Khalid Bazzi

Bazzi was born in the town of Bint Jbeil in South Lebanon. He joined Hezbollah as a teenager, and fought against the Israelis in the South Lebanon conflict in Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon.

Bazzi was thirteen years old in 1982 when the 1982 Lebanon War broke out and his hometown was occupied by Israel for the third time in his lifetime (Bint Jbeil was occupied in Operation Cauldron 4 Extended in 1972 and Operation Litani in 1978). This time the Israelis would occupy the area for 18 years. The Shiite population of Southern Lebanon had suffered during the years of fighting between the Palestinian guerrillas and Israeli military since the 1970s. Many residents of South Lebanon felt an initial relief after the Palestinian guerrillas where pushed back from the area. This feeling soon turned sour when it became clear that the Israelis were there to stay. An armed resistance developed, this time among the Shiite population of South Lebanon that constituted the majority population in the area.

Bazzi thus grew up under the Israeli occupation. Some of his relatives had previously been active in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Bazzi and his friends soon became sympathetic or even active in the emerging Islamic Resistance.

In 1985, Israel withdrew from most of south Lebanon but continued to control a security zone, comprising about 10 per cent of the area of Lebanon. The IDF launched purges in the Shiite villages remaining under occupation, arresting people suspected of being involved in the resistance. Several of Bazzi’s friends were arrested and taken to the notorious Khiam detention center. Bazzi himself fled his home one night and slipped out of the security zone. He went to Beirut and started studying at the university. He soon dropped out of school and became a full-time activist in the resistance.

During his more than 20 years of resistance activity he participated in many operations, such as the famous Bra'shit operation in 1987, where Hezbollah fighters stormed and conquered a South Lebanon Army (SLA) outpost in the security zone. A number of the outpost's defenders were killed or taken prisoner and the Hezbollah flag was raised on top of it. A Sherman tank was destroyed and a M113 armoured personnel carrier was captured and driven triumphantly all the way to Beirut.^[1]

Bazzi was involved in the planting of deadly road side bombs, such as in the villages of Houla, Markaba and al-Abbad in the 1990s. He took part in the attempted assassination Brig. Gen. Eli Amitai, the head of the Israel Defense Forces liaison unit in southern Lebanon and thus the effective commander of the security zone.^[2] December 14, 1996, Amitai was injured when the IDF convoy he was travelling in was ambushed in the eastern sector of the security zone.^[3] Less than a week later, Amitai was again injured when Hezbollah unleashed a mortar barrage on an SLA position near Bra'shit when Amitai invited Maj. Gen. Amiram Levin, head of the IDF's Northern Command, to the area.^[4]

He also took part in the assassination of several high-ranking South Lebanon Army (SLA) officers, whom Hezbollah considered traitors, including Aql Hashem, the SLA Second-in Command, who was killed by a remote-controlled bomb in January 2000.^[2][5] The pursuit and assassination of Hashem was documented step by step, and the footage was broadcast on Hezbollah's TV channel al-Manar. The operation and the way it was presented in media dealt a devastating blow to the morale in the SLA.^[6]

The Israeli withdrawal from the security zone in the spring of 2000 precipitated a virtual collapse of the Israel-controlled South Lebanon Army. On May 26, 2000, Hezbollah General-Secretary Hassan Nasrallah held his famous victory speech in Bint Jbeil, where he compared the power of Israel to that of a spider's web.^[7] Nasrallah's speech infuriated many Israeli officers. This anger explains to a large extent why Bint Jbeil was targeted in 2006.

After the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon, Khalid Bazzi returned to his hometown, Bint Jbeil, and continued his involvement with military activities. He was made responsible for commanding Hezbollah's operations. He took part in the Ghajar raid in 2005, when four Hezbollah fighters were killed in an attempt to abduct an Israeli soldier. Bazzi organized the 2006 Hezbollah cross-border raid, in which eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two were abducted, which ultimately triggered the 2006 Lebanon War.

After the abduction of the two soldiers, Bazzi returned to his post as Chief of Operations in the Bint Jbeil area, comprising the towns of Bint Jbeil and Aynata and the villages of Maroun ar-Ras and Aytaroun. He commanded a force of approximately 140 fighters, spread out in the area.

Bazzi participated in the Battle of Maroun al-Ras. The Israeli army eventually conquered most of the village after 10 days of fighting. The Hezbollah defenders eventually withdrew causing heavy casualties to the Israelis, including two IDF officers and six other soldiers killed. Due to Bazzi's reluctance to use two-way radios, contact was lost with him several times during the battle and at one time it was feared that he had been killed.^[2] He emerged however unscathed and continued to lead the defense from Bint Jbeil. According to Hezbollah only seven of the 17 defenders of Maroun ar-Ras were killed in that battle.^[8]

On July 23, the Israeli army launched Operation Webs of Steel 2 which was designed as a pincer movement, attacking Bint Jbeil simultaneously from the east and the west. The aim was to conquer the town and purge it of Hezbollah fighters and infrastructure. Israel failed to occupy the town and suffered heavy casualties.

After several days of fighting the Israeli forces unexpectedly withdrew.^[9] Bint Jbeil was however largely destroyed by intensive bombardment from the Israeli Air Force and artillery.

On July 29, Bazzi was killed in an Israeli drone strike on a house in the Old Town of Bint Jbeil. The house collapsed, killing him, as well as fellow Hezbollah commander Sayyid Abu Taam and a third fighter. Their bodies could not be retrieved until several days after the cease-fire.^[2]

There are suggestions that Bazzi earlier had refused to obey orders to withdraw from the town saying that he would "only leave as a martyr".^[10] Hezbollah commanders who spoke to Lebanese al-Akhbar a year after the war did not confirm this version of events. According to them the proper place for a commander was with the fighters on the battlefield. Bazzi and Abu Taam however were criticized for violating military regulations by being at the same place during a battle.^[2]

Bazzi was succeeded as sector commander by Muhammad Qanso, a Hezbollah special forces commander who himself would be killed in an Israeli airstrike 10 days later. The Israeli army made a second attempt to capture Bint Jbeil August 6–8, which was unsuccessful like the first.