BEIRUT: Hezbollah leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, who emerged from hiding to attend a huge victory rally on Friday, enjoys a cult status in the Arab and Muslim world as the fighter who neutralised Israeli military might.

For Israel, he is a despised enemy who ordered the seizure of two Israeli soldiers along the Lebanese border on July 12 and a rain of Hezbollah rocket fire on its northern cities, killing dozens of civilians.

The capture of the Israeli troops by guerrillas of the Hezbollah group sparked a five-week Israeli military offensive in southern Lebanon which left more than people 1,200 dead, mostly civilians.

Nasrallah made a series of televised addresses after the fighting began but his appearance at Friday’s rally in Beirut’s southern suburbs was his first in public for more than two months.

Aged 46, the charismatic Nasrallah is a skilled orator with a sense of humour unusual among those in Islamic movements in the Middle East. He is also seen as Hezbollah’s military mastermind.

Born in a poor area of Beirut on August 31, 1960, Nasrallah was elected Secretary-General of Hezbollah in 1992 after Israel killed his predecessor Abbas al-Musawi, his wife and three-year-old daughter in an air attack.

Nasrallah gained much of his early experience in the rival Amal movement but pulled out, with other officials, in 1982 in a dispute over ways to confront the situation resulting from the full-scale Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s resistance to the Israeli “Grapes of Wrath” military operation in Lebanon in 1996 cemented Nasrallah’s role as symbol of resistance and secured him a privileged place with Israel’s arch foe, Syria.

His stature reached a pinnacle with the deployment of Hezbollah fighters along the Lebanese-Israeli frontier during the Israeli pullout in May 2000 after 22 years of occupation.

Nasrallah’s 14 years at the helm of Hezbollah have also been marked by internal successes in Lebanon.

While his movement is seen still by many in the West as a “terrorist” group, it now has 14 MPs in the Lebanese parliament and two ministers in government.

After praising his militia’s success in capturing the two Israeli soldiers in July, Nasrallah said he did not want to “drag Lebanon into a war” but that “if the enemy wants escalation, we are ready”.

In all, 119 Israeli soldiers were killed by Hezbollah fighters in a month of fighting in Lebanon, dealing an embarrassing blow to the Israeli military. Eight-two Hezbollah fighters also died in the fight.

Nasrallah enjoyed a fresh swell of popularity after a UN-brokered ceasefire ended the fighting on August 12, with supporters handing out posters bearing his photograph and declaring Hezbollah’s divine victory over Israel.

In the early days of the conflict, the Hezbollah leader demanded that Israel free prisoners in exchange for the return of its two soldiers and predicted that Israel’s refusal to negotiate would be short-lived.

Indeed, after initially demanding the servicemen’s unconditional release, Israel indicated it would indirectly negotiate on the matter.—-AFP