On May 15 the ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel was extended by 45 days. Despite the extension of the ceasefire Israel’s murders of Lebanese civilians have continued every day, as they have since the April 16th ceasefire. Israel has even accelerated the demolishing of homes in Lebanon’s south as the new “extension” was announced.
Just as in Gaza, the Zionists have used the cover of a ceasefire to continue the destruction of the south of the country and have displaced over 1 million Lebanese people, roughly one fifth of the population, and no international force is holding them accountable.
Israel is applying the Gaza model to Lebanon, steadily flattening Lebanese villages in the south. It has destroyed or severely damaged 45% of the towns and villages there to date, in the hope that the inhabitants will never be able to return. Israel bombed Lebanon every day during the so-called truce and has even accelerated the demolishing of homes in Lebanon’s south as the new “extension” was announced. Further defying the ceasefire, on May 25 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israeli attacks would intensify.
Lebanese government refuses to defend its population
Not only have the Zionists been duplicitous during the period of the ceasefire but the Lebanese government has stood down, stating that it won’t allow its army to confront the Israeli Occupation Force invaders. The government takes this position even though the population of the south of the country has been displaced by Israeli attacks, the central Bekaa Valley is under threat of invasion from the comprador regime in Syria, and the Dahiyaa, the southern suburb of Beirut, is regularly bombarded.
All of these are civilian areas and are majority Shia. The mainstream media has labeled them “Hezbollah strongholds” to manufacture consent for the bombardment, displacement, and murder of the Lebanese in an attempt to fracture their society and because Israel cannot defeat the resistance.
Deliberately dysfunctional: The sectarian state in Lebanon
There is a long history of Lebanese collaboration with imperialism going back to the French Mandate of 1920. The French occupiers were responsible for turning Lebanon into a state based on a confessional system, treating the country’s many religious groups as separate entities. They especially empowered the elite in the Maronite Christian sect, but also created a comprador class within all religious groupings in the country. The Shia, though the largest group in Lebanon, is the poorest, most marginalized and has the least political representation. This system of fragmentation makes the country easily controlled by imperialism, with the U.S. being the dominant force today.
Today’s President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam were hand picked for these offices in 2025 by the U.S. This was not to represent the Lebanese people, but to follow a U.S. agenda, specifically to disarm Hezbollah, known as “the resistance” in Lebanon.
This aim mirrors those of the U.S. and Israel in Gaza – to disarm Hamas so there is no resistance to Zionism in the region. In Lebanon, as in Gaza and the West Bank, even if a state of war is not officially supposed to exist, there is omnipresent Israeli violence, including the destruction of homes and continued murder of civilians.
To justify the Israeli war on Lebanon’s civilians, their homes, mosques and churches, their medical personnel and their reporters, the U.S., Israel and the western corporate media paint Hezbollah as an “Iranian proxy.” But the group, based in the Shia community, is an organic force that formed in 1985 in response to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and occupation of the south.
It was mostly this resistance group that was able to expel the Zionists that had occupied the south of Lebanon from 1982 to 2000. It was this resistance group that repelled another Israeli invasion in 2006. And today Hezbollah is the only force fighting the Israelis, blocking an IOF ground invasion, and inflicting serious damage to Israeli tanks illegally in Lebanon.
Lebanese sovereignty only possible through resistance
Maintaining national sovereignty must include the right and the ability to use arms to defend your land. The Lebanese state, however, is a state whose sovereign is severely compromised. Its military is armed by the United States with outdated equipment. So it nominally has an armed force, but not one that could ever defend itself against Israel. Lebanon does not even possess an air defense network so it can be bombed without consequence just as in Gaza.
Despite Hezbollah’s willingness to abide by the terms negotiated by the Lebanese state from October 2024, until the start of the war against Iran on Feb. 28 2026, it was the only side that stopped fighting. The south of Lebanon was continuously bombed by Israel with over 15,000 violations of that ceasefire recorded, with the Israeli military refusing to withdraw from the south.
The ceasefire negotiated between Israel and Lebanon under U.S. patronage on April 16 did not even consider asking Hezbollah to be part of the negotiations, because the current government was installed to marginalize and ultimately disarm Hezbollah, and that was a major focus of the-so called peace talks. It is actually against Lebanese law for the government to negotiate directly with Israel, especially when it is bombing the country. Many in Lebanon have demonstrated against the negotiations and called them treacherous.
Hezbollah has denounced the negotiations and the phony ceasefire as a surrender, and said it will not disarm, and will never stop defending Lebanon. And the people of the south have expressed their determination to return to their villages no matter how much Israel has bombed them.
Photo: Destroyed Qasmiyeh bridge. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
