Hezbollah has yet to decide when and where to bury Nasrallah, source says

 

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah gives a televised address in Lebanon on September 19. 

Al-Manar TV/Reuters

Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah last Friday has driven the Iran-backed group even deeper underground. A successor has not yet been named. And perhaps most unusually, a funeral — at least a public one — has not yet been held.

Why this matters: According to Islamic norms, the dead must be laid to rest at the soonest opportunity, normally within 24 hours. That is especially true for Muslims slain by an enemy state. Questions swirled and reports emerged on Friday morning that the late leader had been buried in secret. But a source close to Hezbollah told CNN this was not true. “Nothing has been decided,” the source said, about the time and place of the burial.

Coupled with the lack of a clear successor, this has shrouded the group in more secrecy. For a week, Hezbollah’s public statements have been cursory at best. This strikes a sharp contrast with the Iran-backed Shia group’s practice of shoring up community support with public gatherings, and Nasrallah’s long and rousing speeches.

More background: On Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei commemorated Nasrallah in Friday prayers, which, in a rare move, he led. Yet there was no public gathering to mark this in Lebanon.

There are security reasons for that, as well as for the lack of a public funeral. Israel’s intensive bombing campaign has battered many Shia-majority neighborhoods and towns, so there is no conceivably safe place to hold it.

Israel’s airstrikes have decimated its command and control and have also killed a large number of civilians, according to the Ministry of Health, and displaced over a million. More than 100 children have been killed in Israeli strikes in the last 11 days alone, according to UNICEF.

Still, this all underscores the fact that this is a very different war. During the last all-out war with Israel in 2006, Nasrallah gave televised speeches nearly every day. The leadership is operating more clandestinely than ever before, after having been confronted by the most extensive Israeli infiltration of its ranks in its history.