Hizballah's Herald

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At the same time, Nasrallah has boosted Hizballah's campaign against Israel, promoting suicide bombings and other violent attacks over Hizballah's Manar satellite channel and sending Hizballah's guerrillas to smuggle arms into the West Bank. Such meddling infuriates Hizballah's critics in Washington, who have pushed the Bush Administration to disarm Hizballah, through either military strikes or U.N. sanctions. But last week Administration officials abstained from denouncing Hizballah and suggested the group should be encouraged to complete its transformation into a political party. "Let's see what the Lebanese people want to be when they grow up," says a veteran Washington policymaker.

Nasrallah, who is married and has four children, may find himself taking on an even bigger role. Though he rarely ventures out of Shi'ite strongholds--he usually limits his public addresses to well-guarded meetings marking religious occasions--he is respected by Lebanese politicians for ending Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon, a cause that cost him his eldest son, who died in 1997 battling Israeli forces. Some believe that Nasrallah could help bring Lebanon's bickering sides to the table. "Clear, decisive, conversational, principled and responsible," wrote Lebanese columnist Joseph Samaha on Nasrallah's call for a national dialogue. Those might prove to be just the qualities that Lebanon is looking for. --With reporting by Nicholas Blanford/Beirut and Elaine Shannon/Washington