This week, Israel escalated its war tactics to new levels of terror: thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies rigged with explosives detonated, causing horrifying injuries to those holding them and to others nearby. In total, the explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies over two days killed at least 37 people and injured more than 3,000. Unconfirmed reports also suggest that solar panels and ATMs were involved in the explosions during the attacks.

There is a trap in viewing Israel merely as a “rogue state” or Netanyahu as another terroristic authoritarian. This new level of horror is inflicted by Israel in a laboratory for hegemonic powers’ relentless campaign to maintain control at all costs. The attack had a dual objective: to show Hezbollah that their old-school communication tech gives them no safety, and to brutally terrorise the civilian population. For over a year, Israel has been modelling a new iteration of state power bound by no limits, which answers to no one.

Another mistake is to see the weapons manufacturing complex as merely opportunistic, capitalising on conflict to fuel the cycle of violence. In reality, as yesterday’s report by CAAT exposed, the arms industry is an essential cog in the machinery of state violence. The US-Israel alliance is rooted in global capitalism and imperialism. It is not just about protecting US interests but about preserving the entire state-capitalist hegemony and exploiting the Global South.

Anyone hoping that removing Netanyahu, halting US arms sales, or intervention from the superpowers will lead to a solution is bound to be disappointed. There is little hope in negotiations or power shifts of any kind. The deep-seated hatred cultivated in this region between the marginalized and the privileged, combined with the ongoing restructuring of the geopolitical status quo, enables the state authority to do what it does best: create conditions that justify its own existence.

Anarchists believe that the only real hope lies in dismantling the entire state apparatus, along with the capitalist and patriarchal structures that create the borders dividing people, the militaries that enforce them, and the industries that profit from exploitation and ecocide. Nationalism and religion are divisive myths that obscure the possibility of international solidarity among the oppressed. 

The late Alfredo Bonanno wrote decades ago that the only true hope would come from an insurrection by the Palestinian and Israeli people together to destroy the institutions governing them—without intermediaries. Even then, that perspective was more of a dream. So it remains today. But as this tormented region of the world has shown us time and again, we must be prepared for the worst.