attack on the southern suburbs of Beirut in September 2024 turned out to be the opening salvos of an Israeli assault that killed more than 4,000 people across Lebanon and destroyed swathes of the country’s south.
The war, which Israel said it conducted to end Hezbollah’s cross-border attacks in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza, shook Hezbollah’s hold on power in Lebanon, where the group is now under pressure to give up its arms.
Those developments were unimaginable a year ago when Hezbollah’s then-leader was confronted with the major intelligence breach in the communication devices that killed dozens of the group’s members and maimed thousands of others.
“He was upset, angry, resentful – there was a lot of resentment and thinking, ‘How could this happen?’ He considered himself entrusted with those lives,” Jawad Nasrallah, Nasrallah’s second-oldest son, told Reuters in an interview at his father’s grave.
Security was tight around Nasrallah at the time. Jawad, like more than a million Lebanese, had been displaced by Israeli air strikes and had not seen his father for three months.
“You can say we took it day by day. Nothing was certain,” Jawad said.
Nasrallah’s last televised speech was on September 19. Eight days later, a string of Israeli bunker-busting bombs on a Hezbollah complex in Beirut’s southern suburbs killed Nasrallah, who had led the powerful Shiite religious, political and military group for more than 30 years.
“We found out on the news like everyone else. It was shocking but we couldn’t cry — no one in the house could scream or express their feelings,” Jawad said, explaining that other tenants in the apartment building where they were temporarily staying were unaware of their links to the Hezbollah leader.
At the time, Israeli strikes targeted displaced Shiite Muslims dozens of kilometers from Lebanon’s southern border, raising the specter of civil war as Sunni or Christian towns regarded fleeing Shiite Muslims with open suspicion.
“We felt a moment of alienation like everyone else, in addition to the horrors of that time, which was terrible for everyone: war, bombing, brutality — and on top of that, alienation,” Jawad said.
With Israel escalating strikes across Lebanon and sending ground troops into its south, Nasrallah’s body could not be moved into a morgue for several days before a temporary burial. A formal ceremony was held months later during a truce.
The war with Israel that left Hezbollah badly weakened was followed by the toppling of the group’s Syrian ally Bashar Assad and a new government in Lebanon that has pledged to enforce a state monopoly on all arms.
Hezbollah has refused to give up its arsenal — a stance that Jawad, a businessman with no formal position in the group but who is sanctioned by the US, reiterated.
“Never in your fantasies or dreams,” he said, adding that he still asks his father for guidance.
“I ask him to solve some dilemmas. I tell him: ‘You have to solve this problem for us and help me with it,’” he said.

UNITED NATIONS: Facing international isolation, accusations of war crimes and growing pressure to end a conflict he has continued to escalate, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gets his chance to push back Friday on the international community’s biggest platform.
Netanyahu’s annual speech to the UN General Assembly is always closely watched, often protested, reliably emphatic and sometimes a venue for dramatic allegations. But this time, the stakes are higher than ever for the Israeli leader.
In recent days, Australia, Canada, France, the United Kingdom and others announced their recognition of an independent Palestinian state.
The European Union is considering tariffs and sanctions on Israel. The assembly this month passed a nonbinding resolution urging Israel to commit to an independent Palestinian nation, which Netanyahu has said is a non-starter.
The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant accusing Netanyahu of crimes against humanity, which he denies. And the UN’s highest court is weighing South Africa’s allegation that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, which it vehemently refutes.
Against that backdrop, Netanyahu sounded resolute Thursday as he boarded a plane in Israel to head for the UN’s annual meeting of top-level leaders in New York.
“I will tell our truth,” Netanyahu said. “I will condemn those leaders who, instead of condemning the murderers, rapists and burners of children, want to give them a state in the heart of Israel.”
Opposition to Netanyahu’s approach is growing
At a special session of the assembly this week, nation after nation expressed horror at the 2023 attack by Hamas militants that killed about 1,200 people in Israel, saw 251 taken hostage and triggered the war. Many of the representatives went on to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and influx of aid.
Israel’s sweeping offensive has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza and displaced 90 percent of its population, with an increasing number now starving.
While more than 150 countries now recognize a Palestinian state, the United States has not, providing Israel with vociferous support. But President Donald Trump pointedly signaled Thursday there are limits, telling reporters in Washington that he wouldn’t let Israel annex the occupied West Bank.
Israel hasn’t announced such a move, but several leading members in Netanyahu’s government have advocated doing so. And officials recently approved a controversial settlement project that would effectively cut the West Bank in two, a move that critics say could doom chances for a Palestinian state. Trump and Netanyahu are scheduled to meet during his visit.
Palestinians had their UN say the day before
Netanyahu was preceded Thursday by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who addressed the General Assembly via video, since the US denied him a visa. He welcomed the announcements of recognition but said the world needs to do more to make statehood happen.
“The time has come for the international community to do right by the Palestinian people” and help them realize “their legitimate rights to be rid of the occupation and to not remain a hostage to the temperament of Israeli politics,” he said.
Abbas leads the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, which administers portions of the West Bank. Hamas won legislative elections in Gaza in 2006 before seizing control from Abbas’ forces the following year.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war, then withdrew from Gaza in 2005. The Palestinians want all three territories to form their envisioned state, part of a “two-state solution” that the international community has embraced for decades.
Netanyahu opposes it robustly, maintaining that creating a Palestinian state would reward Hamas.
“This will not happen,” he said at the airport Thursday.