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Israel’s Lebanon Offensive: From Genocide in Gaza to Regional War

As Benjamin Netanyahu announced in his bellicose speech to the United Nations last week, Israel is waging a war on “seven fronts”: the genocide in Gaza that is spreading to the West Bank with settler attacks backed by the armed forces; the most recent offensive in Lebanon that began with the exploding beeper and radio attacks and peaked last week with the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah — the famed Hezbollah leader who enjoyed the prestige of having been the only one capable of defeating Israel in the 2006 Lebanon War; targeted bombings in Iranian territory that killed the leader of the political wing of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh; the attacks against the Houthis in Yemen; and the attacks against pro-Iranian militias in Syria and Iraq. Netanyahu made it clear that his speech was meant as a threat to Iran, reminding the country that there is no place where “the long arm of Israel” does not reach.

Emboldened by the blow dealt to Hezbollah, which was left virtually without a leadership and momentarily in a state of shock, Netanyahu has redoubled his military gamble. As this article went to press, the Israel Defense Forces have begun what is apparently a limited ground incursion into southern Lebanon. Meanwhile, the bombings continue, reaching the center of Beirut for the first time since the 2006 war. At this point, districts of the Lebanese capital already look like a sepia postcard of Gaza: incessant bombardments against civilian targets, thousands of people dead, hundreds of thousands of people displaced, and entire families who in their rapid flight from the attacks ended up sleeping without shelter — in public parks or even on the beach.

The trail of death and destruction in the Middle East carried out by the state of Israel — 42,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, another 700 people killed in the West Bank, plus nearly 2000 people killed in the first bombings in Lebanon — begins in the West. Despite the enormous international repudiation of Israel’s war crimes and its growing isolation, Netanyahu has the unconditional support of the United States and European powers such as France and the United Kingdom (in addition servants such as Javier Milei in Argentina) who provide him with arms and diplomatic cover for his genocidal wars. President Joe Biden, as well as Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump are staunch defenders of the strategic alliance with the Zionist state. Beyond the frictions between the White House and Netanyahu, “Genocide Joe” considered the assassination of Nasrallah to be a “measure of justice” and has loyally sent military and financial assistance to Israel. The United States has reinforced its military presence in the region in the event of an Iranian attack against the Zionist state.

The offensive against Hezbollah and Lebanon, codified as a “New Order” by Israeli commanders, is a major tactical success for Netanyahu, who faces a complicated scenario because after a year of war in Gaza he has not achieved the release of the hostages and even less a “total victory” — in other words the definitive destruction of Hamas. 

The situation in Israel after the Hamas attack of October 2023 is complex. There is undoubtedly a shift to the right in society as a whole. Yet while the war is popular, Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing government — questioned above all for its refusal to negotiate a cease-fire in exchange for the release of the dozens of hostages still held by Hamas — is not. The critical situation of the economy (including JP Morgan downgrading Israel’s credit rating), coupled with the political weight of orthodox sectors and “fascistized” settlers, add to Netanyahu’s unpopularity. However, the new front of the war brought with it a renewed “national unity” that includes political opponents who are even more warlike than Netanyahu himself.

The IDF has succeeded in ten days in decapitating Hezbollah, assassinating almost all of its historic political-military leadership. The attack exposed the organization’s vulnerability to infiltration by Israeli intelligence, which was instrumental in pinpointing the exact location of Nasrallah and his senior commanders. And while the Lebanese militia retains a significant missile arsenal and a significant number of fighters, it will likely be some time before it replaces Nasrallah and the assassinated military commanders and regains even partial combat capability.

So far the “operation decapitation” of Hezbollah is undoubtedly a tactical success for Israel and upsets the regional status quo. But it does not seem sufficient to establish the ambitious “New Order” to which Netanyahu aspires. According to the “blessing map” he displayed before the sparse audience that listened to him at the United Nations Assembly, it means wiping Palestinians off the map and annexing the territories to “Greater Israel.” It perhaps also includes the colonization of a strip of southern Lebanon.

Rather than a “New Order,” the situation seems to be heading towards a leap into regional chaos. This chaos could drag the United States into a new military adventure in the Middle East at a time when it is in the midst of a dispute for the White House.

In the immediate future, much will depend on how Iran responds to a strategic dilemma that is difficult to resolve. The regime of the Ayatollahs has been trying by all means necessary to avoid a direct confrontation with Israel and, by extension, with the United States. The construction of the defensive “axis of resistance” composed of tactical and strategic allies — within which Hezbollah plays a central role not only militarily but also as a projection of Iran’s regional political ambitions — is a response to this strategic priority. The conciliatory intervention at the UN of Iran’s new reformist president, Masoud Pezeshkian, sought to resume some dialogue with the United States and the Western powers in order to ease sanctions and reestablish negotiations on the nuclear program.

Israel’s attack on Hezbollah is a direct attack on the heart of this Iranian strategy. If the regime does not respond, it could give an image of weakness and lose its leadership capacity both domestically and internationally. But if it becomes involved in a war which it could lose, the result would be equally catastrophic for the survival of the Islamic Republic. Faced with a set of bad options, it cannot be ruled out that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the more conservative wing of the Iranian regime will emerge stronger and accelerate the march to develop nuclear weapons.

Taking into consideration the potential turning point that the Israeli escalation of the war could signify, some analysts have drawn an analogy between today and the 1967 Six-Day War. The comparison is based not only on Israel’s military offensive, but above all because the defeat of Nasser and his Syrian partners marked the beginning of the decline of Arab nationalism. In other words, today a possible regional war could mean the end of a regional status quo that was established as a consequence of the defeat of the United States in its war on and occupation of Iraq; this of course had the effect strengthening Iran’s position in the region, making it the main enemy of the state of Israel.

However, the analogy seems exaggerated. First, the blow to Hezbollah, a para-state militia, is still in the realm of asymmetric warfare. Israel’s triumph in the Six-Day War changed the regional geopolitical equation, leading in later years to the U.S.-sponsored peace agreement with Egypt; however, this did not mean the end of the Palestinian fight for national self-determination. This cause survived the betrayal of Arab nationalism and resurfaced in the Intifadas of the occupied territories. Contradictorily, it was capitalized by Islamist organizations such as Hamas, which was more radicalized in terms of taking up the struggle against Israel, but which touts a reactionary strategy of establishing a theocratic state.

This is not the first time that Israel has “decapitated” radical Islamist armed organizations. In fact, it is quite common practice. For example, in 1992 it assassinated Abbas Mousavi, then secretary general of Hezbollah, who was succeeded by Nasrallah. In 2004 it executed cleric Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, two of the founders of Hamas. It is true that the scale of the current attack is far greater. The war in Gaza has decimated Hamas’s structure and the incursion into Lebanon is probably intended to do the same with Hezbollah.

But Israel also has the goal of attempting to liquidate — through terror, genocide, and the threat of extermination — the will and capacity of the Palestinian and Lebanese people to resist.

Historical experience has shown that the tactical advantage of these blows will not end up translating into strategic victories, precisely because what Israel and its imperialist allies have not achieved is the extermination of the struggle against colonial oppression. On the contrary, they have fed the radicalization of new generations that recreate the resistance in the occupied territories or confront it in imperialist countries, denouncing the complicity of their own governments in the genocide carried out by the state of Israel. There is nothing to say that this time will be different.

>> The article above was written by Claudia Cinatti, and is reprinted from Left Voice.

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