Israel and the US strike blows in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine
Will this lead to imperialist victory?
05 January 2025
Benjamin Netanyahu visits the Golan Heights
The Syrian people are rid of the Assad regime, but are now in the hands of the imperialist powers and their stooges. Essentially Syria as a nation state has been removed from the map. Large areas have been invaded by Israel, Türkiye and the US. France has joined the other powers in bombing across the state. The Jihadists, sponsored by the West, have taken over the state claiming that they are now woke and will set up a democratic society in 4 or 5 years. The imperialist occupations, the relentless bombing of infrastructure and the endorsement of Jolani and the HTS ensure that this democracy is impossible.
What are the geopolitical and regional consequences of the collapse of the Syrian state?
Let’s go back to Gaza. The Hamas outbreak from Gaza on 7th October 2023 has been dominated by claims of bloodthirsty massacre on their part, countered by claims that many Israeli civilians were killed by the Israeli forces themselves.
An objective analysis has to focus on the aims of Hamas. Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was meant to smash the Abraham Accords. These accords, brought in by Trump, removed the issue of Palestine from the agenda and signed up the Arab regimes to partnership with Israel.
The Gaza outbreak was an appeal to Arab nationalism to unite against Israel. The Al-Aqsa Flood title was a further call for Islamic unity, based on the fact that the Zionists plan to demolish the Al-Aqsa Mosque and erect the Temple of Solomon on the rubble.
The Hamas plan involved hostage
seizure followed by a swap for thousands of Palestine hostages. Palestine
would be inserted into a new debate and a new settlement.
Things didn’t work out like
that. The role of Israel in West Asia is to rule through terror and military
superiority on behalf of the US. The Hamas breakout blasted apart their
claims of unbeatable intelligence and their military forces were defeated
by the equivalent of a brigade of light infantry.
There was no question of an overall exchange of prisoners. The main task was to re-establish the Israeli reputation of military prowess and ruthlessness. Within this programme the Israeli hostages were to be sacrificed as the overall Zionist aim of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank became an achievable goal.
Within days Israel genocide became US genocide. Joe Biden promised unconditional support and weapons flooded in. Biden explained that if Israel did not exist the US would have to invent it and that it was a ground-based US aircraft carrier in West Asia.
The western powers fell in behind the genocide programme and the US proved willing to collapse international bodies such as the UN and international courts to assert their supremacy.
This was all beyond the expectations of Hamas. In addition, the appeal to the Arab nations and to Islamism failed. The endless peace trips by US secretary Blinken were not directed at Israel, but at the Arab states. The aim was not to stop the genocide, but to ensure that the Arab regimes continued to quietly support Israel.
Each round of peace talks made greater and greater demands on Hamas only for the sponsors to shrug their shoulders at new Israeli demands and press Hamas to do more. Even Israel’s assassination of the chief Hamas negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, did not lead to any protest from the Arab regimes. In fact, Quatar, posing as chief negotiator for Gaza and Türkiye, the home of claims of undying hatred of Israel, jointly participated in the invasion of Syria with the result that the new state outlawed Palestinian organisations and acts as a block to arms transfers from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Both Egypt and Jordan are dominated by imperialism and are allies of Israel and the US. They receive billions from the US and use repression to silence their own populations. Israeli seizure of the Philadelphi Corridor, separating Egypt and Gaza, was an act of war against Egypt, breaking the Camp David peace accords which are the formal text of the peace. Egypt will not respond. As for the Gulf states, they are universally hostile to the Palestinians.
One cannot sum up the corruption of the Arab bourgeoisie without mentioning the Palestinian Authority. Even in the midst of genocide they continue to repress the opposition in the West Bank, killing demonstrators themselves and even banning the news organisation Al Jazeera. PA leader Abbas has pinned everything on lobbying the US and on diplomatic games in the United Nations.
However, the failure to mobilise Arab and Islamic unity was replaced by the idea of an “Axis of Resistance”.
Hezbollah in Lebanon, groups in Syria and Iraq and Ansar Allah (the Houthi movement) in Yemen were supported by Iran and took military action against Israel. Russia has been working militarily with Iran and China has strong trade links with that country.
This alliance inflicted real damage on Israel. In over a year of fighting the Zionists failed to wipe out Hamas. Hezbollah forced the depopulation of settlers in Northern Israel and was able to reach port cities and Tel Aviv itself. Ansar Allah has been able to enforce a shipping blockade and to strike into Israel. Iran has responded to provocations by demonstrating an ability to cause serious harm to military infrastructure in Israel. Many believed that this alliance might defeat the imperialist alliance in West Asia.
The sudden collapse of Syria seems to flip that equation on its head. The new model suggests a return to a greater Israel ethnically cleansing Gaza and the West Bank, occupying areas in Syria and Lebanon and militarily dominating the area with the support of imperialism. Overall, the East Asia conflict is seen as part of a wider war involving Ukraine and victory as establishing a step forward towards war with China
However, all the elements of the conflict remain, without imperialism scoring a decisive victory. Hamas remains in place. Hezbollah have been damaged but not broken. Israel has suffered significant losses in military forces and within its economy. Despite its overwhelming military prowess, the US has a corroded land army, a corrupt political system and many problems with industrial capacity inside the military industrial complex
The fractured land of Syria is the subject of explosive forces. Large slices of land have been seized. Many factions, supported by contesting governments are contesting for power over the remaining area. The US and Türkiye are in conflict over the future of the Kurds. Will the US hand back stolen oil and agricultural resources to a Syrian administration? The majority of the imperialist forces favour a stable but subject Syria. Israel has already decided the issue by occupying territory and relentless bombing of infrastructure. It aims to impose the Libyan solution of a failed state, constantly at war.
The aim of Israel now is for complete victory by bringing the US into war with Iran. This would mean endless instability, as neither country could achieve a ground invasion and we would have the same strategic plan applied yet again of endless bombing in the expectation that their victims will surrender.
The main contradiction, that of class, is ignored. East Asia is convulsed with anger. The corrupt regimes of Egypt and Jordan are sitting on a powder keg. How long until the explosion?
It is the model of class that is never applied, yet all the other geopolitical models have failed. After the Gaza genocide the idea of a progressive imperialism is laughable. Given the role of the Arab regimes, a model of progressive nationalism is ridiculous. A twist by the reformist left in the West, of a new democratic wave supported by imperialism and by colour revolutions has degenerated into simple support for imperialism.
What is left is the working class. The mass rebellion of the Arab Spring in the 2010s were at their strongest where the working class was strongest, sparking off the movement in Tunisia and being decisive in forcing the collapse of the Egyptian government. The Arab Spring was followed by counterrevolution led by the US and there was no established working-class party, leaving the way free for Islamism and nationalism.
The working class across Arabia are well aware of the reality of genocide and are kept in place only by the most ferocious repression. In countries with large populations, such as Egypt and Jordan, these forces cannot be held at bay indefinitely.
The solidarity movement in the West is also important. The fundamental basis of solidarity is that workers everywhere have a common interest. We now find that basic civil rights and freedom of expression are being attacked as opposition to genocide is increasingly criminalised.
The final step to international solidarity will be the recognition that both West Asia and the Ukraine are the sites of proxy wars directed by the US and aimed at global war with China. Then, both the socialist and solidarity movements can rejuvenate themselves and engage in the long battle that lies ahead.