Israel’s war on Lebanon: ‘a mortal threat to the whole region’

Joseph Daher is a Swiss-Syrian academic and activist based in Switzerland. He is the author of Syria After the Uprising: The Political Economy of State Resilience, Hezbollah: The Political Economy of Lebanon’s Party of God and Palestine and Marxism. He founded the blog Syria Freedom Forever. He spoke to Red Flag’s Simone McDonnell. This interview has been edited for length.

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Firstly, could you describe the scale of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and the impacts on communities inside the country?

The Israeli occupation army (IOA) has imposed a deadly escalation, with the support of the United States, against Lebanon since mid-September 2024, taking the form of a destructive war. This escalation began with the explosion of communication devices used by Hezbollah members, civilians and military, killing at least 37 people and wounding nearly 3,000. It continued with massive bombing campaigns aimed at assassinating senior Hezbollah military and political figures, but also killing more than a thousand civilians and causing the forced displacement of more than a million people, while an estimated between 300,000 and 450,000 have crossed the border into Syria.

The IOA has also launched ground offensives on the Lebanese-Israeli border, causing massive destruction. According to estimates by the Lebanese Ministry of Health in the beginning of November, more than 3,000 people had been killed, including 185 children, since October 2023. Another 13,492 have been injured, including 1,200 children. These numbers are, unfortunately, most probably an underestimate.

Israel has justified these merciless bombing campaigns against civilian areas in Lebanon by stating that Hezbollah members or infrastructure were present, just as it did in Gaza. However, for Israel, all civilians in these areas are considered Hezbollah supporters and, by extension, “terrorists”. Western media, which have aided and abetted this war, echo Israeli propaganda by continuously describing these areas as Hezbollah (or Hamas) strongholds.

Moreover, the IOA carried out numerous strikes against Hezbollah civilian institutions. This has included several branches of the Al-Qard Al-Hassan organisation and warehouses intended for the packaging of goods before their distribution to Hezbollah’s supermarket chain, Al-Sajjad. It has also assassinated several rescue workers from the Islamic Health Committee and members of the Al-Manar TV chain.

Meanwhile, we can see that civilians and non-Hezbollah civilian infrastructure have continuously been the target of Israeli bombing. The total number of health workers and rescue workers killed by Israel stood at 163 at the end of October and 272 injured, while the Israeli occupation army attacked 55 hospitals, 36 of which were directly targeted, leading to the forced closure of eight hospitals. Israel also targeted 158 ambulances, 57 fire trucks and 15 emergency vehicles.

The Israeli occupation army has also attacked the ancient city of Tyre, a UNESCO-designated World Heritage site, and killed several Lebanese soldiers in a strike in southern Lebanon, all while continuing to defy international calls for a ceasefire.

Entire neighbourhoods were destroyed and razed by IOA in 37 villages in South Lebanon along with the houses they contained, and more than 40,000 homes were completely demolished in a three-kilometer-deep area extending from Naqoura (Tyre) to the outskirts of Khiam (Marjeyoun).

Prior to the eruption of the war in mid-September 2024, the Israeli occupation army had already destroyed civilian infrastructure and made large areas of farmland in southern Lebanon unsuitable for cultivation. The Israeli army conducted a veritable scorched-earth policy in the Lebanese border regions.

What is the context for Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and what do you consider are the overarching plans of Netanyahu?

Israel’s bombing campaigns in Lebanon, supported by the US, have been taking place amid its continuous genocide in Gaza and annexation of the West Bank. They have spared no-one.

Israel’s war on Palestine and Lebanon is not to promote “peace” or “liberate” local populations from Hezbollah or Hamas, but to pursue its historical objectives as a settler colonial state of eliminating Palestinians through a continued Nakba and consolidating a regional order serving US imperial interests. These objectives are a mortal threat to the whole region, with no exception.

Israel’s objectives in Lebanon are not limited to the return of displaced Israeli citizens to the north of the country and not even to the withdrawal of Hezbollah’s military capacities south of the Litani River, as mandated in the initial phase of UN Resolution 1701 (2006). Instead, Israel is looking to fatally weaken Hezbollah, both militarily and politically, and through it, the entire so-called axis of resistance led by Iran.

More widely, Netanyahu’s plans are clear: a new Middle East that bows down to US and Israel, forced to submit under harsh violence. This strategy does not include any prospect of democracy and justice for Syrians or the wider region’s popular classes, quite the opposite.

What is the US’s role in supporting Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah and Lebanon?

The US has supported Israel’s war on Lebanon to weaken Hezbollah. It no longer even rhetorically calls for a ceasefire, and has celebrated Israel’s assassination of key Hezbollah leaders, including Hassan Nasrallah. Reflecting this orientation, at the beginning of October 2024, US Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller described the war in Lebanon as an “opportunity” to change the country politically. He added that Washington wanted the Lebanese people to have “the ability to elect a new president [and] the ability to break the stalemate that Hezbollah has had over the country”.

Since 7 October, the US has acted in the most hypocritical way. Despite rhetorical calls to de-escalate the situation, it has in practice allowed Israel to act with impunity. It has provided Israel with all the military equipment it needs to carry out its genocidal war, occupy and colonise Palestinian lands, launch a war in Lebanon, bomb Yemen and Syria, conduct assassinations throughout the region and escalate military operations against Iran.

The US has spent more than $18 billion on military aid to Israel since October 2023. It has also increased its military presence in the region, escalating from 34,000 military personnel in the Middle East to about 50,000 in August 2024, when two aircraft carriers were in the region. The current total is around 43,000. And we shouldn’t forget that last August, Washington agreed to sell a further $20 billion worth of arms to Israel. The bulk of this sum will go toward a contract for 50 F-15A fighter jets, scheduled to arrive in 2029—a move that signals the US’s long-term commitment to Israel.

The US and other Western imperialist powers have deputised Israel to be their local police force mobilised against threats to Western interests in the region, in particular any revolutionary movements that might emerge which would challenge US control over the area’s strategic energy reserves. Because Israel is a state predicated on the displacement of a people with deep roots on the land Israel claims, a reality which arouses anger and hostility among the region’s masses, Israel is forced to rely on imperial patronage and make itself such an instrument against radical change in the Middle East.

How should we understand Hezbollah’s political project and the divided responses to Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon?

The vastly differing views of Hezbollah were starkly reflected in the scenes that followed Nasrallah’s assassination. On one side, the party’s members, supporters and allies expressed sorrow, while at the same time images were shared across social media of Syrians from the opposition-controlled north-western areas distributing sweets in celebration. Some supporters of the Syrian revolution also expressed joy over the massive Israeli bombing of Dahieh (southern Beirut).

These reactions can be largely attributed to Hezbollah’s role in having assisted the Syrian regime in crushing the uprising [between 2011 and 2018], laying siege to cities like Madaya, forcibly displacing civilians and various other violations of human rights against civilian populations. In addition to this, a lot of Syrians recalled when it was Hezbollah’s members and supporters who distributed sweets in Dahieh in the summer of 2013, following the capture of the city of Al-Qusayr in Homs province by the Syrian army in alliance with Hezbollah against Syrian armed opposition groups.

These different reactions are connected to Hezbollah’s political evolution, but moreover its political orientation and strategy on the national and regional scenes. Initially, the establishment and development of Hezbollah was connected with different elements of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and Israel’s subsequent occupation of the country until 2000 as well as political dynamics in, and regional designs of, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and socioeconomic evolution of the Lebanese Shia population. The party was established as an Islamic political group, based in Shia-populated areas in Lebanon, with an emphasis on armed resistance against Israel. An important part of Hezbollah’s legitimacy in its early days was the military struggle it waged against the Israeli occupation of Lebanon.

Since the 1990s, Hezbollah has become the most prominent voice for the Shia population within Lebanon, surpassing the other main Shia party, Amal, in the process. It has reached this position of prominence by providing welfare and services to the Shia population through its own organisations and institutions, and as the main actor in the military resistance against Israel. Both efforts were made possible by financial support from Iran.

Since its founding, Hezbollah’s base has widened and evolved. It has become a party with a membership and cadre increasingly dominated by a fraction of the Shia bourgeoisie and upper middle class, particularly in Beirut. This is a significant departure from the party’s roots among religious clerics and the popular classes.

In the capital’s southern suburbs, many wealthy families and most of the merchants have become reliable supporters of Hezbollah. As the party has grown, it helped give rise to a new segment of the bourgeoisie connected to it through Iranian capital. Meanwhile, the rest of the Shia portion of the bourgeoisie, whether in Lebanon or in the diaspora, has come increasingly under Hezbollah’s umbrella.

Since the 2006 war [when Hezbollah repelled an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon], Hezbollah’s resistance against Israel, which had been at the core of its identity, has increasingly been subordinated to the other political objectives of the party and its sponsor Iran.

While Hezbollah is a Lebanese actor with partial domestic political autonomy, the party is also the main force serving and participating in Iranian regional interests. This role has been essential to the expansion and consolidation of Iran’s network of regional allies, consisting of state and non-state actors, and especially so after the assassination of the head of the Quds force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Qassem Soleimani, in 2020.

In other words, Hezbollah’s resistance against Israel, which stood at the core of its identity at the time the party was established, had been increasingly subordinated to the national political objectives of the party, its allies and its sponsor Iran. Between 2006 and 2023, the weapons of the “resistance” were increasingly diverted from the struggle against Israel and used inside and outside of Lebanon instead—especially in Syria but also to attack Lebanese political parties, for example in May 2008. [In May 2008, the organisation took up arms against other Lebanese political factions and even invaded certain neighbourhoods in West Beirut as well as regions, like the Chouf. This came after a Lebanese government announcement that it wanted to dismantle Hezbollah’s communications network. The violence ended within a week with more than 80 deaths and 250 wounded after the government cancelled its decrees.]

Rhetorical support for the “axis of resistance” and the armed apparatus of the party have been used by Hezbollah to justify its policies and actions, including its military involvement in Syria. This did not and does not mean that Hezbollah’s military component has not been playing a role against Israel’s aggression and wars, as it has since 7 October, but it does mean that Hezbollah’s forces have been increasingly used for other purposes, especially after the 2006 war.

Hezbollah has become increasingly politically and socially isolated outside Lebanon’s Shia population. A survey conducted in July 2024 showed that support for Hezbollah outside the Shia community was one of the lowest in its history, with only 30 percent of the Lebanese population trusting the party. This finding sits in the background of the party’s involvement in a number of sectarian clashes with different religious communities in Lebanon over the past few years. The most important one occurred in 2021, following a protest by members from Hezbollah and its ally Amal against Judge Tarek Bitar, who was in charge of the investigation into the explosion at the port of Beirut on 4 August 2020.

Street fighting broke out in the neighbouring Tayouneh district of southern Beirut. These clashes pitted Shia fighters from Hezbollah and Amal against fighters stationed in Christian neighbourhoods, most probably members of the Lebanese Forces, a Christian far-right movement. This street battle left seven people dead and 32 wounded, raising fears of a new civil war. Within Lebanon, sectarian political parties opposed to Hezbollah, but also wider sectors of the population, view Hezbollah as the main obstacle to achieving justice for the port explosion. Even the party’s former political allies, such as the Free Patriotic Movement, have been increasingly critical of it.

The broad-based popular support that Hezbollah enjoyed in 2006 is absent today. Hezbollah’s military intervention to support the Syrian regime to crush the country’s popular uprising after 2011 also undermined its popularity on both a national and regional level.

At the same time, Hezbollah has also been amongst the parties considered responsible for the economic and financial crisis of 2019 as it has been part of every national unity government since 2005. Hezbollah’s opposition to the Lebanese uprising of October 2019, and the rallying of its supporters and members to intimidate demonstrators in different localities and to attack them in downtown Beirut as well as in the city of Nabatieh (southern Lebanon), or in the Beqqa, also reduced the prestige of the party.

For all of these reasons, Hezbollah has grown more and more politically and socially isolated outside its Shia popular base. Rather than being seen as a national resistance figure, Nasrallah was also increasingly perceived as a sectarian “Zaim”, defending his party’s own political interests and those of authoritarian regimes, like Syria and Iran.

Therefore, the main reasons for Hezbollah’s growing isolation have been its defence of the sectarian and neoliberal political system in Lebanon, and serving in the interests of Iran, including through supporting the Syrian regime.

While the main strength of Hezbollah has been to build a strong and disciplined organisation, and not a “one man show” despite the cult-like support for Nasrallah, the party’s ability to widen its base is very much restricted by its political strategy and orientation. Hezbollah has not been engaged in building a counter-hegemonic project that challenges the Lebanese sectarian and neoliberal system. In fact, it has actively sustained it by becoming one of its main defenders.

Moreover, the party has been acting as the leading nexus of Iranian influence and interests in the region, particularly following the eruption of uprisings in Syria and across the Middle East and North Africa since 2011, which also promotes a neoliberal authoritarian order opposed to the emancipation and liberation of the popular classes.

In other words, Hezbollah, like other regional political actors involved in the resistance against Israel, is incapable of building a large movement linking democratic and social issues, opposing all imperialist and sub-imperialist forces, while promoting social transformation from below through the construction of movements in which the popular classes are the agents of their emancipation.

Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have issued pointed messages to groups inside Lebanon that oppose Hezbollah, encouraging them to incite support for Israel’s attacks. What is the purpose of this?

Indeed, Israeli politicians, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee, have attempted to promote sectarian tensions among the Lebanese to provoke internal strife or even civil war through incendiary statements. In his speech on 8 October this year, for example, Netanyahu sent a message to the Lebanese people, warning them that they could face “destruction like Gaza” if they did not act now to “save Lebanon” from Hezbollah. He addressed in particular “every mother and father in Lebanon,” saying “There is a better solution for your children. Stand up and take back your country from the hands of Hezbollah terrorists, supported by Iran. You have a unique opportunity to save Lebanon before it turns into destruction and suffering like we are seeing in Gaza.” Similarly, Israel purposefully bombed areas that welcomed internally displaced people from majority inhabited Shia areas to encourage sectarian tensions. One example is the strike on the village of Aitou last October that killed more than 20 internally displaced persons. The village is located in the district of Zgharta and is inhabited mostly by Christians.

How do you think socialists should approach the question of resistance by Hezbollah to Israel’s attacks?

Attention to the strategic constraints faced by Hezbollah, as well as its political limitations, should not prevent socialists from maintaining that Palestinians and Lebanese people have the right to resist Israel’s racist, colonial, apartheid state violence, including through military resistance. This includes defending the right of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, which are the main actors involved in the armed confrontation with Israel’s occupation army, to resist.

Israel’s war against Palestine and Lebanon is part of its attempt to pursue its historical objectives as a settler-colonial state serving Western imperialism. Central to this is the elimination of the Palestinian populations through a continued Nakba and the consolidation of a regional order serving US imperial interests. These objectives are, without exception, a mortal threat to the whole region.

Defending the right of people to resist oppression should not, however, be confused with political support for the specific political projects of Hamas or Hezbollah in their respective societies, or lead us to imagine these parties will be able to deliver Palestinian liberation or that they have a strategy that could lead to it.

Just as all critiques of these political parties shouldn’t be confused with “promoting” Israeli propaganda or siding with US allies. If support is uncritical, it becomes a passive form of solidarity limited to celebrating Hezbollah, and often its main sponsor Iran. Such a narrow perspective becomes an obstacle to building a wider popular resistance against Israel’s war on Lebanon and/or attempts to establish regional and international solidarity.

Finally, socialists must continue to denounce the complicit role of Western ruling classes in supporting not only the racist, settler-colonial, apartheid state of Israel and its genocidal war against the Palestinians, but also the Israeli war against Lebanon. They must participate in movements pressuring those ruling classes to break off any political, economic, and military relations with Tel Aviv, in line with Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns. No one should expect Western ruling classes to readily change their political positions regarding Israel. Never in history have the ruling classes granted genuine democracy or justice except under pressure from working-class mobilisation from below.

What sort of political project do you think is needed to confront Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians and now attacks on Lebanon, and to confront its role more broadly in the Middle East?

The divergence of views over Nasrallah’s assassination has demonstrated the glaring absence of an independent democratic and progressive bloc that is able to organise and clearly oppose Israel’s wars as well as Western imperialist interests, while also affirming solidarity with all oppressed peoples in the region against all authoritarian regimes and political orders.

The main task for the left and progressive actors in the region must be to build a strategy based on a regional solidarity from below. This requires opposing the coalition of Western powers and Israel on one side, and regional authoritarian powers as well as the political forces linked to them on the other. This strategy, based on class struggle from below, is the only way to win liberation for the popular classes of the Middle East from regimes held up by the imperial power of the US, Russia and China.

These political actors represent, of course, a differentiated danger and threats (depending on the circumstances and the countries), but it is essential to constitute a left and progressive bloc independent of these forces emphasising solidarity with the struggle for the liberation of the Palestinians and the emancipation of all the exploited and oppressed in the region.