PULVERISING Gaza, emptying the Strip of its people, bombing the West Bank, and expanding illegal annexations of land there — none of that is enough for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his genocidal drive to build “Greater Israel.” Lebanon, too, it seems, must be parcelled up and pieces of it brought under Tel Aviv’s control.

Since the war on Gaza was launched by Israel following the October 7 2023 Hamas attacks, Lebanon has been a secondary theatre of combat, with periodic bombing runs by Israel and rocket launches from Iran-backed Hezbollah militants on the other side of the border.

But with the exploding pager terrorist attacks by Israel last week, a new stage has opened in what has become Israel’s region-wide war of conquest and expansion.

War of conquest

On Sunday, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Amichai Chikli, Netanyahu’s diaspora affairs minister, declared that Lebanon “cannot be defined as a state” and that the Israeli army therefore had the right to “take over” Lebanese territory and establish a “buffer zone.”

Chikli said that the government in Beirut had failed “to exercise its sovereignty over Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon.” He implied, therefore, that Lebanon had forfeited those lands and that the IDF should seize them and effectively absorb them into Israel. He said it was the only logical way to protect residents in northern Israel from Hezbollah shelling.

That admission conflicted with Netanyahu’s statement that Lebanese civilians would be able to “come back safely to your homes … once our operation is finished.”

Army General Herzi Halevi’s words to troops massed at the border also conflicted with the prime minister’s public claims. Halevi told soldiers that air strikes were preparing the ground “for your boots to enter enemy territory.” He added: “You will go in, destroy the enemy there.”

Israeli Knesset member Aida Touma-Suleiman of the Communist Party called the army’s operation in Lebanon a “massacre.” She said “The same shocking images we saw at the beginning of the war in Gaza, the same horror, the same blind support” are once more on display inside Israel.

“Innocent women, children and old people are crushed under the bombs. How much more blood will be spilled until the government here realises that war will not bring security?” she asked.

She noted that for more than a year the residents in Israel’s north have faced the threat of rockets from Hezbollah but that the prime minister’s military response is “bringing more citizens into the circle of danger.” She said Netanyahu is “endangering all of us in order to save his career.”

Touma-Suleiman’s warnings earned her the hatred of members of Netanyahu’s Likud Party. Reactionary Knesset member Hanoch Milbitsky branded her a “traitor” and told her to “move to Lebanon or Gaza.”

Netanyahu’s death toll

At the time of writing over 550 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli bombs this week so far, including 50 children and 94 women. At least 1,645 have been wounded. These numbers come on top of the nearly 40 killed in the pager explosions.

Tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians are fleeing northward to escape the IDF’s bombs. Roads are jammed as cars and buses head for Beirut in the biggest exodus since Israel waged war on Lebanon in 2006. Even the capital city is no refuge, though, as the IDF also bombed it — along with other areas far from the border with Israel.

Israeli spokesman Rear Adm Daniel Hagari claimed his government is “not looking for wars,” but the dropping of over 2,000 bombs by Israel on Monday alone refuted his words.

Hospitals, medical centres, ambulances and residential neighbourhoods have already been struck, and all schools and universities are closed. With such a large number of victims and widespread destruction, the official state bodies in Lebanon have been unable to provide services and aid to many of the evacuees.

The Lebanese Communist Party’s “People’s Aid” organisation has stepped in to try to fill the gap, launching an operation to mobilise resources, locate shelters and supply food. Communist volunteers are on patrol along congested roads and in the cities to help people find refuge and provide medical assistance.

Even before Monday’s brutal bombings, the Political Bureau of the LCP issued an open letter to the world’s communist and workers’ parties late last week appealing for solidarity.

“While the genocidal war waged by the Israeli occupation army against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip continues, with its brutal attacks in the West Bank and several countries in the region,” the Politburo said, “the occupation now targets Lebanon, especially the south, with repeated daily assaults.”

US imperialism’s role

Lebanon’s communists were blunt in saying that it’s not only Netanyahu and Israel who are to blame for the catastrophe unfolding in their country: “These attacks are carried out under the full cover of the imperialist governments, led by the United States of America.”

Lame duck President Joe Biden continues funnelling US weapons directly to the IDF for use against people in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran. And his successor on the Democratic ticket, Vice-President Kamala Harris, has signalled she plans no major changes to Biden’s essentially blank-cheque support for the Israeli military, even though she has condemned the human destruction in Gaza and acknowledged the need for a ceasefire.

But with the US presidential election just weeks away and political pressure leaving Biden and Harris appearing paralysed, Netanyahu is trying to run out the clock in hopes that his favoured patron, former president Donald Trump, will return to the White House.

Escalating the war, the Israeli leader has likely calculated, keeps Harris tied to Biden’s disastrous course and further divides the base of Democratic voters over the issue of the war in the Middle East.

Proof of the strategy was seen in the fact that just days after Biden’s officials met with Netanyahu to urge him not to step up the war, the Israeli pager bombs exploded all over Lebanon and air strikes were launched.

It appears to be working, as the rhetoric in Washington has shifted drastically in recent days. The State Department is no longer promising that a ceasefire or hostage deal is just around the corner. The Wall Street Journal actually disclosed last week that Biden administration officials have privately accepted that there will be no deal before the US election and that Netanyahu has effectively ended negotiations.

This correlates to a PBS report that Trump is urging Netanyahu to halt all peace talks until after November 5, telling him that a ceasefire would help Harris’s campaign to become president and hurt both of the right-wing leader’s political futures.

The ceasefire movement in the US is thus left in a tough spot.

US imperialism with Biden at the helm has been complicit in the genocide in Gaza from the start, and its weapons are fuelling the attacks on Lebanon at this very moment. Harris, meanwhile, pledges to stick to the same course and maintain the US war machine as “the most lethal fighting force in the world.”

But with Trump and Netanyahu clearly conspiring about how to execute the next stages of the war, far deadlier and more dangerous days could lie ahead if MAGA Republicans succeed in taking back the White House and winning full control of Congress.

The task remains: Block Trump to maintain a political terrain favourable to grassroots struggle and then keep building the peace movement and upping the pressure for a long-term change in US imperialist policy.

This article appeared at peoplesworld.org.