A lot of Western analysts are applauding the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel as a moment of stasis in the bombings, and as a premise for a peace process. It is possible but only if a series of conditions that have not been fully evaluated are met. In the Middle East, it is not just another war between Zionism and Islamist-style anti-Zionism that is being fought. It is a war of multiple scenarios with the direct involvement of regional interested parties plus the indirect presence of imperialist powers outside the area who play a significant role.

Let's take it one point at a time:

1. The Biden Administration pushed hard for this ceasefire if only for the simple reason they wanted to leave a legacy for an Administration that has been guilty of indiscriminately supporting the butcher Netanyahu and has been an accomplice to horrendous massacres both in the Gaza Strip and in Beirut in Lebanon. All this with the complicity of their European subordinates.
2. The terms of the agreement are unstable and vague. They provide that the Lebanese Shiite militia withdraw north of the Litani River, stop launching rockets into Israeli territory and not move a muscle as they wait for a “pax” that the truce should favour.
3. Put in these terms, the ceasefire, assuming it occurs, has allowed Israel to launch the most violent attack on Beirut by destroying civilian buildings, before the agreement came into force. As if to say: “let’s do the dirty work while we can”, then we’ll see.
4. The agreement allows Israel to achieve a good part of its primary objective, that is, to eliminate all the anti-Zionist hotbeds in the area, from the destruction of Gaza to the bombings of Beirut and the Beka’a Valley, as well as Shiite positions in Syria. It is part of an attempt, thanks to the fierce determination of the settlers in the West Bank, to eliminate as much of the Palestinian population as possible in order to achieve a "greater" Israel and leave a few and insignificant "enclaves" of Palestinians in the Negev desert or in the refugee camps of the neighbouring Arab countries.
5. The objective also has a broader perspective of weakening Iran, not only because it is a sponsor of the Shiite axis of resistance mobilised against Tel Aviv's imperialist designs, but because Iranian imperialism, and its tentacles, represents its number one enemy.
6. In these terms, the American "pax" would gain a significant success over the opposing imperialist axis, the one composed of Russia, China and Iran, while waiting for tensions to develop in the Indo-Pacific region, on the Taiwan question and, above all, on the economic-trade competition involving the "Silk Road", the war between the yuan and the dollar, the control of energy routes, and technological rivalry.

At the moment the game is being played by a single pawn, Iran. China cannot allow one of its important partners like Iran (95% of whose oil goes to Beijing) to be significantly damaged.

The Trump Administration will probably allow Israel to carry out its plan which, to a large extent, favours the US by weakening Iran and its Shiite tentacles, plus the Sunnis of Hamas, and, consequently, creating problems for its mortal enemy, China.

We are only at the beginning and the prospects are certainly not good, despite the "ceasefire" and the much vaunted promise of a definitive peace throughout the Middle East. And then the usual question remains. Wars are determined by imperialist powers but fought, weapons in hand, by the working class. Those same weapons must not be used by the proletariat to kill each other as in a fratricidal feud, but must be turned against their instigators.

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