Israeli settlers' dream to occupy south Lebanon dimmed by ceasefire

Agreement puts hold on ambitions of taking control of region

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A faction of Israel's settler movement is pushing for Israelis to live in south Lebanon, even as a ceasefire with Hezbollah comes into force. Proponents of the move say Israel taking control of south Lebanon is the only way to end a decades-long cycle of conflict and violence.

“This ceasefire is very frustrating,” Michael Lev, a supporter of the Lebanon settler movement, told The National, after news that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted an agreement to end the 13-month conflict with Hezbollah. “It just makes us more sure in our thinking. The only way to change the situation in the north is for our citizens to live in Lebanon.”

Mr Lev is a member of a settler organisation called Uri Tzafon, founded in memory of Israel Sokol, a soldier killed in Gaza earlier this year who had wanted to settle in Lebanon. On Tuesday, its supporters joined protests in Jerusalem opposing the ceasefire deal, according to pictures posted on its WhatsApp group.

“Absolute victory is to return to the land of our ancestors and live in the mountains of Lebanon,” an accompanying message read.

Fighting in Lebanon escalated over the past two months since Israel began a ground offensive on October 1, adding to cross-border exchanges that started after the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group began firing rockets and drones into Israel on October 8 last year, in support of Hamas in Gaza.

Since then, over 3,700 people have been killed in Lebanon, and more than 1.3 million displaced from their homes, most of them in the past two months. On the other side of the border, about 68,500 Israelis have evacuated the north of the country, and at least 100 have been killed, including soldiers.

Those affected by the conflict in south Lebanon are horrified and angered by the idea of the settler movement.

“The question is: why would someone come and take my house and my land?,” one man from a border village in south Lebanon, told The National. “Do you think it's logical for Germany to invade France, for example, to kick out the French citizens in order to give the land to people with German citizenship? Of course not.”

According to satellite imagery shared with and verified by The National, his family home near the border was bulldozed and olive trees ripped from the ground, likely after the start of Israel’s ground invasion. The man wanted to remain anonymous for fear of retribution on his family, whom he said had no political affiliation.

The idea of settling Lebanon is being proposed by a small portion of Israeli society, and it does not have widespread support among its citizens. Even the government says it is against the idea, although some far-right members of Mr Netanyahu’s government publicly advocate for rebuilding settlements in the Gaza Strip, from where Israel withdrew in 2005.

But in the long term, and despite the ceasefire, proponents of the Lebanon settler movement are unlikely to give up on their dream of claiming what they believe to be the land of historic Israel. They say that previous moves to settle the occupied West Bank, and growing calls to do the same in Gaza, mean there is a precedent for expanding Israeli control north. The idea will eventually gather traction, they believe.

“When we have a dream, and someone says, ‘it's not realistic,’ we say, ‘we have a vision If we didn't have a vision, we wouldn't have the land of Israel,’” Mr Lev told The National, in his Jerusalem office earlier this month, before the ceasefire talks entered their final stages.

“I’m not saying that we're going build a large army and conquer the whole land of Israel as written in the Bible,” Mr Lev said. “But as religious people, we say that we are not controlling this world, but when God opens a gate, this says to us that we have an opportunity. So when the politicians and the security needs stand side by side with our beliefs, we say this is the time to get South Lebanon.”

Many in Israel’s settler movement believe that all land between the Nile in Egypt and the Euphrates in Iraq should come under their control.

Others have published opinion articles in Israeli newspapers, claiming south Lebanon as part of Israel.

“Historically speaking, southern Lebanon is in fact northern Israel, and the roots of the Jewish people in the area run deep,” wrote Michael Freund, a former adviser to Mr Netanyahu, in the Jerusalem Post this month. “Whether or not this can or should be translated now into a political reality is a far more complex question, but there is simply no denying our connection to the land.”

Many Lebanese people see the move as another step by Israel to expand its territorial control using religious justifications.

“We have been seeing these claims online in the past months, of course, so I am not surprised,” said Mona Fawaz, a Professor of Urban Studies & Planning at the American University of Beirut. “I am also not surprised about this messianic attitude; Israel has been profoundly transformed in the past decade or more.”

The Uri Tsafon organisation has a list of Israelis who want to move to south Lebanon, Mr Lev said and is using social media and activism to promote its ideas.

“The only way is by the government endorsing [settlement of Lebanon], because it's over the border,” said Mr Lev, a 50-year-old father of six, who lives in the occupied West Bank in a settlement deemed illegal under international law. “I say it is going to be the policy – maybe in one year, two years, 10, 20 years. We are not afraid of time.”

While the Israeli government officially says it is against the idea of staying in Lebanon, some politicians from Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party have also advocated for Israel to retain some sort of control over the country’s south.

“To ensure the lives of the residents of the north from a ground invasion, the ground must be controlled,” Ariel Kallner, a Likud member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, wrote on X last month.

Lebanese are aware of those wishing to settle their land and say that Israel’s latest invasion has in part been an attempt to erase normal Lebanese people’s connections to the south of their country.

Mona Fawaz described how her grandmothers told of travelling to cities in modern-day Israel, and how repeated Israeli incursions had changed south Lebanon.

“Still, the south remains a lived and living culture, with many of us drawing roots and having deep ties to the land, but also many people living in this land,” she told The National. “Israel knows that. This is why they are flattening senselessly the land, destroying crops and homes, trying to destroy people's relations to this part of the country.”

Israel says its aim in Lebanon has been to degrade Hezbollah’s military capabilities and push the group back beyond the Litani River, which stretches up to 30km from the Lebanon-Israel border. UN Resolution 1701 ordered Hezbollah fighters to withdraw north of the waterway in 2006, although the resolution has never been fully introduced.

“The Prime Minister has said this very clearly that there is no desire from this government to settle Gaza. That simply won't happen. And the same goes for Lebanon,” David Mencer, the Israeli government’s spokesman, said in response to a question from The National during a media briefing this month.

Israel previously militarily occupied south Lebanon between 1982 and 2000, before a withdrawal. At that time, Israeli civilians did not move into the area. Were Israel to one day reoccupy the area and move in its population, that would be “illegal under international humanitarian law,” Dr Suhad Bishara, legal director of Adalah, a Haifa-based independent human rights organisation, told The National.

Of south Lebanon’s current residents, Mr Lev said that under his dream vision, they could stay as long as they accepted it as part of Israel. He acknowledged that his idea is not supported by many Lebanese, who support neither Hezbollah nor the idea of Israel settling their land.

“I think that the people live in south Lebanon, if they can accept that Israel is the owner of the land, they can be part of the state, with some sort of autonomy,” he said.

The settlers’ ideas may have a widespread effect on Lebanese society, widening cracks that already exist. The man whose family home on the border was destroyed said that he did not support the ideologies of Hezbollah or the Amal Movement, another Shiite Islamist party. But the idea of Israelis wanting to settle his home would push him towards them.

“My reaction would be to fully support Hezbollah, the Amal Movement, or any other party that fights against Israel,” he said when asked about his response to the Israeli settler movement. “Even though I am not religious and do not align with Hezbollah's or Amal's internal Lebanese politics, if I had the chance, I would fight alongside them.”

Among the things that pains him most is the damage to his family’s land caused by the Israeli invasion. “I am still so mad at the olive trees that they destroyed,” he said.