Editors’ note: On September 27 the Israeli military unleashed a massive bombardment of the Dahiya neighborhood of Beirut in part to try to assassinate Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. This is a major escalation of the war. We do not yet know the full scale and results of these attacks. With the fast-pace of events in the war, Socialist Alternative will publish more updates, socialist analysis, and call for action.

Netanyahu’s war-government again torpedoes a ceasefire and hostage deal and pushes for a prolonged multi-front escalation in Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza, in a “lasting war” for the protection of the occupation and capitalist rule.

The reports of Israeli air strikes in Beirut on Friday that killed 31 residents, including three children and seven women, and wounded another 66, according to Lebanon’s health ministry –  join a long list of provocative, bloody strikes since Secretary of War Gallant declared on September 10 that the “center of gravity” of Israeli capitalism’s military offensive was moving north to Lebanese soil.

The Netanyahu government and the heads of the military and intelligence apparatus – who are responsible for the Israeli capitalism’s war machine – are “exporting” the military aggression they are employing in the war to destroy the Gaza Strip to the West Bank and Lebanon, of course without any respite from the genocidal offensive in Gaza itself. At least 22 people were killed in an attack that hit a school in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, medical sources in Gaza reported Saturday.

Provocative, High-Profile, Assassinations

In Beirut’s Dahiya district, fighter jets sent by the Israeli regime attacked two residential buildings containing 40 apartments each on Friday afternoon. Horrifyingly, the bodies of four members of the same family were recovered from the rubble. Rescue operations continue and the death toll is expected to rise.

According to Hezbollah, commanders of the Radwan Force and the head of one of the organization’s elite units, Ibrahim Aqil, were also killed in the attack. An Israeli military spokesperson claimed responsibility for the assassination. This is yet another link in a string of high-profile assassinations, following the assassination at the end of July of Hezbollah leadership member Fouad Shukr in Beirut and immediately afterwards the head of Hamas’ political bureau Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, as well as the assassination of Mohammed Deif on 13 July in the Al Muasi area of the Gaza Strip – as part of a massacre in which at least 90 displaced Palestinians were killed. The escalation in Lebanon, which began at noon on Tuesday (September 17) and resumed even more vigorously the next day, continued the same logic of the showcase bombing of civilian infrastructure at Yemen’s Al Hudaydah port on 20 July.

The waves of explosions involving thousands of pagers, various types of radios, and phones and laptops equipped with various Hezbollah operatives and officials, including non-military positions – throughout Beirut, Tyre, southern Lebanon, the Beqaa Valley and Syria – resulted in indiscriminate harm to thousands of residents and and amounts to state-sponsored terrorism.

In addition to Hezbollah fighters, neighbors and family members of Hezbollah members, parliamentarians and diplomats, as well as passersby, including children, were also injured in markets, supermarkets, bank locations, universities, homes, hospitals, cities, and villages far from Hezbollah’s military bases.

The death toll from the waves of explosions on Tuesday and Wednesday rose to 36, including at least two children, according to a statement from the Lebanese Health Ministry. Thousands were injured, including hundreds seriously and critically. Dozens of hospitals in Lebanon were overwhelmed by the casualties . To illustrate, the number of injuries requiring hospitalization in Beirut was even higher than the thousands hospitalized immediately after the massive explosion at Beirut’s port in 2020. 

A doctor at a Beirut hospital told AFP that he had never seen such horrific scenes before: “About 75% of the injured had eye injuries, including 15% who had lost two eyes. Fingers have been amputated, internal organs have been torn off, and we don’t have enough equipment and anesthesia to treat them all.” The disaster struck a collapsing health system in a country in the midst of a severe and prolonged economic crisis that even before the attack led to shortages of medicines and medical staff. Beyond the wounded, countless Lebanese workers and youth have been traumatized.

Those who gave the order to carry out this attack in the air-conditioned rooms of the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv did so with the knowledge and understanding of the attack’s impact on ordinary people. They obviously took into account that an attack of this magnitude could very likely lead to an all-out war with Hezbollah, a rocket response from it to the centers of Israel’s large cities, and the development of a regional war against the “Iranian axis” and even Iran itself. On Saturday morning, airspace from the Israeli city of Hadera to the north was closed until further notice.

“Israel is preparing for a new phase of confrontation with Hezbollah, aimed at its great human and military capabilities. This is what makes the discourse about all-out war realistic,” Ibrahim al-Amin, editor of the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, considered close to Hezbollah, wrote on Thursday. He added that “If the enemy launches an operation aimed at more than 10,000 people, military personnel and civilians in centers, outposts, or homes, then he has decided that we are in a war without rules, ceilings, and borders, and maybe it is pointless to wait for the enemy to throw the dice first.”

But Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah chose to give a speech on Thursday (September 19) that was not actually a declaration of an all-out war, even though he said the bombings amount to an act of war on Lebanon. He stressed that the war of attrition on the Israeli-Lebanese border would not end without a ceasefire in Gaza, and in a rhetorical appeal to Netanyahu and Defense Minister Galant he stressed that “you will not succeed in returning the [Israeli] residents to their homes in the north. The only way is to stop the aggression in Gaza and also in the West Bank. No military escalation, no assassinations, no killing and no all-out war. This will not bring [Israeli] residents back to the north. On the contrary, what you do will increase displacement and eliminate the possibility of bringing them back.” As a populist leader, he chose to correspond with the mass will in the region, and in Lebanon itself, to avoid a regional war and impose a ceasefire on Netanyahu’s government, stressing that “the Lebanese front will not stop until the Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip stops.”

Already at the time of the speech, Israeli Air Force fighter jets were sent to shake the skies of Beirut with supersonic booms and drop bombs on southern Lebanon, and the next day (Friday) to carry out another mega-provocation with the mass assassination in the heart of the Dahiya. The Israeli military commanders in Tel Aviv are willing to sacrifice not only the Israeli hostages but also, potentially, tens of thousands more residents of Gaza, Lebanon and the rest of the region, including Israel, for the sake of the war to fortify the occupation and national oppression of millions of Palestinians and the hegemony of Israeli capitalism in the region.

Catastrophic Escalation From A Desperate Place

Galant and Netanyahu competed among themselves to take credit for the attacks in the Israeli media on Friday evening. The catastrophic escalation they are leading comes from a desperate place, as the anniversary of October 7 approaches and Israeli capitalism found itself incapable of achieving a military victory on any front and presenting a “victory image.” This strategic crisis, from the point of view of the ruling class, also affects and is influenced by the sharp political confrontation between Netanyahu, his war minister, and the military chief.

The debate at the top of the Israeli regime is escalating as the genocidal offensive, which destroyed large parts of the Gaza Strip, wiped out families and communities, and massacred tens of thousands of residents, failed to achieve the war’s official objectives of “toppling Hamas” and “maximum effort to resolve the hostage issue.” 

This does not prevent the cabinet from continuing to add more “targets”. Just before the start of the bombing campaign in Lebanon, the Israeli regime added as its goal the “safe return of northern residents to their homes.” The chances of achieving this by “increasing military pressure” on Lebanon are similar to the chances of releasing the hostages alive by “increasing military pressure” on the destroyed Gaza Strip.

Despite the fact that a majority of the Israeli public supports a swap deal and a ceasefire as the only way to bring the hostages back alive, the government’s propaganda that an all-out war against Lebanon is the way to return the tens of thousands of Israeli residents to their homes – alongside the tens of thousands who left their homes in southern Lebanon – is gaining traction. Assisting the murderous government is the capitalist “opposition” in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) – such as Democrats chairman General Yair Golan – attacking Netanyahu from the right for not yet launching a ground invasion of Lebanon. 

In the face of these voices of nationalist reaction who see themselves as “democrats”, we emphasize that inflicting destruction and death on the masses in Lebanon, as well as on the masses in Gaza, will never pave the way for community rehabilitation and sustainable security in the Israeli regions of Galilee or the western Negev. And from the outset, the war to destroy the Gaza Strip, like the military attacks in Lebanon or the West Bank, was not intended for this.

The military aggression in the West Bank and Lebanon torpedoes any chance of arranging a ceasefire and releasing hostages in Gaza, while torpedoing a ceasefire in Gaza only exacerbates the escalation in the West Bank and Lebanon. This is the spiral in which the Israeli regime is plunging the region into a protracted bloody crisis with no end in sight, in order to, ultimately, stabilize an order of occupation, national oppression and capitalist exploitation through deepening it by military means.

“No Deal In Sight”

According to a Wall Street Journal report, senior officials in the White House, State Department, and Pentagon believe that “no deal is on the horizon” and cited as a main reason the pager attack in Lebanon, which is making negotiations difficult. 

American imperialism is in paradox. On the one hand, the White House is seeking a stabilizing deal that will lead to a ceasefire, if only temporarily, ahead of the final stretch of the US elections. On the other hand, Washington’s fundamental backing of the Netanyahu government’s military operations – including direct military intervention in the region as part of the rivalry with the “Iranian axis” backed by Russian and Chinese imperialism – torpedo any possibility of a deal.

Omri Lifshitz, whose parents Yocheved and Oded were abducted to Gaza and whose mother was released from captivity at the end of October, said at a press conference held by the families of the hostages before the start of the demonstration at Begin Gate a week ago (September 14): “My father Oded Lifshitz was kidnapped alive, but Netanyahu decided to move the center of gravity to the north and abandon him and all the hostages in the death tunnels.” Some of the demonstrations organized over the weekend by the hostages’ families also included more far-reaching messages, such as the banner raised during a demonstration in front of the Kirya in Tel Aviv: “No to all-out war, yes to a hostage deal.”

The persistent “deal now” protest movement reached its peak earlier this month with a mass outburst of anger that quickly translated into the largest demonstration since October 7 and a general strike in the Israeli economy following the Israeli regime’s decision to cement the occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor just before the death of six hostages was announced. 

The expansion of the war to Lebanon with a series of dramatic military strikes initiated by Netanyahu’s bloody government and the extreme right must also be met with anger and urgency to build the struggle towards more protests and strikes at the local and national levels. Just as the perpetuation of the occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor, the emerging war in Lebanon is a deliberate assassination of mass popular aspirations for a ceasefire, a hostage swap deal, and the rehabilitation of communities.

Stop the catastrophe of the bloody crisis now! Stop the policy of assassinations, bombings, and the danger of regional war! Stop the bloodbath in Gaza, stop the aggression of the military and settlers in the West Bank, yes to an “all for all” deal now! 

Overthrow the bloodthirsty government and its entire agenda that serves capitalist rule and occupation. An end to the flow of weapons and money by imperialist powers for mass killing, occupation and destructive wars in the Middle East. Yes to international solidarity with the struggle of ordinary people throughout the region, as part of the struggle for socialist change and peace against the capitalist system based on imperialist aggression and capitalist rule.