ALBAWABA - Six days into the Lebanon conflict, Israeli troops continue to bomb Beirut, prompting social media users to ask where Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah is.
Israel's promotion of its efforts to murder Nasrallah has led to claims about his protracted absence, including that Israeli missiles targeted him. These claims gathered steam after Israel killed three prominent Hezbollah leaders.
While curiosity grows, sources imply Nasrallah's absence was security-related. No formal notification has been made about his injuries, assassination, or targeting.
Retired Israeli Colonel Ronen Cohen told Yedioth Ahronoth that Israel has twice tried to kill Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Both efforts failed, even though Nasrallah was at one of the targets.
Cohen, who was the Deputy Head of the Research Division in Israeli military intelligence (HTAM), said Nasrallah may have been eliminated at one of his rare public appearances. Nasrallah spoke during a Hezbollah rally for local and foreign media. Israel squandered this crucial opportunity.
Despite Nasrallah being Israel's main target, he stated that no intelligence attempts had been made to find and kill him until the July 2006 kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers.
A former Israeli intelligence officer has labeled last week's explosions in Lebanon as a "waste of opportunity," criticizing them for not targeting Hezbollah directly. He argued that Israel missed a critical chance to eliminate Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
In a detailed report published by Yedioth Ahronoth, the Israeli newspaper examined the moment in which Nasrallah could have been killed during the 2006 Lebanon War. The report described Nasrallah as one of Israel's most dangerous adversaries.
Retired Colonel Ronen Cohen, former deputy head of the Israeli Military Intelligence Research Division, confirmed that Israel lost a unique opportunity to strike Nasrallah during this public appearance. Cohen emphasized that Israel had not gathered intelligence with the aim of assassinating Nasrallah in the years following its withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, despite his status as a primary target.
The report further revealed that, on the eighth day of the 2006 war, the Israeli Air Force dropped 23 tons of explosives on a Hezbollah bunker in Beirut, believing Nasrallah was inside. However, the operation failed to kill him, and he has remained hidden ever since. Despite this massive attack, Nasrallah managed to escape unharmed, and Israel has not come close to capturing him in the 18 years since.
