The far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is utilising the US–Israeli war against Iran to establish a Greater Israel, by crushing all resistance—Lebanese, Palestinian, and Iranian.

Within days of the assault on Iran, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) declared war on Hezbollah. This activated a blueprint drafted well before the group fired a token volley of rockets in response to Israel’s assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Israel has trampled on the 2024 ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah more than 10,000 times, demonstrating its rejection of any negotiated settlement. Its objective is the destruction of Hezbollah, the elimination of Iran’s influence, and the subjugation of Lebanon.

Hezbollah emerged in the 1980s as a mass movement of the Shi’ite poor, forged in the crucible of Lebanon’s civil war—a war stoked by US intervention—and Israel’s brutal occupation of the south from 1982 to 2000. It remains the principal obstacle to Israel’s domination of Lebanon.

Israel’s public broadcaster KAN reports that the government is considering raising the limit on reservist mobilisation to 450,000 reservists—nearly double the current authorised ceiling—in anticipation of a full-scale ground invasion. The IDF has ordered the mass evacuation of everyone living south of the Litani River and residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs, while sending ground forces into Lebanon.

This is a replay—on a vastly more destructive scale—of the 1996 Operation Grapes of Wrath. That operation displaced up to half a million civilians and culminated in the shelling of a UN compound in Qana, killing 106 people.

Israel’s current bombardment of southern Lebanon, Beirut’s southern and central districts, and the Beka’a Valley has levelled neighbourhoods and infrastructure. More than 912 people have been killed, including at least 111 children; 2,200 have been injured; and nearly one million—17 percent of Lebanon’s population—have been driven from their homes.

The UN human rights office has warned that the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure constitutes a war crime, and that Israel’s sweeping displacement orders may violate international law.

Schools, municipal buildings, and public halls have been turned into makeshift shelters, yet thousands are sleeping in cars or on the streets. Migrant domestic workers, undocumented refugees, and labourers from Africa and Asia are among the most exploited layers of Lebanese society. Many of them are being turned away from shelters and denied aid. Lebanon, which already hosts one of the world’s highest refugee populations per capita, is being pushed to the brink: roughly 1.3 million Syrians (only around 716,000 officially registered), more than 200,000 Palestinian refugees, and some 160,000 migrant workers from Ethiopia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Kenya, and elsewhere.

Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun has said Beirut is ready for direct talks with Israel and has called for a ceasefire to enable negotiations. But Israel rejected this out of hand, claiming the Lebanese government has allowed Hezbollah to rearm and rebuild. Defence Minister Israel Katz threatened to seize additional Lebanese territory and continue destroying national infrastructure until Hezbollah is disarmed. He declared that Lebanon will “pay a price,” calculating that terrorising the population will turn them against Hezbollah and force the Lebanese army to act as Israel’s proxy.

Israel’s campaign is further bolstered by the de facto support of US-backed interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Shara’a. His forces have tightened control over the Lebanese and Iraqi borders to restrict the movement of fighters and weapons, closing the corridor once linking Lebanon to its eastern hinterland and aligning Syria’s security apparatus with Israel’s war aims. The US has called for Syria to consider deploying forces into eastern Lebanon to help disarm Hezbollah.

Israel resumes its starvation policy in Gaza

No sooner had the US–Israeli assault on Iran begun than Israel reinstated its starvation siege on Gaza, reigniting fears of famine. It closed every crossing “for security reasons,” cutting off food, essential supplies, and humanitarian workers. This formally buried US President Donald Trump’s fraudulent Sharm el-Sheikh deal of 10 October.

After UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on Israel to reopen the crossings, Israeli authorities grudgingly opened a single gate at Kerem Shalom—allowing in a symbolic trickle of aid. By March 8 , just 83 trucks had entered Gaza: 50 carrying humanitarian supplies and 33 commercial goods. On March 10, just 200 trucks were permitted entry—170 with aid, 30 with food for markets. With even these meagre quantities throttled, food prices have exploded. Medical evacuations to Egypt have stalled entirely, condemning 18,000 people—including 4,000 children—to health deterioration or death.

Israeli airstrikes continue unabated, raising fears that a new large-scale assault will be overshadowed by the war on Iran. Warplanes have bombed camps for forcibly displaced families in Gaza City. Since the Sharm el-Sheikh deal, Israel has killed 648 Palestinians in Gaza and injured 1,728 more.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor last week detailed Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s education system as “deliberate policies aimed at preventing the population from restoring education.” The IDF has bombed 668 school buildings, destroyed 179 public schools, and severely damaged 118 others. It has attacked 100 UNRWA schools, obliterated 63 university buildings, and left the remaining higher-education institutions in ruins.

Amnesty International reports that maternal and neonatal health services have collapsed. Sixty percent of all health facilities are non-functional. Nearly half of all medications are at zero stock—including drugs essential for childbirth.

Israel’s siege is a weapon of war: a calculated policy of mass deprivation designed to break Gaza’s population through hunger, disease, and the destruction of every social institution capable of sustaining life.

Israel seeks ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and Gaza

Last month, fascist Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich, who has responsibility for the civil administration of the West Bank, declared that his “long-term solution” to the Palestinian question is ethnic cleansing. The next Israeli government must “revoke the Oslo Accords and extend Israeli sovereignty” to the West Bank, he said, and take “practical steps to encourage emigration” of Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza.

No sooner had the war against Iran begun than the IDF imposed a total military closure on the occupied West Bank and gave Israeli settlers a free hand in expelling rural Palestinian communities from their land. It “imposed a pre-emptive security cordon.” All checkpoints across the Palestinian territory were shut. Roads between cities and villages were blocked with iron gates and earth mounds, and iron gates were installed where none had previously existed. Settlers sealed the Palestinians’ makeshift passages in areas the army had closed after the Gaza war. This prevents all movement between different parts of the West Bank, leaving people unable to go to work, seek medical treatment, and in some cases to go shopping.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has reported the forcible displacement of more than 36,000 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank in the 12 months since November 2024. The office warned that illegal Israeli settlement expansion and the push to annex the territory are accelerating. It has documented 1,732 incidents of Israeli settler violence causing casualties or property damage in the same period. Settlers have escalated their attacks on rural communities, killing at least five Palestinians since the beginning of March. The Israeli human rights NGO Yesh Din has documented at least 50 incidents of settler violence in 37 different Palestinian communities during just the first four days of the Iran war. Settlers operate almost universally with military support. Some Palestinians are being forced to sell their land for a pittance to the settlers just to survive.

At the start of the Gaza war, the government banned Palestinians from entering Israel. Over 140,000 had been working there in construction and agriculture, earning more than double the average daily wage in the West Bank. This pushed the unemployment rate to around 40 percent by the end of 2025. Compounding the dire situation is Israel’s withholding of the tax revenues collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. After putting its staff on short hours and delaying wage payments, it now faces collapse.