The war in the Greater Middle East repeats a great lesson
“For us, the key
point is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, because the problem is having a just and
correct ideological and political line, and there cannot be a just and correct
political line if there is no just and correct ideology; that is why we believe
that the key to everything is ideology: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, mainly Maoism.
Secondly, developing communist parties. Why? Because the masses are thirsty for
revolution, the masses are ready and they cry out for revolution; so the
problem is not with them. The proletariat cries out for revolution, the
oppressed nations, the peoples of the world cry out for revolution, so we need
to develop communist parties. The rest, I repeat, is done by the masses, who
are the ones who make history and who are going to sweep away imperialism and
world reaction with people's war” (Chairman Gonzalo).
The bourgeois
press reports:
On Monday,
Israel intensified its air campaign against Hezbollah, launching “large-scale
attacks. It was the deadliest day of Israeli attacks in Lebanon since the 2006
war and affected several areas of the country, mainly in the south and east,
near the border with Syria, where the militant group has a strong presence.
Among the
dead and wounded are women, children and doctors, the Lebanese Ministry of
Health reported on Monday. It is not clear how many of the victims were
civilians or Hezbollah militants, but many of the places described by Israel as
Hezbollah targets are also residential neighborhoods and villages.
On Tuesday,
Hezbollah said it fired multiple volleys of rockets into northern Israel,
targeting the Ramat David airbase, Meggido airfield and Amos base, all located
near the northern Israeli town of Afula.
Israel
claimed it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure, but videos show the
destruction of residential areas and the high death toll reflects the scale and
intensity of the attacks.
The nearly
500 dead on Monday are about half of the Lebanese who died during the 34-day
war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
Israeli
warplanes were also seen flying over different parts of the country late in the
afternoon, including Mount Lebanon, where Hezbollah does not have a prominent
presence.
Lebanon's
representative to the United Nations General Assembly said there was a mass
"exodus" of people fleeing. A Lebanese NGO said more than 100,000
people had been displaced.
Hezbollah
and Israel have been at odds for decades, but both have stepped up their
cross-border attacks since last October, when Israel's war on Gaza began
following the Palestinian militant group Hamas' deadly attack on Israel on
October 7.
Last week,
Hezbollah – one of the region's most powerful paramilitary forces – was reeling
from a deadly double attack by Israel, when pagers and walkie-talkies used by
Hezbollah members exploded simultaneously across the country. The attack was
followed by an Israeli strike on a building in a densely populated area of southern Beirut, which killed at least 45
people, including a senior officer and other officials, as well as women and
children. The following days saw some of the heaviest exchanges of fire between
Israel and Hezbollah in nearly a year of war in Gaza, as the Lebanese militant
group fired projectiles deeper into Israeli territory than had been seen before
and Israel fired hundreds of projectiles toward southern Lebanon.
In New
York, on the occasion of the UN General Assembly, and behind the scenes,
feverish efforts are underway to persuade Israel not to escalate and launch a
ground incursion into Lebanon.
Although
the United States is Israel's closest ally and largest arms supplier, a senior
State Department official said the United States and its partners are trying to
find a diplomatic solution. The US believes that neither Israel nor Hezbollah
are interested in a full-scale war, but one of the main concerns is that Iran,
one of Hezbollah's main supporters, will get involved, US officials told CNN
(source CNN, today)
The lessons
of history of this confrontation between the armed struggle of national
resistance of the Lebanese people against the imperialist-Zionist war of
aggression
The current
war of aggression of Yankee imperialism-Zionism against the oppressed nations
of the Greater Middle East (MOA), whose main axis of aggression goes from the
Gaza Strip to Lebanon, repeats a great lesson, which must be extracted from
this:
"They
exalt to the clouds the military power of the United States" and of the
Zionist State of Israel, "its highest and most modern technology."
Which, as
Chairman Gonzalo said, is a reissue of the main thing is the weapons, the power
resides in the most modern weapons, weapons can do everything, that is what
they proclaim; And he concludes: "When, precisely, the first great lesson
that we must draw from the Gulf War is that the main thing in war is the man,
the ideology that animates him, the class that leads him, the interests that he
defends and the cause that he serves."
That is the
lesson, increasingly powerful and current, of what has been going on in the
present war against the Palestinian people, the Arab and Iranian people and
what interests us as a lesson for the people's war and to unmask fallacies.
And reading
the following note on the history of such a war we can draw some lessons that
show us the invincibility of the armed struggle of national resistance in
Lebanon and all that region of the planet.
THE HISTORY
Lebanon has
been involved in the Palestinian question since 1948, due to the forced
displacement of Palestinian refugees, through the massacres and terror of the
Zionist occupier. In 1948, 770,000 people were displaced from the Palestinian
territory conquered by the Zionist and imperialist, of which 100,000 arrived in
Lebanon and just over 75,000 in Syria. In 1965 there were already 180,000
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, after the Six-Day War in 1967 the number rose
to 350,000, reaching 375,000 in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon. With the Palestinians
came the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Today, there are millions of
Palestinians who demand the return to their Palestinian homeland taken by
colonialism.
The
Lebanese civil war, the clashes between the Palestinian fedayeen and Lebanese Sunnis
and Christian militiamen in Sidon in April 1975 put an end to the covert war.
The Sunnis and the Palestinians occupied Beirut and expelled the government in
power. In June 1976, the Syrian army occupied Lebanon and forced the
Sunni-Palestinian coalition to retreat to the border with Israel. Lebanon is
entering a new division, and the imperialists, with their instrument Israel,
are going after the spoils.
In this
situation, the Shiites whose political rights had been recognized in 1974, led
by the cleric Musa Sadr, created the first armed organization whose goal was
the recovery of the Shiite territory, then the scene of fighting between
Palestinians and Sunnis and Christians, as well as the defense of its members;
it was called “Amal, an acronym for Afwaj al-Muqawama al-Lubnaniya, Detachments
of the Lebanese Resistance, which means hope.”
The wars of
aggression of Sinism and Yankee imperialism against Lebanon after their wars of
aggression and conquest of 1948 and 1967 against Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and
Lebanon:
1. The
so-called “Operation Litani” (1978)
Israel
invaded Lebanon under the pretext of weakening the PLO and containing the
growing Syrian influence, without neglecting the acquisition of important
agricultural resources provided by the Litani River.
Israel
supported the creation of Christian militias in the south, the most powerful of
which was the South Lebanon Army (SLA), and indirectly began to affect the
Sunni-Palestinian alliance, which was fought by the Syrian army. Syria, faced
with Israeli aggression in Lebanon, reached a truce with the PLO and allowed
the Palestinians to move heavy artillery and commandos to the border strip with
Israel to fight the new Christian militias. Israel had the ideal pretext to
invade Lebanon. On March 14, 1978, 20,000 Israeli soldiers invaded southern
Lebanon, forced the Palestinians to retreat and created a “security strip” that
extended along the entire banks of the Litani River, which meant the occupation
of 10% of Lebanese territory.
On March
19, United Nations Resolutions 425 and 426 called for the withdrawal of Israeli
military forces, to be replaced by blue helmets, initially 4,000 elements, and
2,000 more in May; however, these were placed between the area controlled by
the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Lebanon, that is, allowing Israel to
control the territory up to the banks of the Litani River.
Although
the withdrawal of Israeli troops was gradually completed, and the UN mission
created to comply with Resolution 425, the United Nations Interim Force in
Lebanon (UNIFIL) was installed in the territory, Israel kept the border open to
enter freely if support was required for its Christian allies, to whom it
entrusted the security of the area. This translates into about 800 km2
controlled by Israel (of the 10,400 that make up the entire Lebanese
territory), and the free crossing of its “militia allies” (in reality its
auxiliary occupation forces) to receive military training and support, as well
as social assistance and medical benefits.
For the
Lebanese, the toll was 2,000 civilians dead, 80% of the populations in the
south damaged, and more than 200,000 displaced, while Israel had only 16
casualties.
2. The
so-called “Operation Peace for Galilee” (1982) of the Zionists
Lebanon had
become the backyard of the power struggle between Israel and Syria. Both
countries sought control of Lebanon.
Israel
acted against the Lebanese Muslim militias and the Palestinians through their
Christian allies. UNIFIL showed its inefficiency. In this situation, Israel
decided to take control of the Litani River basin for economic and security
purposes. On June 6, 1982, 100,000 Israeli soldiers invaded Lebanon under the
pretext of guaranteeing the security of civilian settlements in Galilee, and of
finishing off the PLO in Lebanon once and for all. Israel decided to attack
Beirut from the air, where the Palestinian operations centre was located,
deliberately and excessively bombing the civilian population, which suffered
20,000 dead, 40,000 wounded and 600,000 displaced; and by June 13, the IDF (the
Zionist armed forces) reached the outskirts of Beirut, prolonging the bombing
for two more months.
On August
13, a new multinational force made up of France, the United States and Italy
arrived in Beirut to evacuate PLO guerrillas from Lebanon during a ceasefire.
This task was completed by September of the same year. On August 13, a
multinational force made up of
France, the
United States and Italy arrived in Beirut to evacuate PLO guerrillas from
Lebanon during a ceasefire. This task was completed by September of the same
year. However, Israel did not retreat behind the multinational force, they only
abandoned Beirut, but not the occupied territory in the south.
In the face
of this situation, AMAL, the organization created by Sard, had remained
somewhat on the sidelines. On October 16, 1983, when 50,000 Shiites gathered in
Nabatiyeh for Ashura, the day that commemorates the assassination of Imam
Hussein (the main martyr of Shiism), an Israeli military convoy broke into the
crowd on patrol; the enraged Shiites refused to let them through and the
Israelis forced their way through; the crowd began throwing stones at them and
overturned the vehicles, and a shootout broke out, leaving two Shiites dead and
15 wounded.
When the
multinational force returned to Beirut that same month, with the help of the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the Lebanese National Resistance (LNR) was
organized in southern Lebanon, which later became Hezbollah, whose most
notorious action was on October 23, 1985 in Beirut: 243 American marines were
killed when a truck loaded with explosives crashed into their barracks near the
international airport. But, on April 18, 63 people died when the American
embassy in Beirut was also attacked with a truck packed with explosives; and
although the United States condemned the attacks, it was unable to penetrate
its structure, or even identify it, and proceeded to immediately withdraw its
troops.
The Israeli
military presence, with special concentration in the Beqaa Valley, incited the
Shiite community to rise up in arms. The personification of this rebellion is
Hezbollah.
Since the
1982 “Peace for Galilee” operation, Hezbollah’s military activities have become
more professional and have increased; from June 1985 to April 1986 there were
800 attacks or attempted attacks against the IDF29. The Israeli government chose
to withdraw its troops along the entire border, but to maintain a zone
extending from the border line to 45 km inside Lebanese territory. This
“security strip” was created because Hezbollah’s use of sophisticated and
long-range weapons, such as heavy artillery and Katyusha missiles, would
threaten Israeli settlements if there was nothing to distance them on the
Lebanese side.
The Israeli
strategy involved its “Christian ally” (its auxiliary force): the South
Lebanese Army (SLA). Hezbollah was to settle in the “security strip” to control
it and continue fighting Hezbollah militias there, while the IDF would remain
inside Israeli territory as support. This action was concluded on June 10, 1985
as the Israeli government declared that its military presence in Lebanon was
officially over.
The Taif
Accords ended the civil war in Lebanon and called for elections in 1992.
Hezbollah
thus secured a place in parliament as a political organization and would remain
armed on the grounds that it was a fight not against the Lebanese government or
its factions, but against a real military occupation, and has remained the only
functioning militia in Lebanon ever since. In April 1991, its leadership made
the decision to participate in the 1992 elections, with its television station
Al Manar (which began operations in 1989), its radio station Al Nour, and its
weekly newspaper Al Ahed. In May of that same year, Sheikh Abbas Al Musawi, a
pragmatic man, was appointed Secretary General.
According
to reports: Through five main social institutions, officially recognized by the
Lebanese State, Hezbollah penetrates all sectors of daily life: Jihad al Bina, for
example, is dedicated to the reconstruction of houses, schools and mosques and
theological seminaries. The organization for the relief of the population
operates a fund to financially support the poorest families, whether through
scholarships, loans or food supplies. The organization also has Al Jarih, a
health committee that cares for veterans, has three hospitals, more than 40
clinics in Beirut, as well as pharmacies with subsidized prices and the Shahid
Nursing School, the prices of medical services cost a quarter of what those of
the State cost. Hezbollah even has programs to support farmers through
cooperatives and a reforestation program.
3. Major
Zionist imperialist aggression against Lebanon: “Operation Responsibility”
(1993) and “Operation V” (1994).
The armed
struggle of national resistance continues mainly in the “security strip” with
failure for the Zionist forces, the IDF and the IS. Hezbollah applied mixed
offensive tactics.
Israeli
troops are attacked by surprise not only by attacks on the front but sometimes
deep in the ‘security zone’. It is not just the usual bomb left in the road,
but attacks on Israeli positions using high-caliber weapons ranging from
armored artillery to surface-to-air missiles and heavy machine gun fire. They
have even succeeded in engaging in combat for several hours in an area of
between ten and fifteen kilometers, at the end of which they have
successfully slipped out of the area taking the heavy weapons with them without
being captured” (1997).
On June 25,
1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, ordered the start of “Operation
Responsibility.” However, despite the tremendous destruction, Hezbollah
continued to fire its Katyushas at a steady pace with no sign of weakening, and
the Lebanese government refused to get involved.
The United
States took the initiative to promote a ceasefire. The bombing ended on July
31, leaving 147 Lebanese dead (only 8 of them Hezbollah militants), 500
wounded, and 350,000 displaced due to the loss of 75 villages and about 10,000 houses,
along with infrastructure such as roads, schools, hospitals, and mosques.
Hezbollah
was so unswayed that it carried out about 1,030 operations in the “security
strip” between 1990 and 1995, and this number would increase from 1996 to 2000
to 4,928 due to a second violation of the “rules of the game” during that
second five-year period.
The
skirmishes and clashes between the two sides did not cease. The response was
“Operation Grapes of Wrath”, launched on the 11th of that month with the same
objectives as “Operation Responsibility”, with the only difference that the
actions were even more brutal, such as the one that took place on the 18th of
April in the town of Qana when 17 155 mm projectiles were fired by helicopters
of the Israeli Air Force (IAF) on a complex of buildings that the United
Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) used as a base for the blue helmets,
and that day gave shelter to about 800 people who were escaping the crossfire
between Hezbollah and the IAF.
The armed
struggle of national resistance wins a great victory
The Israeli
withdrawal in 2000
The
continued defeats of the Zionists on the battlefield and, as they say, the
image of Israel in the world after the operations “Responsibility” and “Grapes
of Wrath” was badly damaged and the pressure of the international community,
reflected in Resolutions 425 and 426 promulgated by the Security Council of the
United Nations forced the government of Barak as Prime Minister to seek to
negotiate with Syria a withdrawal that would guarantee the security of its
troops and therefore of the militias of the FSA (Israel was certainly looking
for an honorable way out but on this occasion there would be no heroes for this
country). The role of Syria was important given that Lebanon, invoking the UN
resolutions, refused to grant security guarantees for Galilee because nothing
obliged it to do so. However, Syria demanded the return of the Golan Heights
before proceeding to negotiate a peace treaty, which Israel refused to do,
causing such negotiations to fail.
With no
other options left, Barak, the Zionist leader at the time, completed the
unilateral withdrawal of the IDF from southern Lebanon on May 24, 2000, and
after them the majority of the militants (about 6,000) of the disintegrated FSA
and their families, who Israel agreed to naturalize as citizens. Others,
however, were taken prisoner by Hezbollah or the Lebanese Army when their
disbandment began in 1999, and sentenced to four or five years of hard labor.
Hezbollah
gains its legitimacy from an armed resistance movement against an invading
force, an inclusive nationalism, a remarkable religious tolerance, and an
attachment to the electoral policies of a re-established democracy, as well as
a recognition of the State that fed back its legitimacy as an armed
organization, but it maintains a radical and violent face in the face of an
external enemy.
4. The
Zionist-imperialist enemy attacks Lebanon again
The 2006 War of Aggression
On July 13,
the Israeli air force bombed Beirut airport, rendering it unusable, while a
total blockade of Lebanese airspace and coasts was completed that same day by
the navy and air force. This was done with the purpose of preventing Hezbollah
from supplying itself with weapons and other resources and proceeding to
eliminate it by military means. A plan called “Icebreaker” was chosen, which
consisted of massive air strikes on Lebanese territory to avoid the use of
ground forces and incur fewer casualties.
Hezbollah
responded strongly by firing Katyusha and Fajr rockets into Israeli territory
in response to civilian damage.
By July 14,
Israel began bombing Hezbollah infrastructure throughout Lebanon, from its
offices in Beirut to long-range missile sites and bunkers, but also roads,
bridges, residential areas, schools, power plants, aqueducts and other economic
infrastructure. Yet Hezbollah would demonstrate a high degree of preparedness:
on the same day after Hezbollah’s offices were bombed, a recording was
broadcast in which Nasrallah invited the population of Beirut to take a look at
the sea, and with great theatricality “an explosion on the horizon hit the INS
Hanit, an Israeli Navy ship that was hit by an Iranian-made C-802 Noor guided
missile. The ship was disabled and four of its sailors were killed.
Despite the
punishment inflicted on the entire country, on July 16, Hezbollah surprised its
enemy when the city of Haifa. The IAF managed to destroy, in various subsequent
missions, around 44 Zelzal-2 and Zelzal-1 rockets, the latter with a range of
between 150 and up to 200 km, and more than half of the Fajr 50 rocket
launchers and sites; But against all odds, Hezbollah continued to attack Israeli
forces with Katyusha rockets at a rate of about 150 rockets a day, and up to
250 on the last day of the war.
Faced with
this situation, a UN negotiating team arrived in Lebanon during these first
days. Kofi Annan, then Secretary General, together with the support of France,
Russia, and the European Union in general, proposed the establishment of an
immediate ceasefire, since they considered the Israeli reaction to be a
disproportionate action, but they were met with the refusal of the United
States to pressure Israel, since Washington claimed a legitimate defense of
Israel against an aggression by Hezbollah, directly accusing Syria and Iran of
allowing and promoting it.
As time
went on and US pressure failed to come, the conflict dragged on, because the US
in particular saw a great opportunity to weaken Iran and its growing influence
in the Levant, so it vetoed all efforts at the UN to give Israel time to
destroy Hezbollah and then proceed to have a joint force of Blue Helmets and
the Lebanese Army retake control of southern Lebanon.
Once
Israeli ground forces confronted Hezbollah militias, a previously unknown
feature proved to be very useful for Hezbollah's combat strategies, which
applied both guerrilla tactics and prolonged direct confrontations: an
extensive network of bunkers and underground fortifications secretly built by
Hezbollah throughout southern Lebanon.
On August
11, the Security Council unanimously issued Resolution 1701, which established
a ceasefire and the deployment of 15,000 Blue Helmets to join UNIFIL to restore
order in southern Lebanon, respecting the "Blue Line" as the border
between the two countries. It also reiterated the importance of complying with
Resolution 1559 on the disarmament of all Lebanese militias, leaving only the
Lebanese armed forces in charge of national security. Needless to say, this
last point could not be implemented because UNIFIL is not authorized to disarm
Hezbollah, but this is a decision that concerns only the Lebanese government.
Hostilities
continued until August 14, the agreed date for the ceasefire, but skirmishes
and clashes continued until August 23, when the withdrawal of Israeli troops
was completed. The naval and air blockade of Lebanon was not lifted until
September 8.
During the
34 days of conflict, the IAF carried out 11,897 missions and dropped 13,916
bombs, while Hezbollah carried out 475 rocket attacks. The Israeli Navy carried
out some 2,500 airstrikes, and about 2,000 IDF soldiers were deployed in
southern Lebanon and about 3,000 more remained along the border; in total, the
IDF mobilized about 10,000 reservists. 52
The
intensity of this confrontation left about 1,200 civilians (almost a third of
them children) dead, 4,000 wounded, and one million displaced. Nearly 130,000
homes, thousands of small businesses, hundreds of roads, 300 factories, 80
bridges, dozens of schools and hospitals, and the country's electricity grid
were destroyed or damaged; economic losses were estimated at about $7 billion,
while the country simultaneously had to deal with an external debt equivalent
to 180% of its GDP. In contrast, Israel suffered 43 civilian casualties, and
destruction or damage to some 6,000 apartments and businesses, and military
expenditures are estimated to have amounted to some $1.6 billion.
Despite the
genocidal violence of the Zionist enemy against the people of Lebanon,
Hezbollah's popularity remained, not only because in the eyes of the Arab world
it gave Israel an armed defeat, but also because it reinforced its aid to the
population.