*Edited and translated by Areej Fatima Al-Husseini
Hezbollah’s Martyrs’ Secretary General, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s unwavering commitment to Palestine was never a passing slogan. “We, the Shiites of Ali ibn Abi Talib in Lebanon and across the world, will never abandon Palestine or the Palestinian people,” he declared in 2013 — a statement that encapsulated three decades of continuous resistance and another decade of sustained activism that followed. From the beginning, he framed Palestine not merely as a political cause, but as a moral and religious obligation rooted in the legacy of the Ahl al-Bayt.
In the footsteps of the forebears — the Karbala school
Sayyed Nasrallah’s stance was shaped by the figures who most influenced his worldview: Imam Musa al‑Sadr, who described Israel as “absolute evil”; Imam Khomeini, who called it a “cancerous tumor”; Sheikh Ragheb Harb, who warned that “a handshake is recognition”; and Sayyid Abbas al‑Musawi, who asserted that “only weapons stop Israel.”
He continued on this path under the guidance of his spiritual leader, Imam Ali Khamenei, who has said that Quds Day is when “the front of truth aligns against the front of falsehood.”
Throughout the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, Palestine remained the moral compass for the resistance. Testamentary letters and martyrdom communiqués from the 1980s and 1990s repeatedly affirmed solidarity with the first Intifada and readiness to fight for Al-Quds—a conviction summed up in the slogan heard across resistance circles: “Today Lebanon, tomorrow Palestine.”
After the Israeli enemy’s withdrawal in 2000, Hezbollah’s post‑liberation military parades frequently included units named for Palestinian martyrs and factions—from Islamic Jihad to Fatah and Hamas—signaling a concrete, institutionalized commitment to the Palestinian cause.
Sayyed Nasrallah believed this responsibility fell especially on his movement, grounded in the theological heritage of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), Imam Ali (AS), and Imam Husain (AS)—and infused with the vision of Imam Mahdi (AS). In 2024, he invoked the moral vocabulary of Karbala to delegitimize the Zionist entity: “This Israeli is an illegitimate usurper, the son of an impostor; America too is illegitimate,” he declared, casting the confrontation in the timeless framework of right versus wrong.
For Hezbollah’s culture of resistance, martyrdom is not merely a military concept but a spiritual aesthetic—the “wedding,” the beauty, and the love that motivate fighters and communities alike. Faced with an enemy unmatched in material power and brutality, this ethos of sacrificial love is, in his view, essential to wearing the adversary down.
Al-Quds: Capital of Earth and Heaven
Sayyed Nasrallah insisted early on that the Palestinian cause transcends sectarian framing. In his book summarizing his vision, Capital of the Heavens, he calls Al-Quds “the central cause of Islam.” Al‑Aqsa—the first Qibla and the Prophet’s ascension site—is both earthly and celestial, his Eminence argued: “Al-Quds cannot be the eternal capital of a state called ‘Israel.” Al-Quds is the capital of Palestine, the capital of the earth, and the capital of the heavens.”
That sacred dimension, he argued, contests any exclusive religious claim used to justify the dispossession of Palestinians. His Eminence viewed initiatives like the Abraham Accords and the so-called Deal of the Century not as bridges between faiths but as attempts to normalize a Torah-centric narrative that excludes prophets beyond the “Children of Israel.”
Since Sayyed Nasrallah framed the issue as Islamic, His Eminence called on the entire Muslim ummah—across sects, ethnicities, and languages—to unite behind Palestine. “I cannot understand, as a Muslim, how one can abandon Jerusalem and call oneself pious,” he wrote, launching decades of programs and hundreds of unity events meant to put Palestine above intra‑Muslim disputes.
National, leftist, and human dimensions
Martyr Sayyed Nasrallah also maintained that Palestine is an Arab national cause: an occupied Arab land that implicates all Arab peoples and confessional communities. Hezbollah initiated dialogue and established joint forums with Arab nationalist and leftist groups; Nasrallah met prominent figures, including Egyptian journalist Mohamed Hasanein Heikal, and engaged with Nasserist and nationalist currents in Lebanon. His 1985 open letter and subsequent outreach broadened Hezbollah’s interlocutors to include non‑Islamist nationalists.
He consistently rejected claims that Hezbollah sought to supplant Palestinian agency, citing Shia juristic opinions that “Palestine belongs to the Palestinian people and must be returned to them” and insisting Israel is an illegitimate occupier. He cultivated ties with all Palestinian currents and argued that defending Palestine is inseparable from defending Lebanon—a message repeated throughout the “support wars.”
At the same time, His Eminence acknowledged the role of nationalist and leftist movements in the anti‑occupation struggle, insisting that Hezbollah complemented rather than invented the resistance.
A universal moral appeal
On the international stage, Sayyed Nassrallah lauded global figures who stood with resistance causes—notably Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who expelled the Israeli ambassador during the 2006 war. “Chávez acted from humanity,” Nassrallah said in 2009, urging other leaders to learn from him.
Since 2000, His Eminence sought to universalize the Palestinian cause as fundamentally human: a matter of opposing injustice, defending dignity, and appealing to a global conscience beyond religion or ideology. He called supporters “the free” and addressed them as the “world’s conscience,” framing the Zionist project as immoral and inhumane.
In his final speeches, he reiterated this moral call, thanking global publics who rose for Gaza and urging that what transpires there must “shake the conscience of every human being.”
Analysts such as Richard Norton read this strategy as an effort to transform support for Palestine into a near‑universal moral imperative—to make resistance not merely a political choice but an ethical necessity that transcends sectarian and national divides.
When Jesus Returns…
Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah insisted the Palestinian cause also concerns Christians. “No sacred site in Palestine — from the Church of the Nativity to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre — lies beyond threat,” he warned on Jerusalem Day in 2002.
His Eminence argued that Christian support for Al-Quds is also a defense of Christian rights there: clergy and worshippers are exposed to dispossession and harassment. Today, he noted, extremist settlers spat on priests in Bethlehem and blocked access to the Holy Sepulcher during celebrations in Al-Quds.
Addressing Christians who expect Christ’s return, Nasrallah spoke directly in December 2024 amid the Gaza slaughter: “The Jesus we read about in the Gospel and the Qur’an — whose life, morals and values we share — who will return to earth: whom will he support? Will he stand with tyrants, oppressors, and killers who shed millions of lives for oil, money, and markets? Or will he be the ally of the barefoot, the weak, the poor, the oppressed, and the persecuted? Will Jesus come to be a defender of aggressive, occupying Israel — or, as scripture once taught, will he take up the sword against those temple‑robbers?”
Sayyed Nasrallah repeatedly linked the Zionist project to the United States and to evangelical Christian currents, arguing that US backing sustains Israel militarily, politically, and diplomatically — a point he underscored after the 2006 war, which he said exposed who truly calls the shots in the region. He maintained that view throughout subsequent conflicts, arguing that US support remained decisive, most recently evident in the pause of the Gaza war.
Since his 2002 Al-Quds Day address, Nasrallah has warned of a Christian‑Zionist mindset “that shapes American policy” and of plans within that camp to replace al‑Aqsa with a rebuilt Solomon’s Temple — a danger he said draws nearer by the day.
At the same time, Hezbollah has engaged non‑Zionist Jewish currents. In 2003, the party met religious anti‑Zionist Jews from Neturei Karta and secular Jewish critics, distinguishing clearly between Jews and Zionists: opposition to Zionism, he argued, is not anti‑Semitism.
A project without borders: fragmentation, wars, and divisions
A constant in Sayyed Nasrallah’s rhetoric was that the Zionist project does not stop at Palestinian borders: “Israel’s limits are where the Israeli tank stops,” he recalled from David Ben‑Gurion. Since 2002, his Eminence has warned of an American‑Zionist plan to seize the region and redraw the political map, repeatedly calling out what he called US falsehoods.
He urged Arab leaders to draw closer to their people rather than to the US, and warned that Washington and its allies would seek to fragment the remaining strength of the Muslim‑Arab world by stoking national and sectarian animosities. He warned against reviving a “Crusader” rhetoric to pit Christians against Muslims — and, more ominously, of playing Sunni‑Shia splits for geopolitical ends.
“The American administration wants Muslims to separate from Christians and Christians from Muslims, Arabs to divide among themselves and with others, Shia from Sunni and vice versa — so that in this web of divisions America and ‘Israel’ can realize their aims,” he said.
Subsequent events in the region, he argued, confirmed his warnings about the broader threat posed by the Zionist project.
Resistance as the only path to liberation
For Sayyed Nasrallah, only resistance can secure liberation and enforce decisive solutions. He repeatedly described Hezbollah’s stance in Lebanon and Palestine as defensive — a measured response to the perceived wrongs suffered by Lebanon, Palestine, and the Arab‑Muslim world.
Despite campaigns of smears, assassination attempts, and efforts to delegitimize the movement and its fighters, Nasrallah insisted Jerusalem remained at the center of his thought and his followers’ conviction.
“Call us Rafida, call us terrorists, call us criminals — kill us under every stone and tank… we, the Shiites of Ali ibn Abi Talib, will not abandon Palestine,” he said in the global Al-Quds Day rally in August 2013 — words that followed a period of violent targeting and a media campaign against Hezbollah’s community over its involvement in fights against extremist groups in Syria and Iraq.
Months earlier, at the Liberation Day celebration in May 2013, His Eminence had warned: “If Syria falls, the resistance will be besieged… if Syria falls, Palestine is lost.” Sayyed Nasrallah recognized early the strategic stakes of the Syrian war; later events, he argued, proved him right.
We, the Shia of Ali ibn Abi Talib as
In the world will not abandon Palestine nor the people of Palestine nor the UMMAHS sanctities in Palestine
Call us Rafida, Call us Terrorists, Call us Criminals, Call us what you want, and Kill on every corner!!
We will not abandon #Palestine! pic.twitter.com/exL2xj4xl7— Fahad Hussyn Qazi (@qazi1101) March 24, 2024
Under rain, on the road to Al-Quds
One of his most prescient speeches came in 2002 in Nabatieh — delivered amid thunder and heavy rain at a site linked to Hezbollah’s 1983 Ashura mobilization — where fighters stood motionless opposite his platform. The address foresaw coming trials and readiness to confront them.
Nearly every family in Hezbollah’s milieu has lost at least one martyr over the past forty years. Their funerals — still held across Lebanon — continue to bear the movement’s refrain: “Martyrs All the Way to Al-Quds.” Fighters and civilians from Iran, Iraq, and Yemen have joined those ranks, nations Nasrallah has repeatedly praised, most recently Yemen.
His Eminence consistently held that the martyrs’ blood paves the way: their sacrifice, he argued, is the literal fulfillment of the movement’s founding slogan — “step by step toward Jerusalem.”
Sayyed Nasrallah’s enduring wager was that the Zionist entity would fall incrementally — by attrition and cumulative losses — not necessarily by a single, decisive knockout.
Source: Al-Manar Website
