Repeated risk Targeting of Hezbollah leaders has yet to deal group a fatal blow

In 1992, Israeli media celebrated an assassination.

- Peter Beaumont

The man killed then was Abbas al-Musawi, the secretary general of Hezbollah. Then, as now, Israeli analysts speculated that Musawi's death might lead to the end of Hezbollah, which was founded after Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

The opposite would turn out to be true. Musawi was succeeded by his 31-year-old protege, Hassan Nasrallah, who led Hezbollah for three decades until his own assassination by Israel last Friday.

Nasrallah's killing, in a subterranean Hezbollah headquarters in a southern suburb of Beirut, has inevitably focused attention on two questions: whether Israel's long-term policy of assassinations is effective, and what the killing of senior Hezbollah commanders means for the group.

The issue of the efficacy of assassinations is a moot point, even within the Israeli security and political establishment.

Israel has also killed senior members of Hamas in the past, including key founders Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, both in 2004, neither of which delivered it long-term strategic advantage when it came to Gaza.