On the 12th of July the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah executed a raid on an Israeli army patrol in northern Israel, killing a number of Israeli soldiers and capturing two others. The raid occurred whilst other Israeli units continued their attacks on targets in the Gaza Strip following the abduction of an Israeli soldier by Hamas. During Israel's incursions into the Gaza Strip they demolished bridges, Gaza's main power station and killed approximately 50 civilians. The attack by Hezbollah was used as a pretext for the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) to unleash an orgy of destruction and death upon the Lebanese people.
Under the pretext of purportedly seeking to destroy Hezbollah guerrillas in South Lebanon, the Israeli army have killed an ever increasing number of people, the vast majority of those being Lebanese civilians, and made another half a million civilians homeless as they flee their homes in panic. While around 60 Israeli civilians have been killed by rockets fired into Haifa and other Israeli cities by Hezbollah.
Hezbollah, meaning Party of God, were established around 1982 as a resistance force against the Israeli army in South Lebanon. They advocate the establishment of an Islamic Republic similar to that established in Iran in 1979 which brutally crushed the revolutionary Iranian workers movement in order to maintain capitalist relations of production.
Whilst claiming to want to destroy Hezbollah, Israel's acts of terrorism against the civilian population in Lebanon are unlikely to do little but bolster recruits to the guerrilla group, strengthen nationalist sentiments against Israel and reproduce this most tragic of conflicts. While publicly deploring the attacks within its territories the IDF and Israeli ruling class welcomes such attacks. Not only do these attacks give them a justification to continue their rabid assaults on the civilian populations of Lebanon and Palestine but more importantly they enable the Israeli ruling class to consolidate their position of power over the Israeli people. As always war between states and proto-states only ever undermines and disrupts the progress of the class struggle. It veils and distracts the real conflict between employer and worker leaders and led and oppressors and the oppressed and attempts to strengthen the artificial and destructive division between people of different races, nationalities and religions. The winner on every occasion is the capitalist state of Israel and the reactionary Islamic nationalism of Hamas and Hezbollah, beneath these twin evils it is always the workers or all creeds that suffer and perish.
The only way to find a lasting and meaningful peace in the region is for the workers of Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Iran and all countries in the region to unite in struggle against their own leaders. Only in confronting the hierarchical economic and political systems that are buttressed by this nationalist war can the people ever hope to find a solution. The actions of terrorists and guerrillas can never bring down the Israeli state, that is the task of the Israeli and Palestinian workers whose labour the Israeli war machine is built upon. Despite the seeming hopelessness of the situation there are glimmers of light within the conflict zone, numerous Israeli soldiers have deserted in recent years, refusing to involve themselves in the bloodbath, whilst groups of Israeli's and Palestinians have organised cross border mutual aid and support. However in the absence of a united proletariat in the region, an event which becomes more and more unlikely as people are forced to look to troops and militias for their supposed defence, it seems that the area will continue to slide into a quagmire of hostile fanaticism and bloody nationalism.
Such an arrangement has only ever and will only ever benefit the forces of reaction and the existing class hierarchy in the region. Even with the ceasefire in effect and both sides claiming victory, the workers are left with rubble for homes and family to bury.