Lebanon: Israeli government escalates its war against Hezbollah

Judy Beishon CWI International Secretariat

Fighters from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah carried out a training exercise in Aaramta village in the Jezzine District, southern Lebanon, 2023 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The right-wing Israeli government has set about turning parts of Lebanon into rubble, as it has already done in Gaza following its decision to escalate its war against Hezbollah to a much higher level. 

The ominous opening move by the Israeli regime in what it called a “new phase” in the war was the placing of hidden explosives in over 3,000 pagers and walkie-talkies which blew up in the faces and hands of Hezbollah personnel and anyone else who happened to be near them – including children and medical staff. Over 40 were killed and most of the people holding the devices were injured, many losing eyes and fingers. 

That barbaric action was followed by massive bombardments, mainly targeting areas of Lebanon’s south, but not sparing the east, north, and parts of its capital, Beirut. In the first few days alone, the missile strikes killed around over 500 people and injured over 1,600. It has already included the highest daily death toll since Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war. 

Israeli security forces sent text messages to many Lebanese people telling them to evacuate their homes or face being bombed. However, as the war on Gaza has already shown, such messages won’t prevent an escalating civilian death toll. Nowhere is really safe. Even so, there has been a massive exodus of Lebanese people fleeing their homes in the south, not knowing where they can go and what will be left when they return.

Israeli ministers say they haven’t ruled out a ground invasion, which would add to the scale of the war and suffering. Hezbollah would no doubt take advantage of that development, as it would give its fighters much greater ability to inflict losses on Israeli forces.

From the start of the Gaza war, Hezbollah has fired missiles into Israel, arguing that it is giving backing to the Palestinians in Gaza. The result is that there has been a certain level of war across the Israel-Lebanon border throughout the past year. But that low-level war has now been raised to a full war by the Israeli military escalation, which in turn has made it likely that Hezbollah will try to increase its military response. It also raises fears in the region and globally of the potential for an even wider war to develop across the Middle East, impacting on the world economy and international relations, and creating massive instability with potential for wider conflicts.

Hezbollah’s military capability has suffered some setbacks in the war so far. As well as hundreds of its fighters having been killed or maimed, and the sudden sabotage of its communication devices, two leading Hezbollah commanders have been killed in Beirut. But  it still has a sizeable military apparatus with significant fighting capacity, often described as one of the strongest non-state military forces in the world, and probably the strongest in the Iran-aligned ‘Axis of Resistance’ across the Middle East.

Neither Lebanon’s ordinary people or those in Israel have anything to gain from this terrible escalation – whether the ruthless bombardments by Israel’s forces or the missiles fired indiscriminately into Israel by Hezbollah which hit Israeli civilians and are used by the Israel right to justify using overwhelming force back. Neither do ordinary people in Gaza or any other part of the Middle East have anything to gain from it.

In Lebanon, it will be workers and the poor who pay the main price of it through further death, injuries and mass displacement. And the worsening war conditions in Lebanon bring an even harder struggle to afford and manage daily life, in a country that has had enormous economic, political and social crisis during the years before the war, at the hands of a ruling elite that uses wealth, sectarianism and corruption to enrich itself further while increasing misery for those below.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s right wing Israeli government declares that the use of overwhelming military might is the only way to achieve security in Israel’s north and enable the return of 60,000 evacuated Israelis. However, just as the hi-tech weaponry of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) has been unable to decisively defeat Hamas after nearly a year of war on Gaza, neither can it wipe out Hezbollah’s militia, which is stronger and larger than that of Hamas, and much more able to import weapons. Also, like with Hamas, for every Hezbollah fighter killed there will be other youth so enraged at the Israeli offensive that they will be willing to fight in their place.

While much of the Israeli population might initially be drawn to support this bombardment of Lebanon, especially as little alternative is being offered by their pro-capitalist parliamentary politicians, that support will no doubt lessen as this wider war impacts on the social and economic fabric of Israel – already damaged by the war on Gaza – and brings no greater physical security for the Israeli population. If a ground invasion takes place, that process could accelerate due to an inevitable death toll of Israeli soldiers.

That process has happened during the war on Gaza: support for the war has eroded in Israeli society to the extent that at the start of September hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested on the streets and workers took general strike action. They were demanding a ceasefire so that a deal can be made to release the Israelis who have been held captive in Gaza since 7 October 2023.

The IDF invaded Lebanon in 1982, during Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war, but a mass anti-war movement broke out in Israel that same year following news of a massacre in the Sabra and Chatila areas of Beirut by the right-wing Christian Phalanges, aided by the troops of Israeli defence minister Ariel Sharon. The movement demanded the resignation of Sharon and an inquiry into the massacre. 

The Israeli government felt compelled to withdraw its troops from Beirut and be reduced to occupying a strip of land in southern Lebanon alongside the Lebanese Christian ‘South Lebanon Army’. That occupation, which lasted 18 years, became a quagmire for Israeli forces. They suffered the loss of hundreds of Israeli soldiers at the hands of Hezbollah fighters and ended up abandoning the occupation as a failure, in a chaotic and humiliating withdrawal.

Hezbollah, ‘Party of God’, based on right-wing political Islam, was formed at the start of that war. It gained widespread support in Lebanon for a period of time because of its military resistance to the Israeli occupation. But socialists warned that its pro-capitalist politics and sectarian character – mainly being based on Shia Muslims – would inevitably mean it would develop to be as divisive and anti-working class as the many other pro-capitalist parties in Lebanon that are based on different ethnic, national and religious factions. This has proved to be the case and over the decades Hezbollah has become one of the main power brokers at the top of Lebanese society, including having government ministers. It is aligned with the authoritarian theocracy in Iran; while the Lebanese state army is funded by the US, UK and other western allies, reflecting the interventions of outside powers who will be poised to fight a new proxy war in Lebanon – though not necessarily all backing those they presently fund – if they feel their interests are threatened. 

In 2006 came another round of war between Israel and Hezbollah and now, today, this present war brings yet more devastation and suffering. Workers in Lebanon will only be able to counter these cycles of bloodshed by building a mass working class-based non-sectarian political alternative to their pro-capitalist leaders. 

In 2019, a mass movement broke out across Lebanon against tax rises, lack of public services and the rampant corruption at the top of society. It over-rode the sectarian divides and demanded the removal of the entire political elite and structure, chanting: “all of them means all of them”. 

Then in 2020, after a devastating explosion of stored ammonium nitrate in Beirut’s port, there were more mass protests blaming government ministers and others in authority, and the government resigned. So Lebanese workers and the poor have felt moments of collective potential power during which they have resisted ‘divide-and-rule’ politics, a path they will need to develop further in the next period – starting with opposition to the present war.

In Israel too, the movement against the government urgently needs to escalate further, to remove Netanyahu’s government, stop the wars on Gaza and Lebanon and the attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. Renewal and building of mobilisations and trade union actions internationally against the wars is also urgent. Members of the Socialist Party and Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) will continue to help build those movements, while putting forward socialist ideas within them – the ideas needed for workers’ solidarity internationally and the path towards building workers’ organisations that can challenge and remove capitalism in the Middle East and worldwide. We call for a voluntary democratic socialist confederation of the Middle East that defends the democratic and national right of all the peoples of the region.