
Lebanon: imperialist penetration and anti-imperialist contradictions | Part 3
Jade Saab •In the final part of this series, Jade Saab considers opportunities for a nascent left in Lebanon, and how we can strengthen it with anti-imperialist resistance here in Britain. Go back to Part 1 here.
On 26 November, Israel was forced into a ceasefire by the Lebanese resistance. The Zionist state’s inability to stop rockets from raining down on its citizens and return them to their homes, the crisis within their army reserves, and the incredible losses they suffered in their ground incursions into Southern Lebanon means that they have not achieved a single one of their goals, foremost the dismantling of the Lebanese resistance.
While the Zionist state has promised to withdraw its forces within 60 days, it is likely that Israel is treating this cessation of hostilities as a strategic break allowing it to restock their armaments, sort out their mobilisation problems, and remove any diplomatic shackles once Trump reaches office. There is great political dissatisfaction with the ceasefire, particularly from the northern Israeli settlements who believe that the only way to enforce security is by occupying the South of Lebanon. In addition, Israel has not completely withdrawn its forces or indicated when it will do so. Instead, their tanks have advanced in some Lebanese towns. They have also established a de-facto buffer zone in the border towns not allowing Lebanese citizens to return and they have enforced a curfew on all Lebanese towns and cities south of the Litani River. Israel continues to violate the ceasefire. And their expansion into Syria following the success of rebels against the Assad regime indicates that Israel is not done with trying to strangle the Lebanese resistance.
The final part of this three-part series on Lebanon explores how the ceasefire has been reflected in internal Lebanese politics, what this means for the left in Lebanon, and how the concept of resistance can be used to revive the left in the imperialist core. Overall, the article argues that the coming period will only heighten existing contradictions within Lebanon providing challenges and opportunities for the left, domestically and internationally.
Lebanon and the ceasefire
Despite internal divisions about the war, Hezbollah has claimed the ceasefire as a victory, warning that their fingers remain on the trigger. The resistance’s ability to continue fighting and exacting high costs across the border after suffering major losses is something to be lauded. Any resistance group which has not only survived an attempt to erase it but was able, despite these attempts, to force the enemy into capitulation, even if temporarily, is right to claim victory. Nevertheless, it would be unwise to turn a blind eye to the losses the resistance has suffered and the challenges it now faces.
Following the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, the assassination of most of its leadership, and its longest confrontation with the enemy to date, Hezbollah has been forced into making concessions. The first has been the de-linking of the northern front from a ceasefire in Gaza. The resistance’s participation in the war which began on October 8 was framed as creating a “supporting front” to relieve some pressure on the Palestinians. This front was meant to continue until a ceasefire in Gaza was achieved. This has left Gaza largely to fend for itself (until the recently reached ceasefire agreement came into effect). Second, Hezbollah had promised to take the fight into enemy territory should there be an escalation in what was a low-intensity war. Israel’s ability to quickly take down Hezbollah’s command structure means that this promise remains undelivered and future resistance operations may need to focus on occupied Lebanese territory. Finally, the acceptance of UN resolution 1701 and the deployment of a multinational monitoring force south of the Litani concedes a high level of foreign intervention in Lebanon’s domestic politics, frustrates Hezbollah’s attempts to replenish its arms and deployment, and emboldens right-wing “sovereignists” who see Hezbollah as the main barrier to Lebanon’s prosperity.
While weakened, the ceasefire agreement does not mean that Hezbollah is out of the equation. Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s new Secretary-General, has made it clear that a ceasefire will be followed by deep engagement from the party in political affairs. In other words, Qassem is signalling that the war will continue by other means. The first hurdle that Hezbollah has passed is the election of a Lebanese president. The office has been vacant since 2022 after the term limit was reached. The absence of a president means that Lebanon has been steered (or not) by a caretaker government with limited powers. This situation was reversed on January 9 when US-backed Army Chief Joseph Aoun was elected.
While this presents challenges for Hezbollah, it does not alter the other goals they seek to meet as a result of their ‘political turn’. Having all branches of government function will allow the resumption of bureaucratic mechanisms and processes from the issuing of driver’s licenses, and passports, to state health subsidies which have been offline or only partially functioning since the 2019 economic crash and revolution. This will ease the day-to-day lives of citizens and help kickstart the reconstruction process. A focus on political manoeuvring will allow the party to reaffirm its legitimacy by proving itself an indispensable part of Lebanon’s social fabric. Here, despite losing its majority coalition position after the 2022 general elections, Hezbollah has the power to either facilitate or frustrate the political process based on its objectives as it has done in 2008.
In all of this, Hezbollah is looking to present itself as a pragmatic party actively engaged in digging the country out of the economic, political, and wartime hole it has helped create. In addition to reaffirming its legitimacy, Hezbollah wants to safeguard its autonomy by outmanoeuvring, or at least neutralising, the political threat of the Lebanese Forces (LF), which holds the largest parliamentary block. The LF is a right-wing civil-war time party which has been touting a ‘sovereignist’ stance, meaning that it has consistently argued against Hezbollah’s autonomy and its relationship and dependence on Iran, presenting both as forms of foreign interference in Lebanon. This rhetoric echoes Israel’s claims that Hezbollah is holding the Lebanese state hostage and offers no real economic or political vision of how a ‘sovereign’ Lebanon should be run. This lack of a plan extends beyond the LF’s animosity towards Hezbollah and includes launching racist campaigns and mobilising against the Syrian refugee population in Lebanon which they claim is the cause of, or at least exacerbates, Lebanon’s economic woes.
The LF assumes that without Hezbollah, Lebanon can disentangle itself from the question of Zionist expansionism and Palestinian liberation and achieve a semblance of stability. Of course, any such coexistence would only further subordinate Lebanon to imperialist whims and entrench it into the same predatory domestic and foreign neoliberalism which caused the 2019 crash. For example, the Association of Banks in Lebanon, the body which has enacted cruel capital control measures locking citizens out of their savings, is now pushing the government to repay its foreign debt (which it defaulted on in 2020) by selling public assets under threat of legal action and the seizure of Lebanon’s gold reserves, some of which are held in the US. It is clear that “sovereignty” is nothing but a code word to protect the status quo of the ruling class at the expense of the Lebanese people.
A further example can be found with the election of Army Chief Joseph Aoun as president. Aoun was the favoured candidate for US, European, and Gulf countries who provided financial assistance to the Lebanese Army so it could continue paying staff and soldier salaries following the 2019 collapse. Aoun is seen as a counterbalance to Hezbollah’s influence and a guardkeeper of their interests in the country. This makes his election anything but a ‘sovereign’ affair.
Both Hezbollah and the LF and its sovereignist allies are limited by their own contradictions. Hezbollah will find it difficult to gain broad-ranged legitimacy if it continues to define its existence as a resistance group on a sectarian basis, and the LF will be unable to dislodge Hezbollah which has been critical to the survival of the sectarian system it too seeks to uphold. The latter will only be possible if the LF resorts to its historical role of aligning with Israel to “finish the job” it started in this war.
Opportunities for a nascent left in Lebanon
The failure of the 2019 revolution, the 2020 port blast, the deepening of the economic crisis, and now the war, have left the masses in Lebanon disoriented, reluctant to participate in collective action, or simply unable to due to their worsening conditions. This makes it difficult to speak of the left in Lebanon as if it existed in a cohesive or even sizable organised presence. Nevertheless, the mobilisations of 2019 have left behind seeds of organisational potential which appear in times of crisis. For example, many mobilised to help deliver aid to families internally displaced by the war, sometimes coming into conflict with the state security forces who were policing the occupation of empty private and public property by displaced people. These various groups and organisations adopted a pro-popular resistance stance while highlighting the predatory behaviour of the state and its lack of preparedness during the war.
Since these groups have no access to resources within the country they depend on international fundraising, mainly from the Lebanese diaspora. This dependence facilitates a turn away from political mutual aid towards a deradicalised service model or the ‘NGOisation’ of aid, as was the case with the response to the August 2020 port blast. In addition to a lack of resources, these groups struggle to operate in an environment almost completely monopolised by traditional political parties who practice this monopoly tightly within the geographical boundaries of their respective cantons developed and defined during the civil war.
Creating a more cohesive left in Lebanon means overcoming these political and structural challenges. First, the left will need to find an organisational structure that allows it to gain a foothold in these cantons but maintains enough flexibility to avoid triggering a premature direct confrontation with traditional parties. Second, the left needs to continue to promote a popular anti-imperialist and resistance-focused politics which link domestic woes to international issues including that of Palestinian liberation. Finally, fundraising should transcend traditional humanitarian models and domestic political organisation should be explicitly tied to international political organising within the Lebanese diaspora and beyond. It is this final point which makes our role as organisers within the imperial core critical.
Internationalism and the Internal Front
While there is no doubt that the quieting of the ‘northern front’ has left Palestinians more isolated, it is wrong to put the onus and cost of resisting on those already suffering or who will pay a disproportionate price for resistance, be this in Lebanon or Palestine itself. The fact that the genocide in Palestine continued so long and the escalation of the war in Lebanon was made possible by the unwavering support of imperialist countries and our failure as individuals living in the imperial core to put a stop to this support. We must admit that the absence of an organised and cohesive left is not something unique to Lebanon but is rather something we share with it. While there has been significant mobilisation for the cause of Palestinian liberation and to stop the war in Lebanon, any tangible outcomes were a result of state machinations beyond the influence of our movements. How can we change this?
First, international solidarity should no longer be seen as something separate from or as an additional task to our domestic role in the class war. International solidarity needs to be seen as an indispensable core function of our organising. We must strengthen ties with leftist groups and organisations in Lebanon and Palestine and support them in whatever way we can. Strengthening these ties not only allows us to better practice solidarity, but can also help us develop innovative organisational practices and understanding. In short, international solidarity should not be something that takes centre stage when things go wrong, but should be a normative continuous practice.
Second, the cause of Palestine has galvanised sections of the population in an unprecedented way and has created a sense of unity in action within leftist circles. The immediate need to shut down factories, grieve, mourn, and fundraise have injected our organisations with a vitality that has been lost to many. This opportunity presents a chance to build grassroots alliances at a practical level away from theoretical debates and shallow analysis of world events, something we should continue beyond the quieting of any front.
Finally, we should stop seeing resistance as something that only happens ‘over there’ confining our role to creating political pressure through the usual means of mobilisation. As Palestinian organiser and theoretician Ghassan Kanafani said, we serve the world revolution anywhere we strike and damage the body of imperialism, where better to strike it than in its heart? With that in mind, the quieting of one front should be met with the intensification of another. In other words, the quieting of the northern and Palestinian front should be met with the intensification of our internal front against imperialism. We must strike it with bolder, more organised and disciplined tactics and mobilisations. The banner we should all be carrying now is the one that reads unity of fronts through unity in action.
0 comments