As Israel trades fire with Hezbollah, calls for mass evacuations and sends ground troops deeper into Lebanon, its leaders have hinted at a long-term occupation modeled on the devastating conquest of much of Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
Israel says it needs to establish a zone of control in the depopulated south to shield its own northern communities, which have faced daily rocket attacks since the Hezbollah group joined the wide war.
Many in Lebanon fear that could mean the open-ended displacement of over a million people, the flattening of their homes and a loss of territory.
Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz said this week that it would create a “security zone” up to the Litani River, some 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the border in some places.
He said troops would destroy homes, which he claimed were being used by militants, and that residents would not return until northern Israel is safe.
The campaign would mirror the one in Gaza, in which Israeli forces flattened and largely depopulated the eastern half of the Palestinian territory, Katz said on Tuesday.
Israel has said it won’t withdraw from the enclave until Hamas disarms as part of a US-brokered ceasefire deal.
“We have ordered an acceleration in the destruction of Lebanese homes in contact-line villages to neutralise threats to Israeli communities, in accordance with the model of Beit Hanoun and Rafah in Gaza,” Katz said, referring to border towns that were largely obliterated.
From one war to the next
After a 2024 ceasefire halted Israel’s last war with Hezbollah, Israeli forces gradually withdrew from southern Lebanon except for five strategic hilltops along the border.
Lebanese returned to find that homes, infrastructure, and some entire villages destroyed.
Israel said it had dismantled Hezbollah infrastructure that could have been used to launch an Oct. 7-style attack, and it continued to strike what it said were militant targets on a near-daily basis after the truce.
Hezbollah resumed it attacks after Israel and the United States launched the war with Iran on Feb. 28, accusing Israel of having repeatedly violated the ceasefire.
Israel accused Lebanon’s government of failing to carry out its pledge to disarm Hezbollah, despite its unprecedented steps toward criminalising the group.
In the latest fighting, Israel has launched blistering air raids across Lebanon, killing more than 1,000 people — mostly outside of the border area — and displacing over a million.
It has warned residents to evacuate a wide swath of the south, extending from the border to the Zahrani River, some 55 kilometres (34 miles) away.
The Israeli military says it has launched a limited ground operation. Political leaders speak of more ambitious plans.
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister and a member of its Security Cabinet, said this week that the current war must end with “fundamental change.”
“The Litani must be our new border with the state of Lebanon,” he said.
Echoes of an earlier occupation
Israel invaded southern Lebanon in 1982 during the country’s civil war. Hezbollah, established that year, waged a guerrilla campaign that eventually ended the Israeli occupation in 2000.
This time around, Israel has bombed seven bridges over the Litani, the northern edge of a UN-patrolled buffer zone established after previous conflicts. Israel says Hezbollah was using the bridges to move fighters and weapons, and that its military will control the remaining crossings.
Heavy fighting has meanwhile erupted in the town of Khiam, the fall of which would cut off the south from Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, another area with a large Hezbollah presence.
After the bridges were bombed, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun accused Israel of seeking to sever the south from the rest of the country “to establish a buffer zone, entrench the reality of occupation, and pursue Israeli expansion within Lebanese territories.”
UN peacekeepers say the bombing of the bridges and ongoing clashes have hindered their operations and put personnel at risk.
