On April 16, Trump announced that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to a ceasefire that would take effect the next day, and that the leaders of Israel and Lebanon would soon meet in Washington, DC, for further talks aimed at a long-term agreement. 

This ceasefire could pause Israel’s military onslaught against the people of Lebanon for at least 10 days. However, Israel and its leader Benjamin Netanyahu (aka Netan-Nazi) were adamantly opposed to halting their campaign of mass death and destruction, and only did so under serious pressure from Trump and the U.S. So this ceasefire remains very fragile, and Israel’s murderous war on Lebanon could resume any time. 

Israel’s Devastating Six-Week Assault on Lebanon

On February 28, the U.S. and Israel launched an unprovoked war of aggression against Iran. 

Three days later, on March 2, Israel seized on rocket attacks by Iran’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah, to launch a massive, preplanned assault on Lebanon. Its strategy according to Israeli military sources: “This is the Gaza model, but in Lebanon.”

The world has seen the “Gaza model” for the last two-plus years—and it’s genocide! For any concerned that this charge is overstated hyperbole, here’s what prominent Israeli officials and media figures have said publicly:

One member of Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich’s party, urged: “We must conquer territory in southern Lebanon, destroy the villages there and annex the territory to the state of Israel,” Ben Reiff reports in an important exposure in the Guardian.

Former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, calls for the army “to strike and eliminate everything that’s in Dahiyeh, Baalbek, Tyre, Sidon, Nabatieh [all major Lebanese cities], everywhere.” 

“We need to destroy the country in terms of infrastructure,” a commentator on Channel 14, implores. “There’s no more civilian infrastructure in Lebanon.”¹

This is what we’ve been seeing in Lebanon since March 2. Israel has inflicted massive death, destruction, and displacement on the country through hundreds and hundreds of airstrikes, demolitions, and a ground invasion and occupation by some 25,000 Israel soldiers in southern Lebanon.²

The Death of Taleen Saeed 

What has this meant for the Lebanese people? Here’s but one example:

On April 8 alone, just hours after the U.S. and Iran had reached a ceasefire, Israel launched an unprecedented concentration of airstrikes which killed over 357 people and wounded 1,000 or more within 10 minutes—10 minutes! 

One of Israel’s targets that day was the port of Tyre, one of the world’s oldest cities dating back 5,000 years or more. “There are buildings with their facades sheared off,” the New York Times reported afterward. “Entire rooms of apartments were hurled across the road and lie on top of mounds of rubble. Poking through the wreckage are signs of the lives once lived there: A doll with blond hair. A black and bright green roller blade. The severed half of a headphone.”

Seven-year-old Aline Saeed and her family were among the victims. Her father and three other relatives were killed when an airstrike hit the family home. Aline had been badly wounded and was wrapped in bloody bandages for her father’s April 12 funeral. Suddenly, in the midst of the funeral, Israel struck again, killing more of Aline’s relatives. One was her infant sister Taleen. She had not yet turned two.

 “This is humanity? This isn’t humanity,” Aline’s grandfather exclaimed. “This is a war crime.”³

Vast Devastation, Massive Displacement, Over 2,000 Dead

According to the BBC, towns and villages in southern Lebanon are being reduced to rubble, with more than 1,400 buildings taken down. Israel has destroyed or damaged over 37,000 housing units, and obliterated shops and apartment buildings, including in densely-packed Beirut, Lebanon’s capital. Even hospitals and medical facilities have been hit.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry reports that Israeli attacks have killed over 2,300 people, 165 of them children.⁴ Over 7,000 people have been wounded, who now struggle “to access urgent medical care. Hospitals report acute shortages of medicine, a lack of space for treatment and surgery, overwhelmed public shelters unable to meet basic needs.” Some 100 medical workers have been killed by Israel since March 2. 

Israel has demanded that people evacuate from areas amounting to over 14 percent of Lebanon’s territory. That and Israel’s bombardments have forced more than 1.2 million Lebanese, including 350,000 children, to flee from their homes. Many have been left without shelter or any safe place to go. The World Food Programme warns that hunger is spiraling.⁵

In the face of all this, when the ceasefire took effect on April 17, thousands of displaced families defied Israeli warnings to stay put, packed their belongings, and headed south in hopes that their homes had not been demolished by Israel. 

What’s Behind the U.S.-Israeli Differences Over the Lebanon Ceasefire

Netanyahu was adamantly opposed to halting Israel’s Lebanon onslaught. Netanyahu believes that destroying Hezbollah and expanding Israel’s grip on its neighbor is crucial for the expansionist, Zionist state of Israel. 

For Trump and the U.S. imperialists, bigger, more critical regional and global interests were on the line: Iran was refusing to negotiate or open the Strait of Hormuz so long as Israel was bombarding Lebanon and the Trump regime wasn’t forcing them to stop. 

This—not concerns for the Lebanese people or out of the goodness of his heart (if, in fact, he has one)—is why Trump demanded that Netanyahu halt Israel’s slaughter and agree to a ceasefire, whether he liked it or not. Indeed, soon after Israel agreed and halted bombing, Iran announced that the Strait of Hormuz was open for commercial shipping.

On April 17, Trump forcefully repeated his message to Netanyahu and Israel in no uncertain terms, posting: "Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the U.S.A. Enough is enough!!!" 

There was widespread sentiment in Israel that Trump had humiliated Netanyahu, and this cost Netanyahu politically vis-a-vis his opponents. Yet this incident does clearly and accurately illustrate who overall calls the shots in the U.S.-Israeli relationship: the U.S. imperialists. This is a lesson opponents of war and Israel’s many atrocities need to learn from and take to heart! 

At the same time, Israel remains the U.S.’s key bastion in the Middle East—militarily and otherwise—and the ceasefire reflects this. Israel’s Defense Minister stated that the Israeli military “holds and will continue to hold all the areas it has cleared and captured” in Lebanon, and that Israel will continue to raze structures near its border. (Netanyahu insists Israel will remain and maintain an “extensive” security zone up to the Syrian border.) The ceasefire also gives Israel the right to “take all necessary measures in self-defense, at any time, against planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks.”

This is a pattern that Israel and the U.S. have followed in previous “ceasefire” agreements, which have curbed Israeli aggression, but hardly stopped it. In November 2024, Israel and Lebanon signed a U.S.-brokered ceasefire. The result? While Lebanon and Hezbollah honored it, Israel violated the agreement between 10,000 and 15,000 times and killed at least 370 people in the year-plus afterward. Now, Israel has already begun violating this new ceasefire, including by targeting an ambulance on April 17. 

A Precarious Ceasefire, A Very Dangerous Situation

This U.S.-brokered ceasefire is on very shaky grounds. For starters, Israel has paused its military assault on Lebanon for the moment, but insists it has not ‘finished the job.’ Second, while the Lebanese government wants to maintain the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, Israel’s agenda focuses on disarming and destroying Hezbollah, maintaining a “security” buffer zone in southern Lebanon (and perhaps permanently occupying it), and weakening Lebanon overall. 

Meanwhile, Hezbollah says it will respect the ceasefire for now, but it has not been party to the negotiations and warns that its finger “remains on the trigger”—in other words that it would strike back if Israel resumes its assault on Lebanon—or Iran. And Lebanon’s fate is closely bound up with the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran—which could resume at any moment.⁶

All this makes the whole situation—in Lebanon, in Iran and across the Middle East— extremely volatile and dangerous.

What Kind of System Inflicts Such Never-Ending Death, Destruction and Terror?

Step back and think about the unending horrors that have been inflicted by the U.S. and Israel on the Lebanese and Iranian people over these past seven weeks—indeed over these past seven decades! 

Think about the reality that neither the U.S.’s current ceasefire with Iran, nor Israel’s with Lebanon are aimed at setting right the great crimes they’ve committed or birthing a better region or world. Quite the opposite: they’re driven by the U.S. capitalist-imperialist system’s compulsion to solidify its death-grip on the Middle East—and world—including by arming and overall backing the state of Israel.

And think about the fact that the fascist Trump and his regime are now dangerously heightening the reckless, predatory, and genocidal nature of this system of global exploitation and oppression even further!

All this underlines the urgent need for millions to take up the demand: Trump Must Go Now! 

And as we wrote last week, these ceasefire agreements do not “in any way undercut, but actually drives home, the essential truth illustrated by this war that as the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian has stated”: 

We can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible. And it is a scientific fact that we do not have to live this way.

STOP THE U.S.-ISRAELI WAR AGAINST IRAN AND LEBANON! 

IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY, WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT A FASCIST AMERICA!

THIS WHOLE SYSTEM IS ROTTEN AND ILLEGITIMATE! 

WE NEED AND WE DEMAND A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE AND A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM!