Israel is subjecting Lebanon to a campaign of ‘Gazafication’ – systematically levelling villages, displacing populations and targeting journalists and medical staff – under the pretext of ‘fighting Hezbollah’. Their intention is clearly to prevent any ceasefire between the US and the Iranians, and to seize Lebanese territory by force of arms while much of the media’s attention is focused on Iran.
Just three days into the conflict with Iran, Israel intensified its military operations in Lebanon, ongoing since 2023, by launching another ground invasion into the south of the country. This was combined with a heavy air assault nationwide, including in the capital, Beirut. The current death toll stands at over 2,500 (not including the many uncountable bodies under rubble), while 1.2 million people, a fifth of the country’s population, have been displaced.
Occupation and ethnic cleansing in the south
In the south of Lebanon, entire towns have been levelled and made uninhabitable. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has openly bragged that his forces would destroy “all houses” in Lebanese border villages “in accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun”. A military source explicitly stated: “This is the Gaza model, but in Lebanon.”
Last month, Israeli Finance Minister and West Bank settler Bezalel Smotrich said Israel needs to seize territory up to the Litani River, which would result in the occupation of around 10 percent of Lebanon’s national territory.
As it stands, the IDF currently occupies over 50 towns and villages in southern Lebanon, where it has established a ‘security zone’. A ‘yellow line’ has now been drawn by Israel to distinguish ‘their’ territory from Lebanon’s.
A similar yellow line in Palestine was first established in October’s ceasefire deal. It has since continually moved forward and is used as an opportunity to fire on anyone remotely close to it. Of the 700 killed by Israeli fire during the ‘ceasefire’ in Palestine, 269 were shot near the yellow line, according to UN data, 100 of whom were children.
Most revolting of all, the Israelis are resorting to a clear-cut policy of ethnic cleansing, combatting Hezbollah by targeting the Shia population as a whole. According to IDF reserve Brigadier General Assaf Orion, in an article published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, only Christian and Druze villages are likely to survive the IDF’s “scorched earth” tactics.
More than this, village leaders in Christian and Druze-majority villages in southern Lebanon have been called by IDF officials to expel Shia Muslims. In fear of Israeli bombardment, to prevent their villages from being reduced to dust and rubble, some have complied.
With Shiites making up the majority of the population in the region, this is a clear attempt by Israel to ethnically cleanse the region, forcing minority populations to participate, inviting revenge and ethnic conflict, while cynically claiming to be protecting them.
This verdict has also been reached by UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, Prof Ben Saul, who stated:
“In places the pattern of attacks appears aimed to ‘cleanse’ predominantly [Shia] villages and populations from the south, collectively punishing civilian populations within which Hezbollah fighters may be mingled”.
Israel claims that those who have been displaced are unable to return to their homes until their ‘safety’ can be guaranteed. If they ever return home, they will likely find that their villages and homes have been flattened.
Israel has a vile history of whipping up ethnic divisions inside Lebanon in order to push its interests. This history is marked by such milestones as the massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in September 1982, where Lebanese Maronite Christian militias gunned down up to 5,000 Palestinian refugees, with the assistance of the IDF. Now they are attempting to repeat these horrors, their war against Hezbollah turning into, in fact, a war against the whole Shia population of southern Lebanon.
Destruction and barbarism
The IDF’s campaign has been both merciless and cynical. On 8 April, the same day as the neutral mediator, Prime Minister of Pakistan Shehbaz Sharif, announced a ceasefire between the US and Iran, Israel launched airstrikes against over 100 targets in a period of 10 minutes. The bombs hit some of Beirut’s busiest commercial districts and residential areas. At least 357 were killed and over 1,200 were injured by the Israeli attack. A victim of these bombings told The Guardian:
“There’s no Hezbollah here, the Israelis are just getting happy when they bomb people, it’s not about Hezbollah”
Notably, ending military operations against Lebanon was one of Iran’s ‘red lines’ in the peace negotiations held in Islamabad in April, which quickly collapsed. These murderous airstrikes (codenamed ‘Operation Eternal Darkness’) were a brazen gambit to keep the Americans involved in the Iran conflict.
The IDF has also systematically targeted medical personnel, including a ‘triple-tap’ bombing on 15 April that killed three medics attempting to rescue people from the site of an attack in the town of Mayfadoun. A sense of impunity can be seen throughout the ranks of the IDF, with soldiers gloating to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about looting civilian property in the south, including televisions, cigarettes, tools or whatever they can get their hands on.
The shaky truce between the US and Iran was eventually extended to Lebanon, despite Trump initially claiming it was “a separate skirmish”. But on 26 April, just two days after Trump announced yet another extension of the Iran ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commanded the IDF to “vigorously attack Hezbollah targets”. Israel clearly has no intentions of ending the slaughter.
Israeli impunity
Having conducted a three-year-long genocidal war in Gaza – funded, aided and abetted by the so-called ‘democratic’ western powers – the Israeli ruling class feels a tremendous sense of impunity, which can be clearly seen in the savagery of its latest escalation against Lebanon.
One of Israel’s war aims is conquering territory. It has long coveted the southern part of Lebanon. The founding organisation of Zionism, the World Zionist Organisation, included it in a 1919 map of claimed territory. Israel directly occupied it for 18 years before being kicked out in 2000.
But the main motive is neutralising obstacles to its dominance of the region. For Israel, the war with Iran is the attempt to destroy it as a nation in order to permanently eliminate a powerful rival. If the US pulls out, far from being destroyed, the Islamic Republic will emerge greatly strengthened, which would be a disaster for the ruling class in Israel. By hook or by crook, Israel needs to tie the US down in this war. The war in Lebanon allows them to throw a spanner in the works of any peace negotiations.
From the point of view of Netanyahu, opening up another theatre of conflict also helps to maintain a continuous state of war, allowing him to remain in power and avoid jail time over his myriad of corruption charges.
This may prove, however, to be a catastrophic mistake on his part. Despite a complete barbarisation of Gaza since October 2023, the war aim of wiping out Hamas has not been achieved. De facto, it is still governing those areas of Gaza not under direct Israeli occupation, and although 8,900 Hamas or allied fighters have been killed (at least 88 percent of the official death count in Gaza were civilians), a new generation of between 10,000-15,000 new fighters have been recruited.
Their inability to wipe out Hamas does not bode well in facing Hezbollah: a far more heavily armed, experienced and recently reorganised guerrilla force. Southern Lebanon is not Gaza. It is several times the size. It is not a closed-off strip of territory, but openly accessible for Hezbollah forces to slip in and out, with a rugged, mountainous landscape.
Israel’s attempts to augment their forces by whipping up religious sectarian hatred within the region have also had a limited impact. Over the course of decades, Israel has attempted to create a pliable, friendly Druze and Christian population within Lebanon against Shia Muslims.
But the indiscriminate barbarity of the current war has inculcated a general hatred of the IDF in Christians, Shia and Druze alike.
Matters were made worse after videos shared widely online of an Israeli soldier using a sledgehammer to strike the head of a statue of Jesus on the cross that had fallen from a church in a Christian village. Whatever members of different religious sects may think of Hezbollah, few will be willing to fight it on behalf of Israel.
Israel is likely to find itself overstretched and forced into a humiliating retreat. This is a small country, the army of which is a reservist army, and yet it has been continuously at war for nearly three years. Israel’s Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir described the IDF as “exhausted”. The strain will be felt even more as this conflict protracts.
Splits in the West
The escalation in Lebanon has further inflamed the tensions in foreign policy between the USA and its allies in the West. Trump, infuriated by the Europeans, is hurling all sorts of threats towards the “cowards” in Europe who are refusing to mobilise their navies to re-open the Strait of Hormuz. These include threats to withdraw from NATO, to revise the economic deal signed last year, or even to take Greenland.
If the Europeans seem to have finally grown a backbone, despite their dependence on US capitalism, it is because their economies are so severely hit by the economic impact of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and the attendant fear of the potential for mass unrest should the war drag on.
A joint statement by the “gravely concerned” leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom (notably, not the United States) condemned the “unacceptable” actions of Israel in Lebanon and called for “all parties to act in accordance with international humanitarian law”. There have been other, largely symbolic, actions such as Giorgia Meloni suspending Italy’s 21-year-old defence agreement with Israel.
But the joint statement of European and Canadian imperialists, along with various symbolic actions and other thin moral pleas, are clearly not to be taken as an indication that they have suddenly discovered the sanctity of human life. They defended and helped bankroll Israel’s butchery of the Palestinians for two years without batting an eyelid. Now the Europeans are discussing sanctioning Israel… not for the slaughter they are conducting, but for buying grain from the Russians!
Their position has nothing to do with humanitarian concerns. Rather, they understand that Israel’s principal aim is to deliberately sabotage any prospect of a peace deal with Iran, perpetuating a war that is, above all, most disastrous for Europe.
Indeed, the likes of Keir Starmer, despite calling Israeli airstrikes “wrong”, continues to parrot Israel’s demand that “Hezbollah must disarm” to facilitate diplomacy.
As ever, the targets of Israel’s aggression are called upon to disarm by world leaders, while the IDF is armed to the teeth and free to rampage across the region.
The war in Lebanon is yet another bloody chapter written in the history of the Middle East. It seems there is no end in sight to the barbarism, as the world’s biggest killers and gangsters unleash hell upon millions of innocent people in pursuit of their narrow interests. Workers across the world will also pay, at the supermarket, at the petrol pump and in their bills. The only way to end this spiral of destruction and chaos is to put an end to imperialism, once and for all, and that means overthrowing our own ruling classes at home.
