Israel is set to begin ground operations in Lebanon amid ongoing brutal aerial bombardment

A major Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon appeared imminent late Monday evening as reports emerged that isolated special operations missions were already underway. Highlighting US imperialism’s central involvement in the escalating region-wide war, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington was in “continuous conversation” with the Israeli military about its invasion, while public broadcaster Kan referred to “intense coordination” between Israel and Israel US on how to deal with Iranian attack.

Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike hit the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Reuters reported late Monday that Lebanese army units were seen leaving positions on the Lebanese-Israel border and retreating 5 kilometers into Lebanese territory. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced the creation of a “closed military zone” covering several northern communities along the border, emphasizing that entry to the area is prohibited. The official said The times of Israel that one goal of the operation would be to eliminate Hezbollah positions along the border. At a meeting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet on Monday, a decision was made to continue the operation.

Heavy shelling and airstrikes targeted several locations along the border. The IDF ordered residents of Dahiyeh, a southern Beirut suburb and traditional Hezbollah stronghold, to leave their homes. According to Lebanese news agency NNA, major explosions were heard shortly after midnight on Tuesday morning and at least eight strikes took place, destroying several apartment buildings.

The invasion of southern Lebanon follows a weekend of unbridled violence by the Zionist regime, including the massacre of hundreds of civilians in airstrikes across the country. On Friday, the targeted assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah killed approximately 300 civilians when six multi-story buildings collapsed in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Israeli attacks reportedly killed 136 people in the 24 hours since Monday. The intense bombing, which included an initial strike in central Beirut on Sunday evening, forced around 100,000 people to flee to neighboring Syria, where a fratricidal conflict fueled by US imperialism has been ongoing for more than a decade.

On Sunday, Israel also attacked the ports of Hodeidah and Ras Issa in Yemen, about 2,000 kilometers from its border. Six people were killed and 57 injured in the strikes, which targeted power plants and facilities used by the Houthis to import oil.

Although Hezbollah continued to fire rockets into northern Israel, the continued attacks over the past two weeks appear to have severely weakened its capabilities. Brussels-based military analyst Elijah Magnier told Al Jazeera that Israel struck at least 3,000 to 3,500 Hezbollah missile units. “Thousands of Hezbollah operatives lost their hands or eyesight and were evacuated to hospitals in Syria and Iran. Therefore, these fighters are out of the equation and can no longer participate in any potential war,” he added, referring to the consequences of the Israeli terrorist attack on September 17, when hundreds of communications devices exploded. In addition to Nasrallah, several dozen top Hezbollah commanders were murdered.

Underscoring the indiscriminate nature of the attack, which is reminiscent of the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, 14 Lebanese paramedics were killed in two days of bombing that continued through Sunday. On Monday, the Ministry of Health announced the death of six more paramedics as a result of renewed airstrikes.

Asked at a press conference about reports of a ground invasion, Miller confirmed the close involvement of US imperialism in a major escalation of the war. “They briefed us on a number of operations,” Miller said, referring to Israel. “Right now they have told us these are limited operations focused on Hezbollah infrastructure near the border, but we are still talking about it.” With breathtaking cynicism, he added: “Military pressure can sometimes make diplomacy possible.”

Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Antony Blinken became the latest American official to revel in mass slaughter and praise Nasrallah’s assassination. Hezbollah’s leader was a “brutal terrorist” and “the region and the world are safer without him.”

Behind false public statements about a “limited” operation, Israel’s far-right regime is apparently launching a massive offensive to take revenge for the failure it suffered during the month-long war with Lebanon in 2006, when Hezbollah mobilized widespread popular support against the IDF invasion. The United Nations has confirmed that its 10,000-strong United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), tasked with monitoring the ceasefire agreement that ended the war in 2006, is no longer able to conduct patrols due to the intensity fighting.

Speaking to soldiers in northern Israel, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who shamefully called Gazans “human animals” when Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians began, declared: “Eliminating Nasrallah is a very important step, but it is not everything.

“We will use all the opportunities we have. If someone on the other side didn’t understand what these opportunities meant, then they are just opportunities and you are part of that effort.

Netanyahu’s far-right regime intends to annex parts of Lebanon along with Gaza and the West Bank as part of a U.S.-backed effort to restructure the entire Middle East. Netanyahu and other top officials have bluntly outlined this agenda, including: in speeches before the US Congress in July and before the UN General Assembly last week.

Israel’s aggressive expansion of the conflict, which is quickly escalating into a Middle East-wide war, is made possible by the unwavering support it enjoys from US imperialism. as World socialism website as made clear within days of Israel beginning its destruction of Gaza, Washington supported the genocide because it saw it as a key element in the preparations for war with Iran across the region. In perspective on October 23, 2023, noting the influx of US troops and warships into the region following the launch of the Israeli attack on Gaza, WSWS wrote:

The Biden administration is escalating the war in the Middle East and threatening a direct attack on Iran in what it sees as a global conflict for global hegemony stretching from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and the Pacific. American imperialism, faced with the economic rise of China and the global decline of the US economy, sees war as a way to ensure world domination.

Over the past year, Washington has supplied Israel with billions of dollars’ worth of weapons, including 2,000-pound bombs that have turned Gaza into a wasteland and are now devastating Beirut and southern and eastern Lebanon.

The Pentagon announced Monday that Washington would send “several thousand” additional U.S. troops to the region, bringing the number of U.S. troops in the Middle East to 43,000, according to the AP. Most of the new forces consist of squadrons of fighters and attack aircraft. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced Sunday that he has extended the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East by a month. The second carrier strike group, the USS Harry Truman, recently departed Virginia and is expected to reach the region within the week.

With their repeated escalatory actions, Israel and its American paymaster are trying to induce Iran to react in some way, which could then be used to launch a ferocious attack on Tehran. Already this year, Israel murdered seven members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps in Damascus and humiliated Iran’s bourgeois-clerical regime by killing Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was visiting Tehran as a guest at the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. For their part, the Iranian regime and its bourgeois-nationalist allies throughout the region have nothing to offer in the face of this imperialist attack, except vain pleas for alignment with the imperialist powers.

The only social force capable of preventing the entire Middle East from descending into a bloodbath with incalculable consequences for its long-suffering population is the international working class mobilized in the fight against the imperialist war. Rejecting reactionary Zionism and bankrupt bourgeois nationalism, the workers of the Middle East, whether Arab, Persian or Jewish, must unite on the basis of the struggle for socialism in alliance with their class brothers and sisters in the imperialist centers to put an end to the capitalist profit system and war.