THREE times in the past three weeks Israeli jets have flattened buildings where they hoped that Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the unchallenged leader of Hezbollah, was hiding. Three times they missed him, and three times he appeared on his own TV channel soon afterwards to mock them.

Where is Sheikh Nasrallah now? On Thursday a Kuwaiti newspaper put him in Damascus. Last night Iran denied that he was hiding in its Embassy in Beirut — but offered refuge should he want it.

This is the man now hailed by Arabs from Syria to Egypt as the new Nasser. He is also the terrorist whom Israel must kill to claim victory in southern Lebanon. And, for all the rumours, he is believed to have stayed in Beirut throughout this war, racing between hiding places in unmarked family saloon cars as the Israeli air force tries to catch up.

The survival of Sheikh Nasrallah is already remarkable. Even more so is the West’s sudden obsession with his leadership — not just of Hezbollah but also, for all practical purposes, of Lebanon and of an upsurge of pan-Arab solidarity potentially more powerful than any since the Yom Kippur war of 1973.

His support on the Arab street will not of itself rebuild Lebanon or destroy Israel, which remains a key Hezbollah goal. But it has made him the new face of jihadism, with an appeal transcending border and sectarian divides. This is why, with stunning swiftness, Sheikh Nasrallah has eclipsed even Osama bin Laden as the West’s most potent enemy in the War on Terror.

“Nasser 1956 — Nasrallah 2006” declare the posters on the streets of Cairo. No al- Qaeda figurehead was ever so honoured. “Oh beloved Nasrallah, strike Tel Aviv,” chant protesters in Bahrain, home of the US 5th Fleet. And his latest televised threat is to do just that, with long-range missiles he has not needed to deploy so far.

To Israel, the story of Sheikh Nasrallah is one of toxic extremism and remorseless killing. To his followers, it is of patient planning and heroic defiance. Until this month his greatest triumph, in their eyes, was Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon six years ago. But by taking on the full might of the Israeli Defence Forces in a war of his own timing — and then holding it at bay — he surpassed himself.

On Wednesday troops from the IDF’s elite Golani brigade entered the village of Bint Jbeil in southeastern Lebanon after Israeli artillery had pounded it for days. They had expected resistance, but not the furious Hezbollah ambush that pinned them down for six hours and left 13 Israeli soldiers dead.

Sheikh Nasrallah had staged a victory rally in this remote stronghold in 2000. Now he crowed on his own al-Manar satellite news channel: “We will fight in Bint Jbeil . . . and we will fight in every village, town, position and post.”

What has set him apart from other Arab leaders is his ability to make good promises. That, in turn, is the result of systematic stockpiling of weapons from Syria and Iran and his transformation of the military wing of Hezbollah into the world’s most lethal guerrilla army.

Under Sheikh Nasrallah field commanders are promoted strictly on merit and their fighters are trained as specialists, among them snipers who proved their worth this week. Israel’s losses at Bint Jbeil were the IDF’s worst in a single day for 20 years.

Such resistance has electrified not just the Arab world but also Lebanese voters of all stripes. A new poll shows that 80 per cent of Lebanese Christians, 80 per cent of Druze and 89 per cent of Sunnis support Hezbollah, even though it remains Shia to its core.

Small wonder that Ayman al-Zawahri, the al-Qaeda second-in-command, felt the need this week to cross the sectarian divide and jump on the Hezbollah bandwagon in a tape broadcast on al-Jazeera; or that a Lebanese minister said of Sheikh Nasrallah: “We wonder who can rein him in now.”

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