By Fabio Bosco
On November 26, the State of Israel agreed to a 60-day ceasefire with Lebanon, brokered by representatives of U.S. and French imperialism. During this period, Israeli troops will withdraw from southern Lebanon. Hezbollah committed to a ceasefire and the withdrawal of its military bases from southern Lebanon, with the Litani River as a border. French troops will reinforce UNIFIL (a UN military force located in southern Lebanon and responsible for preventing any action against Israel, whether by Hezbollah or any other political or military force). In addition, the United States will increase funding for the Lebanese national army and negotiate with Saudi Arabia and Qatar to do the same. Since the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon in 2005, the United States has become the main sponsor of the Lebanese army, investing about $2.5 billion since then. This ceasefire agreement follows the foundations of UN Security Council resolution 1701 of 2006.
Israel’s main demand was not met. Israel wanted the unfettered right to attack Lebanese territory. This absurd demand was replaced by an international committee led by the United States that will receive reports of breaches of the agreement, either by the launching of any device across the border, or by the presence of Israeli troops or Lebanese militias in southern Lebanon. These complaints will be transmitted to the Lebanese army, which must guarantee the signed agreement. Other Israeli demands: the disarmament of Hezbollah and the transformation of southern Lebanon into a buffer zone are also not guaranteed, despite the US commitment to seek their implementation.
Israeli aggression in Lebanon was at an impasse. There were two alternatives: to qualitatively increase military force and occupy southern Lebanon, or to sign this ceasefire agreement with its main allies as guarantors: US and French imperialism.
Several factors weighed in on the Israeli decision: the fear of a growing number of daily casualties of soldiers in an army prepared to commit cowardly genocides but not for ground combat (more than 50 soldiers were killed by the Lebanese resistance, in addition to a well-known Zionist archaeologist who wanted to prove that southern Lebanon was part of greater Israel); the embarrassing situation of the more than 60,000 Israelis evacuated 400 days ago, that cannot return to the north of occupied Palestine; the possibility that Hezbollah would increase attacks with drones, rockets and missiles that could easily reach Tel Aviv, accelerating the exodus of Israelis abroad; the likely growth of the protests of the liberal Zionist opposition; the need to recompose military forces while waiting for Trump’s green light for an attack on Iran; and Joe Biden’s bribery of handing over $680 million worth of weapons in exchange for the ceasefire agreement (according to the Financial Times).
Hezbollah accepted the agreement, a decision that is consistent with its position since the Palestinian offensive on October 7, 2023. Hezbollah, like Iran, has always avoided a full-scale military conflict against Israel. Its attitude has always been to react on a smaller scale to Zionist military aggression.
Coordinated action with the Palestinian resistance?
Palestinian preparation for the Oct. 7 offensive included several attempts to take coordinated military action with Hezbollah and the Iranian regime since the first half of 2021. However, these efforts failed due to Iranian and Hezbollah’s policy of avoiding large-scale conflicts against Israel. Therefore, the Palestinian resistance had to launch the attack in isolation, which facilitated the Zionist genocidal aggression in Palestine.
After the offensive of October 7, Hezbollah decided to carry out symbolic action, a low-intensity attack, against Shebaa farms, Lebanese territory occupied by the State of Israel. Since then, the Zionists have carried out increasingly intense aggression in various parts of Lebanese territory, while Hezbollah has limited itself to low-intensity attacks on the border strip in the north of occupied Palestine.
Two moments of Israeli aggression
Faced with Hezbollah’s rocket fire at Shebaa, the State of Israel decided to prioritise genocide in Gaza and bombard southern Lebanon with targeted attacks on Beirut, Sour, Nabatieh and Baalbek. In addition, it released white phosphorus throughout the border strip of southern Lebanon. White phosphorus is an incendiary weapon banned from use in populated areas, which Israel pledged to ban in 2013.1
In September 2024, the Zionists military offensive in Lebanon changed qualitatively. The detontaion of communication devices, assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah’s top brass, heavy shelling of several Lebanese cities, which razed Dahiyeh, south of the capital, and destroyed more than 100,000 residences.
On 1 October, Israel began a ground offensive accompanied by demands for the surrender of the Lebanese state, which would have to give up its sovereignty to allow the free incursion of Israeli troops and bombardments. This offensive was openly supported by US imperialism, by political, diplomatic, financial and military means. More than a million Lebanese had to leave their homes for the capital and the north of the country. More than 3,800 Lebanese were killed and more than 15,000 injured by Israeli attacks.2
The decision to launch this genocidal aggression against Lebanon was based primarily on the need to quiet the growing protests of liberal Zionists who threatened to overthrow the Netanyahu government, whose artificial majority of only four seats presented growing internal frictions.3 A genocidal offensive on Lebanon had broad support in Israeli Jewish public opinion. Second, there was an immediate issue – the return of some 60,000 evacuated Israelis, held in empty hotels due to the paralysis of Israel’s powerful tourism industry – and a strategic issue: the reduction of Hezbollah’s military power, which had multiplied and become more sophisticated since the last Israeli military aggression in 2006.
However, this offensive reached an impasse: escalation or ceasefire. In practice, the Zionists recognized the difficulties in obtaining a decisive military victory and opted for the second alternative.
In the words of Israeli political analyst Ameet Makhol:
“This could be the first rational decision, which recognizes the limits of its power, that the army is exhausted and overburdened, and that soldiers are very stressed, particularly reservists.”4
Pax Americana?
The ceasefire agreement was brokered by U.S. Representative Amos Hochstein. Their goal is the same as Israel’s – to impose a qualitative shift of power in Lebanon by marginalizing Hezbollah – but the means are different. Hochstein is working towards the election of a new president and the appointment of a new prime minister in tune with American and Zionist interests. His presidential candidate is General Joseph Aoun, and the Lebanese parliament could make this decision as early as this week. Another of Hochstein’s objectives is a qualitative strengthening of the Lebanese army to enable the transformation of southern Lebanon into a buffer area and prepare the conditions for the disarmament of Hezbollah.
Hochstein has in his favor the strength of Western imperialism (albeit in decline), the confessional divisions imposed by the Lebanese regime, and the unpopularity of Hezbollah among non-Shiite communities. Against him are the immense difficulty of forming a Lebanese army with the strength and readiness to confront Hezbollah; the unpopularity of Israeli aggression among the vast majority of Lebanese; the large Shiite community (representing between 31 and 39% of the resident population) where Hezbollah maintains its social base; the majority of the influential Lebanese Shiite bourgeoisie; and Hezbollah’s capacity for reconstruction, and both its social services and of its military capacity. Historical experience has shown that the Israeli aggressions of 1982 and 2006 failed to overcome these obstacles. Since then, Hezbollah was weakened by joining the forces that drowned the Syrian revolution in blood and became the main opponent of the 2019 uprising against the confessional regime, known to the Lebanese as the “October Revolution”.5
Added to these factors internal to Lebanon are factors on the world stage, such as the economy, the inter-imperialist conflict between the United States and China, the weakening of European imperialism, the unpopularity of the genocide in Gaza among the masses of the whole world. All of this makes any plan for stabilization in Lebanon and reconfiguration of the Middle East extremely challenging, to say the least.
In any case, the Zionist withdrawal was celebrated in the streets of Beirut and other Lebanese cities, despite the loss of more than 3,800 lives, 15,000 wounded and widespread destruction whose reconstruction will cost billions of dollars and take several years, in a country that has already been in an economic depression for the last 5 years. But whether the ceasefire holds will depend on the level of dissatisfaction among the Zionist settlers (55% of Israelis opposed to the ceasefire), and on the policy of the future Trump administration.
On the Iranian side, the regime’s efforts to normalize relations with Western imperialism are increasing by resuming nuclear deals to ease the heavy sanctions imposed on the country. Preemptively, the Iranian regime established military relations with Russia. Today, most of Iran’s production of Shaheed drones and Fathi missiles are delivered to Russia to promote genocide in Ukraine. In return, the Iranian regime expects Russia to provide S-400 air defense systems and Sukhoi Su-35 aircraft, strengthening Iran’s defense against potential Israeli attacks with U.S. support.
On the Palestinian side, there is nothing to commemorate. The ceasefire in Lebanon means that the Zionist genocidaires will be able to concentrate efforts on the ethnic cleansing operation in northern Gaza, which is going on full steam ahead, as well as on preparations for the annexation of the West Bank. In this way, Netanyahu diverts the discontent of the Zionist settlers over the ceasefire in Lebanon towards the expansion of genocide and the colonization of Palestinian lands.
Today, the Palestinian people count only on the Arab working class and youth, who do not accept the genocide imposed by the Zionists, and need to overthrow the Arab regimes in the process of normalization with Israel, including the Lebanese regime. The Palestinian people are also counting on the working class and youth of the whole world to maintain and deepen international solidarity in order to paralyze the imperialist war machine, isolate the Zionist entity and open the way for its dismantling.
It is this combination of the Palestinian, Arab struggles with the solidarity of the entire world behind them that can achieve a secular, democratic, non-sectarian Palestine from the river to the sea, where the Palestinian and Arab working class kicks the corrupt elites out of power and can build a socialist federation across the Arab world.
4 https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-approves-ceasefire-deal-lebanon-hezbollah
5 https://litci.org/es/que-es-hezbola/?utm_source=copylink&utm_medium=browser
