Lebanon: Israel’s air war threatens regional war

"WE WILL turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years". This threat
from an Israeli general is now being implemented by a brutal bombardment
of Lebanon by the Israeli army, the IDF.

Kevin Simpson

The Israeli regime, with the support of the Bush administration and
his sidekick Blair, is in danger of driving the region towards a new
regional war. The IDF incursion into Gaza was disastrous enough.
However, the air invasion of Lebanon is qualitatively different.

Events are spiralling out of control. Reports on Jordanian TV speak
of Israeli warnings to the Syrian regime to force Hezbollah to back down
or face bombing raids within 72 hours.

Israeli Prime Minister Olmert talks of a long war, while Sheikh
Nasrullah, leader of Hezbollah, threatens Israel with more rocket
attacks and delivers them. One western diplomat said "if [the nightmare
scenario] develops we are all in deep, deep trouble" (Observer, 16 July
2006).

War and military conflict generally have a logic of their own. In the
Middle East, awash with hatred towards US imperialism and the barbaric,
brutal, decades-long oppression of the Palestinians, this is even more
the case.

It’s possible the Israeli regime may step back from this immediate
brink of all-out war. However, even if this happens, the political
situation in the Middle East shows some similarities with the huge
tensions and bitter anger amongst the Arab masses that existed in the
period preceding the Israeli-Arab wars in 1956 and 1967.

Huge swathes of southern Beirut have been reduced to smoking rubble
with residents wandering around in shock at the massive devastation from
a hail of missiles and bombs from land, sea and air. Bridges, roads,
power stations have all been pulverised. Food and water shortages are
widespread. Starvation and disease now threaten the poorest in Lebanon.

Hundreds of Lebanese civilians have been killed, many blown to pieces
by IDF bombs while attempting to flee the country to the Syrian capital,
Damascus. Massacres have already occurred.

On Saturday 15 July the IDF warned Marwaheen residents to leave their
village. When they did so a convoy of trucks was struck by an Israeli
missile. Twenty were killed including many children. Horrific pictures
of dismembered bodies were shown on TV across the Arab and Muslim world.

Brutality

BUT IN all conflicts it is the working class and poor peasantry on
both sides that suffer. Lebanese workers and youth have experienced the
worst death and destruction. However, increasingly Israeli Jewish and
Arab workers will also suffer as the deaths of eight rail workers from a
Hezbollah missile attack on Haifa showed.

Internationally, workers and young people will be absolutely enraged
by the brutality of this conflict and the cynical callous disregard for
human life from US imperialism and the EU powers.

When a US presidential spokesperson was asked if Bush would condemn
the disproportionate response by Israel, he said: "The President is not
about to give military advice to Israel."

Yet, at the G8 Summit, in a private conversation to Blair caught on
tape, Bush said: "What they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to
stop doing this shit".

The spineless, grovelling Arab elite are even worse. A meeting of the
Arab League over last weekend was unable to come up with any statement!
Saudi Arabia has supported Israeli action against Hezbollah.

All of these actions will be remembered by the Arab masses and these
leaders will pay for these crimes in the future.

However, what really enrages all those who are horrified by the
scenes of destruction on their TVs every night and drives Arab and
Muslims to incandescent levels of anger, is that US imperialism is so
open and blatant in their support of the Israeli regime. And all this is
done in the name of "democracy" and against "terrorism".

The G8 summit, under severe pressure from US imperialism, issued a
statement putting the onus for the conflict on Hezbollah and refusing to
call for a ceasefire. A meeting of EU foreign ministers followed this up
with similar comments refusing to condemn Israel.

Collective punishment

This amounts to open support for the Israeli regime’s collective
punishment of the entire Lebanese nation. Western imperialism will rue
the day they gave the green light to the Israeli regime’s pulverisation
of Lebanon, amounting to nothing more than state terrorism.

Over the last year, Bush has supported Israel’s building of massive
settlements on the West Bank and given almost carte blanche support to Olmert’s plan to unilaterally impose a final settlement on the
Palestinians, leaving them with only 11% of the original land area of
Palestine, all of which will be divided into cantons surrounded by a
Berlin style "separation wall".

Gone are the days when US imperialism could appear to play a more

‘neutral’ role. It is now very difficult for the Bush administration
to even pretend to act as a brake on the Israeli regime’s brutal
military repression. Even the Arab elite realise this.

This partly represents a change in policy under the second Bush
administration. But it is also linked to US imperialism’s ability to
intervene and influence world events being more limited than before.

Following September 11, where the US hyper power appeared to
temporarily have more room to intervene militarily around the world,
Bush’s regime put forward the idea it would reshape the Middle East.

They claimed they would sweep the Taliban out of Afghanistan and
implement a "democratic secular regime". Iraq’s Saddam Hussein would
be dealt with and a new stable US-friendly regime would flower in the
Middle East and provide cheap energy for the West.

A "democratic" transformation of the rest of the region would
follow, sweeping aside the Iranian regime which was part of the "axis
of evil", Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian Ba’ath regime and maybe even
replacing past allies of US imperialism with more compliant and stable
rulers.

And their solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would result
in the crushing of the most extreme Islamic groups in the Occupied
Territories.

This neo-con Utopia has been replaced with a horrific nightmare for
imperialism and for the masses. Iraq is in a worse situation than when
under the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein. The possibility of the
country breaking up into hostile unstable statelets is becoming greater
by the day. Iran has been qualititatively strengthened regionally
because Shia parties linked to the regime are in the ascendancy in Iraq.

Moreover, the Iranian regime has refused to bow to Western pressure
to end its production of enriched uranium gaining the support of the
majority of the population for its anti-imperialist rhetoric.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt face a growing threat from Al Qaeda-linked
reactionary armed Islamic groups. And, the Islamic Muslim Brotherhood
made significant gains in Egypt’s last general election. The most
graphic humiliation for US imperialism’s plans for the region came with Hamas’s crushing landslide in the Palestinian elections in January of
this year.

But the present turn of events is far more serious. Hezbollah’s
original attack on the Israeli army convoy was designed to bolster its
position within Lebanon since the withdrawal of Syrian troops took away
what was seen as one of its allies.

The attack also was designed to divert attention away from the demand
by the United Nations for Hezbollah to disarm its armed wing.

Hezbollah, better armed and more cohesive than Hamas represents a
formidable enemy for the Israeli regime. It is now regarded as the third
most powerful armed force in the region by some military observers.

Through mass support in the Shia population and armed attacks it was
able to force the IDF to withdraw prematurely from south Lebanon in
2000, a major blow to Israel’s military’s prestige. Some Israeli media
commentators now refer to Lebanon as "Israel’s Vietnam".

When Hezbollah killed seven soldiers and captured two more the
Israeli military suffered another major blow. Since the conflict has
escalated, Hezbollah has shown that it is capable of hitting major
population centres like Haifa.

The Israeli regime’s prestige is on the line. Its decades-long
promise to provide lasting security for the Israeli Jewish population is
increasingly exposed.

This is a major reason why there has been such a brutal response to
Hezbollah’s attacks. The Israeli military elite clearly want to
emphasise a policy of what they describe as "deterrence". This does
not mean they oppose the government’s plans for withdrawing from
sections of the West Bank and the imposition of a final settlement on
the Palestinians. But they want to achieve this on the basis of
pummelling any signs of resistance and show that Israeli capitalism is
the major military power in the region with withdrawal not being a sign
of weakness.

Polarised

THE IDF hope their bombardment will push the Lebanese government and
population to turn against Hezbollah and force it to disarm and move 25
miles away from the Israeli-Lebanese border to the Litani River.
Effectively, this would mean Hezbollah moving away from areas where
support for it is highest.

However, this approach will only serve to make things worse.

Amongst some sections of the population who support the most
reactionary Christian parties in Lebanon, there is full support for the
smashing of Hezbollah who are historic opponents of theirs from the time
of the Lebanese civil war.

Following the initial bombing wider sections of the population may
have felt that they were being made to suffer for actions carried out by
Hezbollah. However, given the brutality of the attack, the mood is now
changing and now the hatred of the Israeli capitalist regime’s
brutality dominates and support is swinging behind Hezbollah – not just
amongst the Shias.

In Israel there have been sharp changes in mood and consciousness.

Never before in Israeli capitalism’s history has the rich elite been
hated so much by the Israeli Jewish working class, because of the neoliberal attacks on their living standards and the increasing
corruption amongst politicians. The military generals have also seen
their normally high standing in society undermined.

However, the threat of widespread rocket attacks and a growing mood
of being surrounded by hostile Arab countries threatening to drive the
Jews into the sea means that the mood has begun to change.

There is now growing support for more decisive military action and
increased support for the government – even though this may be tinged
with doubt and criticism. Through experience of the futility of using
military means to crush mass opposition and the incapability of Israeli
capitalism to protect their physical and social security the mood will
change but presently it is moving towards a war mentality.

This polarises the situation further and also explains why Israeli
capitalism, imperialism and the Arab elite have so little room for
manoeuvre. An atrocity on either side could tip the balance.

The IDF already has covert land forces operating in Lebanon. Olmert
signed an order on 18 July to recruit three battalions of reservists.
This could be a signal that the IDF is preparing a land invasion.

Even the continuation of the vicious air war could lead to the weak
and divided Lebanese government falling apart and Hezbollah taking open
control of the areas where it has majority support. The Syrian regime
could use this as an excuse for sending covert forces back into Lebanon.

It could not even be ruled out that the Iranian regime, which has
already provided weaponry and military advisers to Hezbollah could send
armed volunteer fighters into Lebanon.

Part of the spiral to war could potentially be bombing attacks by
Israel of Syria and also Iran, particularly its nuclear facilities. This
can no longer be ruled out. And if this horrific eventuality comes about
then a regional war becomes more of a possibility.

Israeli capitalism and US imperialism are banking on the fact that
Hezbollah is isolated within the Arab world, with many Sunni Arab
leaders seeing it as an opportunity to clip the wings of a strengthened
competitor of theirs.

Some serious military analysts have pointed to the relatively
restrained response by the Syrian regime to the Israeli attacks as
evidence that they are unwilling to put their necks on the line. They
even use the fact that the Iranian foreign minister has called for a
ceasefire and negotiations for the release of prisoners as evidence that
there are limits to their support of Hezbollah.

But there is also huge anger amongst the Arab masses. If conflict
escalates then a whole number of regimes could be threatened, now or
later, with massive instability, mass movements and the overthrow of
corrupt elites. The Egyptian administration rests on a knife edge, and
countries like Saudi Arabia – despite the increase in oil prices – are
plagued with instability. The idea of a spreading whirlpool of armed
conflict taking in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and then Iraq, where over
140,000 US troops are stationed, no longer seems far fetched.

Working class

THE WORKING class of the region, drawing along with it the poor
peasantry, are the only force capable of defeating imperialism,
capitalism and the corrupt Arab elites and fulfilling the desire of the
Palestinians for their social and national liberation.

Capitalist wars and conflict can also see further working-class
struggles develop against privatisation and attacks on workers’ living
standards like those which have already taken place in countries like
Iran, Egypt and Israel. Such movements will come to the fore again but
with a different consciousness – one that is imbued with a desire for an
end to bloodshed and a new society where the mass of the population
control the huge wealth that exists in the region.

The huge anger that exists against imperialism’s pernicious role
must be channelled in the towards building new working-class movements
and parties, based on the ideas of a socialist confederation of the
Middle East, the removal of all imperialist armed forces, and the
overthrow of capitalism and feudalism in the region.

Unlike the US neo-cons’ plans for the region this is not a Utopia
but based on historical experience. At the height of the internecine
Lebanese civil war in 1988, Lebanese workers across the sectarian divide
took strike action against the collapse in the value of the minimum wage
as a result of the galloping inflation caused by the conflict.

Along the "green line" which divided Christian and Muslim Beirut
joint demonstrations took place on this issue. During the same conflict
between half and one million Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv against
the IDF invasion in Lebanon.

However, socialists and activists cannot simply sit back and wait for
these developments. A movement for revolutionary socialist change across
the region needs to be built as a matter of urgency right now.

  • No to the mass terror of the Israeli regime against the Lebanese
    people. End the bombing of Lebanon. Build mass international
    opposition to ‘collective punishment’ of the Lebanese people
  • For the right of the Lebanese working class and poor peasantry to
    defend themselves against Israeli state aggression. No to
    indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian areas.
  • For the setting up of cross-community, armed defence committees
    under the democratic control of the Lebanese masses. No to the concept
    of collective punishment of innocent civilians
  • Release all political prisoners and captives. All imperialist
    forces out of the region
  • For a mass movement of Arab and Palestinian workers, poor peasants
    and young people to overthrow the capitalist system which breeds war,
    poverty, mass unemployment and neo-liberal attacks in the Middle East.
    For a socialist confederation of Arab states based on a democratically
    planned economy, under workers’ control and management
  • For a mass movement of Israeli Jewish workers to overthrow the
    Israeli capitalist regime which means endless wars and attacks on
    living standards. For a socialist Palestine and socialist Israel as
    part of a socialist confederation of the Middle East in which workers
    and poor peasants and not corrupt leaders will decide how society is
    run and where the national, religious and ethnic rights of all
    minorities will be guaranteed