In the early hours of 1 October, the Israeli army crossed the border of Lebanon and started a land invasion of the country, following two weeks of heavy air strikes. This is a thoroughly reactionary war, backed and funded by US and western imperialism, which threatens to engulf the whole of the Middle East into open war, which could last for years and leave harrowing suffering in its wake.
Predictably, the United States gave full support to the Israeli invasion. Despite its protestations that it wanted a ceasefire, Israel knew that Washington would side with it. A White House National Security Council spokesperson said that the invasion was “in line with Israel’s right to defend its citizens and safely return civilians to their homes. We support Israel’s right to defend itself against Hezbollah and all Iranian-backed terror groups.”
Here we see the stinking hypocrisy and double standards of the so-called ‘rules based order’. When Russia invaded Ukraine two and a half years ago, there was a chorus of condemnation, an outcry of outrage about the ‘inviolability of national borders’, an ‘aggression against a sovereign country’, which was against ‘international law’.
It seems that such noble principles do not apply to ‘our side’. In this case, an unacceptable breach of national sovereignty becomes a “limited raid” in line with “the right of self-defence”. Where is the right of self-defence of the Palestinians, who have seen Gaza razed to the ground, tens of thousands killed, and hundreds of thousands displaced and starved? Where is the right of self-defence for Lebanon, where more people have already been killed by Israeli aggression than were killed in the 2006 Israeli invasion and where a million people have already been displaced?
We are not just seeing an invasion of Lebanon. In the last 24 hours, Israel has attacked targets in Yemen and Syria, as well as continuing the murderous genocidal campaign against the Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank.
As is always the case with imperialist war, the stated aims (the protection of the Israeli population close to the northern border) have little or nothing to do with the real aims of the Zionist aggressor.
Netanyahu does not care about the citizens of the north anymore than he does about the fate of the hostages in Gaza. If he did, he would not have deliberately sabotaged the deal which could have paved the way for the release of the hostages and could have set the conditions for an end to Hezbollah’s rocket strikes over the border.
It is clear to anyone with eyes to see that the main aim of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is his own political survival. Having failed to achieve any of the stated war aims in the murderous invasion of Gaza after a year of killing and destruction (freeing the hostages, destroying Hamas), his popularity plummeted as ever-larger sections of the Israeli public came into opposition to his leadership.
He needed to recover ground by any means necessary. His removal from office, either during the war or by elections at the end of it, would mean his prosecution and perhaps even a jail term. He calculated that a campaign against Lebanon would do the trick.
In fact, the Israeli ruling class has been preparing for a war against Lebanon ever since its humiliating withdrawal at the end of the 2006 invasion. It had clearly accumulated a wealth of intelligence and information about Hezbollah, which allowed it to act decisively in the first stages of the attack. By using terrorist methods, it managed to eliminate a whole layer of the top leadership of Hezbollah, dismissing the fact that in the process it also killed hundreds of civilians.
Netanyahu’s calculations also include another factor. By waging constant provocations against Iran, chiefly the killing of Hamas leader Haniyeh in Tehran, Israel is hoping to entice the Islamic Republic into an open conflict with Israel, one in which the US would be forced to step in to defend the Zionist state.
A regional war would cause unthinkable destruction and loss of life, but in the mind of Netanyahu, all of that is a price worth paying to save his own skin.
The contours of such a conflict can already be seen. The Yemeni Houthis stepped up their attacks and threatened to target Israel’s off-shore oil and gas platforms in the Mediterranean. In Iraq, the US Victoria base at the Baghdad airport was attacked with four rockets. Israel carried out airstrikes against Syria. The US has ordered more troops to the region in order to “strengthen its defensive posture”.
There has been a lot of speculation about the nature and strength of the Iranian response to Israeli provocations.
The Iranian regime finds itself in a difficult position. Faced with growing opposition at home, its whole trajectory in the recent period has been one of trying to reach a deal with the West, which it needs in order to lift sanctions and re-establish some economic equilibrium.
At the same time it has established close alliances with a series of armed groups in the region (Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Syria), spreading its influence and creating a protective shield against its main regional enemy, Israel. This is now under attack by Israel. If Iran does not respond, its regional clout will be severely damaged. Israel’s ultimate aim is to destroy Iran’s nuclear and military capability. No regime in Iran can allow that to happen without a response if it wants to stay in power.
The question arises of how come the fate of the Middle East has become so entangled with the personal calculations of one single individual. In fact, as much as the personal whims of Netanyahu play a decisive role in these events, they are in turn a reflection of underlying processes which have built up for a period of time.
We have the conflict in world relations between the United States on the one hand, and China and Russia on the other. The first is the world’s foremost imperialist power, but one which is in relative decline (with heavy stress on the relative nature of this decline). Defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan, unable to intervene decisively in the Syrian civil war, and having let down its most trusted allies during the Arab revolution, the US no longer carries the same clout it once had in the Middle East and it has but one stable ally, Israel.
We have seen this relationship play out in the last year. Washington does not want Israel to completely obliterate Gaza – not out of any humanitarian considerations, but because it fears that Israel’s brutal actions will lead to the revolutionary destabilisation of the Arab regimes of Jordan, Egypt and others, whom the US also relies upon. Washington is not in favour of getting directly entangled in a regional war – not because of any concern for the lives of the people in the Middle East (after all, it has already killed hundreds of thousands in the last 20 years), but rather because that would be costly to itself (in terms of funding and personnel) at a time when it is already involved in a losing war in Ukraine and would distract it from dealing with its main rival China.
But all of these considerations are trumped by the fact that, at the end of the day, Israel is the United States’ most reliable ally in the region and it cannot allow it to fail. Biden has, occasionally, mildly criticised Netanyahu, has tried to play Gantz against him, and has even threatened to withhold certain military supplies. But at the end of the day it has fully backed Israel.
The real relationship is not that presented in the media: that of an ailing president who has his hands tied and reluctantly ends up backing Israel. Ten percent of Israel’s annual military budget is financed by the US. Further to this, at times of war the US is prepared to cough up billions more, such as the $8 billion package granted earlier this year.
Furthermore, if the US were to withdraw arms licences, the Israeli military would be left with few or no arms, and no ammunition. The Zionist state would not have all the resources it needs to carry out its reactionary murderous wars of aggression if it wasn’t for the funding and supplies it punctually receives from the US.
This is the leverage Biden is not prepared to use. On the contrary, from the very beginning he has offered ironclad support to Israel. Netanyahu is fully aware of this fact. Perhaps Biden thought that this was the best way to put himself in a position to influence or restrain Netanyahu. The opposite is the case. Sure in the knowledge that Biden was duty bound to back him, Bibi proceeded to carry out the actions that best suited his own interests, with complete disregard for Washington’s interests.
Meanwhile, Russia played a decisive role in the Syrian civil war, keeping its ally Assad in power, while balancing off the different regional powers involved (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc.). China also stepped in to broker a peace deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia completely by-passing the US, something which would have been unthinkable only 20 years ago.
While these processes were going on, Washington was pushing for the completion of the Abraham Accords, leading to the ‘normalisation’ of relations between Israel and its Arab neighbours. The process had gone very far and the last piece of the puzzle, Saudi Arabia, seemed to be falling into place. A year ago, at the UN General Assembly, Netanyahu showed a map of what he described as “the new Middle East” which depicted Israel trading with Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, Egypt and Sudan. The map had completely erased the Occupied Territories.
The message was clear. ‘Normalisation’ meant giving Israel a free hand to finally complete the annexation of Palestine. This was one of the main reasons behind Hamas’ attack on 7 October 2023.
The overall objective of the Israeli ruling class is to weaken or disable its main rival in the region: Iran. They know that in order to do so they require the backing of the US. In this, the general interests of the ruling class and the personal interests of Netanyahu coincide. Those who opposed Netanyahu’s sabotage of a hostage deal in Gaza, did so precisely because they wanted to concentrate on the war against Lebanon.
The position of revolutionary communists in this conflict is clear. We stand with the oppressed against the oppressors. We stand against the reactionary imperialist state of Israel and with the oppressed Palestinians, and now Lebanese, who are at the receiving end of brutal military aggression. We support their right to defend themselves.
Revolutionary communists declare openly that peace in the Middle East will not be achieved by appeals to the governments nor through the mediation of international institutions (which merely reflect the balance of forces between different imperialist powers). The presence of UNIFIL peacekeeping forces on the border has not prevented the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Imperialist peace would simply be the interlude leading to a new reactionary war.
Only the overthrow of the reactionary Zionist ruling class of Israel and the overthrow of the reactionary ruling classes of all the other regimes in the region (Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, etc), can lead to genuine peace, which can only be based on the end of the national oppression of the Palestinian people.
Our main task in the West is to fight our own imperialist warmongering governments, which are covered in the blood of the people in Gaza.
The struggle against imperialist war is the struggle against the rotten capitalist system which breeds it. If you want peace, fight for socialism.
