From Gaza to Lebanon
Israel killed more than 30 Lebanese and wounded thousands last week when it detonated explosives hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies. Doctors there reported unusually high numbers of eye and limb amputations, depending on whether the victim was holding the device to their ear or had it in their pocket. Whether the victims were Hezbollah fighters is irrelevant. Israel couldn’t know the location of each device at the moment of detonation, or who was using the device or who was within the blast radius. Which means that Israel didn’t give a damn whom it killed and injured. The indiscriminate violence was the point and it was a war crime.
Israel has created two “buffer zones” in Gaza — a kilometer-wide zone extending the length of Gaza’s western border with Israel, and the 6.5-km-long Netzarim road that separates northern and southern Gaza. The western border zone alone comprises 16% of Gaza’s territory. Israel also insists that it will take control of the Philadelphi corridor at Gaza’s border with Egypt during a ceasefire. Palestinians have been warning that Israel is creating these “buffer zones” as a prelude to recolonizing and Judaizing the Gaza Strip. So when Israel says its goal is to drive Hezbollah from the Israel-Lebanon border and create a buffer zone in southern Lebanon so Israelis can return to their homes in northern Israel, the deeper goal is to create the conditions to enable Israel to reoccupy southern Lebanon, as it did from 1982 to 2000.
It’s not a coincidence that most of the 200,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon live precisely in the area that Israel wants for a “buffer zone.” Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982 to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization. Al Jazeera recalled what happened:
The PLO withdrew from Lebanon by September 1, 1982. Assurances were provided by the United States and a multi-national force that the remaining Palestinian refugees and civilians would be protected.
Two weeks later, the Israeli military besieged Sabra and Shatila [Palestinian refugee camps south of Beirut] and provided cover for their allies, a right-wing Lebanese militia called the Phalange, to carry out the mass killings.
The killing continued for 43 hours, from 6pm on Thursday, 16 September, until 1pm on Saturday, 18 September.
While accurate figures on the number of people killed are difficult to ascertain, estimates have put the death toll at between 2,000-3,500 civilians.
Testimonies from the mass killing describe horrific acts of slaughter, mutilation, rape and mass graves. Images from the aftermath were aired on television worldwide and caused global outrage.
The United States proclaimed its “war on terror” as self-defense against an “axis of evil” (North Korea, Iran, and Iraq), but it was ideological cover for enforcing U.S. geopolitical hegemony. Here’s part of President George W. Bush’s axis-of-evil speech in 2002:
States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.
Similarly, Israel claims that its escalating violence is self defense against Iran and its “proxies” in Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Reuters reported:
Israel says its conflict with Hezbollah, like its war in Gaza against Hamas, is part of a wider regional confrontation with Iran, which sponsors both groups as well as armed movements in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.
In the face of Israel’s flagrant effort to draw the United States into its war in Lebanon, the Biden Administration urges “restraint” on both sides, but keeps the weapons flowing to one side.
Hezbollah and the Houthis had said that they would cease attacking Israel when a Gaza ceasefire is implemented. Hamas agreed to the ceasefire proposed by the Biden Administration in May. Israel has rejected all proposals, and now we know why — the genocide in Gaza, the unfolding genocide in the West Bank, and now the impending war in Lebanon, are elements of Israel’s strategy to use unlimited U.S. military and diplomatic support to expand its borders, to Judaize the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and to entrench itself as the imperial cop on the Middle East beat.
Until this past week, I believed that a ceasefire in Gaza — ending the war and returning the hostages from both sides — would reduce the chance of all-out war in Lebanon. But in its barbaric attack on Lebanese civilians this past week, Israel seems to be provoking Hezbollah, a much more powerful military force than Hamas. Because the U.S. is looking over Israel’s shoulder, and for domestic reasons, Hezbollah does not want a war, but will it continue to show restraint?