The Axis of Resistance.

Statement on Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Iran

rs21 releases a statement on the Zionist attacks which martyred Ismail Haniyeh and destroyed a neighbourhood in Beirut, and which risk spiralling war across the Middle East. A call to renew our work against imperialism in Britain.

In the last 48 hours, Israel has carried out attacks on Dahiya in Beirut, and assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, leader of Hamas’ political bureau, marking a massive escalation in Israel’s aggression against the people of Lebanon, Iran and Palestine, and against the forces resisting its genocidal war on Gaza and the broader Zionist settler-colonial project in Palestine. 

On Tuesday Israeli forces bombed Dahiya, a predominantly Shi’a and working-class neighbourhood in Beirut. The air strike, which targeted and killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, killed at least three civilians, two of whom were children, and injured 74 more, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. In its own right, the assassination of Shurkh and the killing of civilians in Beirut marks a significant escalation in the war carried out by Israel against Hezbollah, Palestinian factions and the people of Southern Lebanon. Israel has killed around 500 hundred people in Southern Lebanon, and has used white phosphorus in its war that has displaced 98,750 people, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). 

This is the second time that Israel has broken the ‘rules of engagement’ in the conflict with Hezbollah by targeting Beirut, after assassinating Hamas deputy Saleh al-Arouri there in early January. Its murder of several civilians further intensifies this escalation and makes the possibility of a devastating full-scale war between Hezbollah and Israel more likely. 

Israeli forces have also assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, chief of Hamas’ political bureau, just weeks after a targeted killing of his sons and their extended family in Gaza. The assassination of Haniyeh is their most significant attack on the leadership of the Palestinian resistance since October 7th. Killing him in Tehran is all but a declaration of war on Iran.

Recent signs have pointed towards the Israeli leadership taking reluctant steps towards agreement with both Hezbollah on the Northern front and Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions in Gaza. But these escalations, alongside recent Israeli attacks on Yemen, are a change in direction. Both Tehran and Hezbollah will respond. Israeli leaders have for months threatened to do to Beirut what it has done to Gaza, and the memory of the 1982 war and brutal siege of Beirut looms large in the memories of the Lebanese people, particularly in Dahiya.

The Israeli leadership’s drive towards regional war is likely related to the intensifying conflict within their territory between the extreme-right religious settler movement and the IOF, as a project not only of external destruction but also internal unification. 

This also looks like an attempt to force Western powers to realign themselves with Israel, at a time when many states, including Britain, are beginning to waver in their support for the Zionist entity. It is unlikely that these attacks could have occurred without the approval of the US, which seems to be either unable or unwilling to oppose this utterly destructive and dangerous agenda.

It is now more important than ever to push the Starmer government to go beyond limited restrictions on arms shipments and the dropping of its objection to the ICC arrest warrants. The British state is still conducting an aggressive military campaign against Yemen, following its humanitarian blockade in support of the Palestinian people, and its bases and spy planes are still being used to support the Zionist genocide. We fight for an end to this, a full arms and energy embargo, comprehensive sanctions on Israel, and a derecognition of a state that is hellbent on genocide not only in Gaza, but the destruction of the region and its peoples at large. In our workplaces and in our streets, we must continue to escalate our action to this end.