The world is witnessing an acceleration in the global drive to war against those who refuse to be silenced by imperialism. The Israeli state brazenly escalated its brutal war on Lebanon with the murder of the leader of the Hezbollah resistance movement, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, on the night of 27 September. This is not just a further attack on Lebanese solidarity with the Palestinian people, but a deliberate attempt to draw Iran – a long-time backer of Hezbollah – directly into the conflict, provoking a far wider and even deadlier conflagration, dragging Zionism’s imperialist allies behind it. For whatever the cost and whatever their own claims to want a ceasefire, the US, British and EU imperialists continue to defend the Zionist state unconditionally as a bulwark for their interests in the Middle East.
This escalation comes after a year of genocidal warfare following the 7 October Palestinian resistance operation, throughout which the Israeli occupation has failed to defeat the people of Gaza. Facing a fightback on multiple fronts, the regime is now desperate to crush the wider resistance struggling against imperialism and Zionism. The Israeli state had already, outrageously, assassinated a string of Palestinian, Lebanese and Iranian leaders. Israel’s 17-18 September cyber-attack upon Hezbollah and the Lebanese people was followed by a wave of Israeli airstrikes, bringing Lebanon’s bloodiest days since the Israeli incursion of 2006.
Meanwhile, as it remains deadlocked in Gaza, the Israeli state is supporting settler racists to colonise the West Bank, assisted by a complicit Palestinian Authority (PA). At the same time the Zionist state, Britain and the US are attempting to crush Ansarallah solidarity actions from Yemen. Israel also subjects Syria and Iraq to regular air raids and selective assassinations while continuing to target Iran.
Lebanon
In southern Lebanon, the Zionist state had already deployed the tactics of indiscriminate killing seen in Gaza in an attempt to pressure populations to abandon support for Palestinian resistance. Between 7 October 2023 and 23 August this year, Israel carried out 7,800 bombing raids, killing hundreds of people.
The government of Prime Minister Netanyahu had warned on 17 September that the Zionist state would expand its war on the Lebanese frontier. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant stated that ‘the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes will be via military action,’ claiming spuriously that the Hezbollah-Hamas alliance was diminishing the possibility of a peace agreement. Within hours, 5,000 bombs planted in pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah and others in Lebanon were blown up, followed by a second wave of explosions a day later. 37 people were killed and around 3,000 injured, many seriously. Announcements warned people to stay away from all cellular devices and smartphones as pagers detonated in hospitals, ambulances and other civilian facilities. Though labelled ‘made in Taiwan’, the devices were produced by Hungary-based BAC Consulting, likely a front organisation working for Mossad. Hezbollah had imported the pagers to replace smartphones susceptible to surveillance by the Israeli state.
Threatened with all-out war, the Lebanese people immediately took to the streets, unfurling banners that read: ‘We will remain with Palestine, no matter what you do.’ The Lebanese solidarity front has offered the most significant challenge to the Zionist state outside historic Palestine, with the ability to wreak havoc on the Israeli economy.
On 20 September a Zionist airstrike on southern Beirut killed Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil, along with 37 others, including three children. A nursery was destroyed in the bombing. Speaking in the wake of these atrocities, Hezbollah’s former leader Nasrallah stated that ‘certainly we were dealt a major, unprecedented hit on both security and humanitarian levels’ but added that the northern fronts must continue as a ‘trump card’ in the hands of the Gaza resistance in its fight to end Zionist aggression.
The Zionist state broadened its bombing campaign in the days that followed. Two storeys of a residential building were obliterated by Israeli bombs in Ghobeirion, southern Beirut on 24 September, claiming the life of senior Hezbollah commander Muhammad Qubeisi. By 25 September, three days of relentless bombing had killed over 600 and injured thousands during attacks on towns and villages across Lebanon; the dead included more than 60 children. Claiming that these were ‘precision strikes’, Israeli air forces announced that they had dropped more than 2,000 bombs during 1,600 raids in just 24 hours. Imperialist media justified the bombing of Beirut by referring to ‘militant strongholds’, with the BBC parroting the line that these were ‘strikes on Hezbollah’, rather than what they were: blanket attacks on the Lebanese people. In the space of three days, 90,000 people were displaced, joining 200,000 already forced from their homes by the months of Zionist attacks on southern Lebanon.
The Lebanese resistance has launched new weapons capable of striking the heart of the occupation in response to these Zionist massacres. Following the 17-18 September cyber-attacks, the northern front harassing the Zionists spread to occupied Haifa, engulfing the Kiryat Bialik settlement in flames. The Israeli Ramat David Airbase, which houses advanced fighter jets and other weaponry, was hit with dozens of rockets. Responding to the widening of Zionist attacks from 23 September, Hezbollah launched long-range Fadi and Qader missiles, hitting Israeli military instillations and settlements in Ilaniya, Dado, Zikhron and elsewhere. On 25 September, resistance operations included the targeting of the Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv, in recognition of the organisation’s role in the cyber massacre.
Lebanese forces have caused real problems for the Zionist occupation, forcing the evacuation of colonial outposts and hitting soldiers attempting to use them as bases, as in Manara, al-Abad, and Zaoura. As reported in FRFI 301, Hezbollah deployment of advanced surveillance drones has deepened Zionist commentators’ fears of a full-scale war, revealing the potential of the Lebanese resistance to wreak havoc upon Israeli normality. On 28 September the Zionist state began massing more troops in preparation for a ground assault on Lebanon. Israeli army Chief-of-Staff Herzi Halevi told them: ‘Your military boots…will enter enemy territory.’
While Western imperialist leaders fret at the dangers for them of a regional conflagration, they are also determined to weaken any independent state in the Middle East using their Zionist front men to do as much of the dirty work as possible on their behalf. US President Biden told ABC News that while ‘an all-out war is possible’, he wanted ‘a settlement that can fundamentally change the whole region’ to emerge. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for de-escalation ‘on both sides’ while making it clear that the Labour government stood on the side of the Israeli state. The regional ‘change’ the imperialists want is the defeat of Hezbollah, Hamas and other leading forces of resistance. Hezbollah is capable of damaging crucial infrastructure of the Zionist state and has so far offered an important distraction to its occupation forces bogged down in Gaza.
Gaza
Official figures showed that 41,272 Palestinians had been slaughtered in Gaza in the 11 months to 19 September, with over 95,500 maimed; the true figures are certainly much higher and approach 60,000. The Gaza Health Ministry has repeatedly published lists of the dead and on 16 September, released the names of 34,344 deaths that it had managed to register, pointing to its large backlog and huge numbers lost under the rubble. The list included 710 newborns, among 16,700 children murdered in the Zionist genocide, along with 2,995 elderly people.
While serious injuries proliferate under the Zionists’ Gaza terror, World Health Organisation spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic reports that more than 10,000 people need medical care outside Gaza – an impossibility as the Zionist state has isolated Gaza residents and controls the border with Egypt. The World Food Programme warns that two million people in Gaza now suffer from hunger and easily preventable diseases like polio and hepatitis A are rife among a population living in tents and rubble with insanitary facilities. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder observed that ‘Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children. It’s a living hell for everyone else.’ Such is the immense cost paid by Palestinians in Gaza as imperialism pins its hopes on Israel’s ability to pacify the region.
By mid-June, the Zionist state had carried out 3,300 bombing and shelling massacres, roughly 16 per day. There has been no let-up to the murderous onslaught. In one week, from 14-21 September, the Palestine Information Centre reported:
- Two civilians were killed and others injured by Israeli fire while looking for fuel in al-Azhar, western Gaza. An occupation airstrike killed an elderly couple in Sheikh Radwan, west of Gaza City. A gunboat fired on tents at Nuseirat refugee camp, injuring two people, while three other people were killed in an attack on a house in the camp.
- 20 Palestinians were killed in three massacres in different areas of the Gaza Strip.
- An Israeli massacre at a residential block in al-Bureij slaughtered 23 people and left 50 injured. At least eight people were killed during the shelling of a refugee shelter in al-Shujaiyya. A strike on a civilian car near Rafah beach killed one person and injured 12. Four were killed at Khirbet al-Adas, Rafah. Aerial attacks on the al-Hajj family in al-Zeitoun and the al-Quqa family in al-Shati’ refugee camp killed five people and injured at least 13 others.
- A Civil Defence member and his pregnant wife were killed in strikes on Jabaliya, northern Gaza. Five family members were massacred; overnight in bombings of homes in al-Sabra, Gaza City. Seven further families were killed in Jabaliya and the central Nuseirat camp.
- Seven members of the al-Sheikh family were murdered in Zionist bombings in al-Daraj, Gaza City and six people killed in shelling west of Nuseirat camp, where residential buildings including Ilia tower were targeted.
- 21 people, including 13 children, were massacred at al-Zeitoun UN school-turned shelter in Gaza City, in an attack that Hamas described accurately as a ‘war crime committed with US backup’.
Through this constant stream of massacres, the occupation is engaged in a cycle of attempted conquest, failure, and bloody collective punishment. We have reported previous Israeli claims of victory over Jabaliya, Khan Younis, Rafah and Gaza City, followed in turn by the re-emergence of resistance forces turning such claims to dust. Seeing the brutal killings of displaced, tent or school-dwelling refugees, but without the means to move, many Palestinians have bravely remained in their neighbourhoods, despite the destruction of their homes. On 11 July all residents of Gaza City were ordered to leave. Hundreds of thousands remain steadfast on the land.
The armed resistance in Gaza has continued to hit the occupation forces, with reports in the Hebrew press of airlifting operations to rescue the wounded and dead among the invading troops. Amidst growing Israeli discontent, these casualties are rarely reported but resistance organisations document guerrilla attacks, such as the killing of four occupation troops occupying a house in Rafah on 18 September. The resistance has developed effective anti-tank missiles, anti-personnel and anti-fortification shells and frequently seizes control of military vehicles and drones. In mid-July it was reported that Zionist forces were running out of ammunition and tanks, with over 500 destroyed or damaged by the resistance in the preceding months. Reports in the Israeli press calculate that at least 10,000 Israeli troops have suffered some form of injury at the hands of the resistance and hundreds have died. According to Ramzay Baroud, ‘The number is likely to be much higher, based on media leaks and information provided by Israeli hospitals. Additionally, thousands of Israeli soldiers have been declared “disabled” due to psychological trauma suffered during the war, according to Israel’s defence ministry.’ (Counterpunch 27 September 2024). Now, while calling up more reservists, the Israeli state is trying to bribe African asylum seekers to join the Israeli army as mercenary auxiliaries with the promise of settlement on the conclusion of their service.
There is no sign that any Palestinian faction has been seriously weakened in the genocidal onslaught, with left, Islamic and nationalist organisations working together to confront the occupation. For all of its US-funded advanced weaponry, the Zionist state is unable to claim any kind of victory in besieged Gaza. Zionist establishment figures see the Netanyahu government as unsustainable and believe that the real goal of the regime is to find and kill Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, and therefore falsely claim to have triumphed. The resistance rejects the Israeli proposal that Sinwar be given safe passage out of Gaza in return for a negotiated end to the war.
West Bank
A report by Save the Children showed that the number of children killed by Zionist forces in the occupied West Bank had doubled to 158 in the period October 2023-August 2024, compared to the preceding 10 months. Over 1,400 children were maimed during the same time. The number of West Bank Palestinians murdered by 9 September 2024 stood at 962, with over 6,000 injured. Including occupied Jerusalem, over 10,700 Palestinians had been arrested. On 17 September, the occupation arrested Abla Sa’adat, the wife of PFLP leader Ahmad Sa’adat, in al-Bireh as part of a targeted operation that arrested 26 PFLP activists over the space of the week. According to the PFLP, Abla Sa’adat’s detention signifies ‘a systematic policy targeting leaders of the national and women’s movement, as well as their families, in a desperate attempt to deter them from continuing their struggle against the occupation’.
UNRWA reported on 3 August that the occupied West Bank faced a ‘silent war’, with the situation ‘worsening daily’. It cited Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps suffering from water shortages and electricity outages as a result of Israeli military siege. Jenin, Balata, Tubas and other dense population centres have faced similar blockades, while brutal invasions target resistance fighters and unarmed Palestinians alike. Israel’s largest military operation in the West Bank since the early 2000s began on 28 August and continued for a fortnight. Jenin refugee camp suffered dozens killed, injured and arrested before the withdrawal of armed vehicles on 6 September. Hundreds of occupation troops, backed by drones, warplanes and bulldozers left a trail of destruction akin to Zionist attacks on Gaza. Tawfiq Qandil, an 83-year-old man, was shot and left to die in the streets before armoured vehicles ran over his dead body. Houses were blown up, food, water, medicine and ambulances blocked from entry. Yet the invasion ended in failure and thousands of Jenin residents took to the streets alongside armed resistance factions to celebrate the withdrawal of Zionist forces. On 15 September, resistance forces returned fire on PA headquarters in Jenin, responding to the shooting of bullets and teargas at Palestinians, and the pursuit of resistance fighters by the PA.
There are contradictions between both the internationally and nationally stated positions of the Israeli government and its de facto mission to totally absorb the West Bank. In years of imperialist-controlled ‘peace’ negotiations, the Zionist ruling class paid lip service to the so-called two-state solution. When Netanyahu appeared before journalists in occupied Jerusalem on 1 September to explain his ‘Philadelphi’ plan, he did so arrogantly brandishing a map that erased the West Bank, showing only Israel and Gaza. The patchwork collection of Zionist extremists and supposed pragmatists that make up the Netanyahu cabinet belies the myth that the regime sees negotiations as a solution. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich favours the complete conquest of historic Palestine and has driven a process whereby power over the West Bank is transferred from military to ‘civilian’ occupiers. In reality, this means giving free rein to settlers to expand their West Bank colonies and act as vigilantes in terrorising indigenous Palestinians.
Both Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir participated in a conference in January organised by the extremist Nahala organisation, with the former telling the crowd of baying settlers that ‘settlements bring security’. The conference called for the building of settlements in Gaza and, although the resistance has proven this demand to be an ultra-Zionist pipe dream, the military Judaisation of the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem and historic Palestine remains a real threat. This includes the West Bank demarcation of Area C, nominally controlled by the PA according to the 1993 Oslo ‘peace’ deal.
On 16 September, fascist settlers – violent expansionists – invaded the Arab al-Ka’abneh Elementary School in Ma’arjat, northwest of Jericho, beating students and teachers with clubs and crowbars, leading to a number of hospitalisations. Zionists use extreme violence against Palestinians while seizing the land. In April, settlers brutalised residents and livestock at al-Auja Spring, northern Jericho, before establishing an illegal outpost in the area. Dumping garbage in the local water supply and attacking Palestinians with the assistance of the occupation army, settlers act with impunity, while PA forces use Jericho prison to incarcerate West Bank resistance activists. Standing against both the Zionist colonisers and the imperialist-sponsored PA security forces, resistance brigades are leading the fightback in the West Bank. This situation sparks fears among the Israeli ruling class; the Jerusalem Post voiced them in an article on 18 September, stating that ‘Israeli policies under the troika of Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben Gvir may lead to a rebellion in the West Bank, worsen Israel’s international standing, and further destabilise the region.’
Yemen
The involvement of Ansarallah-led Yemeni forces in the confrontation began with the hijacking of Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea from 19 November 2023 and quickly escalated. A month later, Gideon Golber, CEO of the Israeli Eilat Port in colonised southern Palestine, reported an 85% decline in port activity, catalysed by Yemeni resistance rockets and operations targeting commercial shipping. The entry of British warplanes from January, launching attacks from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, saw British and US imperialism target ‘Houthi (Ansarallah) locations in Yemen’, which the then British Defence Secretary Grant Shapps termed ‘self-defence’. This meant both a continuation of the Saudi and UAE-led genocidal war on Yemen and a recognition that imperialism’s allies had failed in suppressing Yemeni resistance. By June, Golber declared Eilat bankrupt, revealing that the port had been inactive for eight months.
In contrast to resistance actions that limit civilian losses, Israeli airstrikes on Al-Hodeida port on 20 July hit a civilian power station and oil tank, leaving around 80 people with severe burns. More recently, on 10 September, British and US planes combined to bomb Aisha Girls’ School, killing two students and wounding seven, and continued to strike residential areas of southern Yemen in the days to follow. Speaking at the UN two days later, Labour’s UN ambassador James Kariuki said nothing of this brutal attack on civilians, having the audacity instead to call on ‘the Houthis to cease their dangerous and illegal attacks on maritime shipping’.
Responding directly to Zionist and imperialist aggression, on 15 September Ansarallah forces successfully hit the Tel Aviv suburbs with a hypersonic ballistic missile, which travelled 2,040km before hitting its target in just 11.5 minutes. The operation came hours after Netanyahu decided to expand attacks on Lebanon. Ansarallah announced that Yemeni operations had reached a new stage, in ‘response to criminal aggression on the city of Al-Hodeida, as well as [in] continued support for the oppressed Palestinian people’. The operation saw ‘two million Zionists run to shelters for the first time in the enemy’s history’. An Israeli military statement admitted that ‘several interception attempts [were] made by the Arrow and Iron Dome aerial defence systems’.
The same week, Yemeni forces shot down three US MQ-9 drones worth $32m each. Speaking to al-Mayadeen, Yemeni information minister Hashem Sharaf al-Din said that, ‘Today, we live in a state of freedom, dignity and pride, and we are the loudest voice confronting imperialism.’ The developing capacity of Ansarallah-led Yemeni forces and deepening ties with Palestinian and regional resistance expose the abject failure of imperialist intervention in the region.
Hamas leader Sinwar sent a letter on 15 September to Ansarallah leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, praising the Yemeni resistance for ‘surpassing all layers and systems of defence and interception, to reignite the intensity of the battle of al-Aqsa Flood and its impact on the heart of Tel Aviv once again’. Speaking of the capabilities of the Gaza liberation forces, Sinwar said that, ‘We have prepared ourselves for a prolonged war of attrition that will break the enemy’s political will, just as the al-Aqsa Flood broke its military will.’ Palestinian resistance represents an inspiring and necessary cause for humanity.
Regional confrontation threatens global war
Though favouring ceasefires in words, US, European and British imperialism have set no restraints on their Zionist ally in the Middle East and have backed the genocide by every means. Bombing Yemen, enabling Israeli massacres in Gaza and refusing to sanction Zionist institutions in the wake of Israeli atrocities in Lebanon, they ultimately share the goal of quelling the fires of anti-imperialist struggle. As much as the naked barbarity of an uncontrolled Zionist genocide may appear beyond the pale for ruling classes trading in claims to represent human rights, Israel was put there for a reason, as the defender of imperialist interests in the region. This underpins the position of the British ruling class, led once again by the warmongering Labour Party. When, on 18 September, the UN general assembly voted in favour of sanctions on the Zionist state and called for an end to the occupation within a year, Britain abstained. Earlier in the month, Britain had suspended 30 arms export licences to the Israeli state – while maintaining 320 others. Once again, a Labour government is tipping the balance towards militarism and war.
Britain’s current position is to call for a ‘full and immediate ceasefire’ in Gaza and a ‘de-escalation between Israel and Hezbollah’. Both ‘demands’ are consistent with unlimited political and economic backing for the Zionist state. The call for a ceasefire ‘on both sides’ represents a demand for the Palestinian resistance to lay down its arms, while leaving the murderous occupation of Gaza and historic Palestine unchallenged. Likewise, the right of the Lebanese people to defend themselves is rejected by this narrative. This continual talk about ceasefires ignores the Zionist targeting of Palestinian and Lebanese negotiators. Assassinated in Tehran on 31 July, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh had been leading the Palestinian push for a negotiated end to the occupation of Gaza. As Israeli warplanes massacred over 600 in Lebanon, Foreign Secretary Lammy used a UN speech on 25 September to launch a long diatribe against ‘Putin’s imperialism’ in Ukraine and condemned Russian presence at the UN. Lammy remained silent while Netanyahu stood on the same international platform parading anti-Arab racism and ranting about Israel’s supposed right to bomb any country it likes. Unlike Ukraine, which receives arms, training, political support and special refugee statuses from western imperialism, Palestine represents the cause of the oppressed, in opposition to imperialist plans for the wider world.
Even before the Israeli state took a renewed step towards regional war with the airstrike that killed Nasrallah, the British foreign office had also been ratcheting up pressure on the ineffective Lebanese government to accept the entry of its own occupying forces purportedly for civilian purposes. In a memorandum sent in late August, the Labour government requested ‘facilities to deploy its army in Lebanon for the purposes of evacuating citizens, and in the event that Lebanon needs humanitarian assistance from Britain’. British forces are involved in ongoing occupations of Iraq and Syria, both sites of pro-Palestine armed movements, while Britain trains and maintains alliances with reactionary regimes from Saudi Arabia to Jordan. As we go to press, the consequences of Zionism’s bellicose stance for the region are unclear. What we do know is that whatever the Israeli state does, its imperialist allies will fall in step to support it. Fighting in solidarity with the Palestinian, Lebanese and Yemeni peoples must therefore mean building the anti-imperialist movement in the heartlands of this global system.
Victory to the resistance!
Free Palestine!
Louis Brehony
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 302 October/November 2024
