Why Netanyahu won’t let the Middle East have peace any time soon

Israel is openly considering a new settlement land grab in Lebanon, showing de-escalation is not even an option Israel’s war in Lebanon has entered a stage in which claims of supposedly precise strikes on military infrastructure can no longer be taken seriously. The scale of the operations, the depth of the advance in the south, the destruction of bridges and residential neighborhoods, the massive strikes on Beirut, and the steady expansion of the so-called buffer zone all show that this is not merely a tactical effort to contain Hezbollah. It is an attempt to reshape the military and political reality of southern Lebanon for years to come. Israel describes this as the creation of a security belt up to the Litani River. In the language of the region, however, it reads differently. It is a course toward long term control of territory, the depopulation of the border strip, and the creation of facts on the ground that will be extremely difficult to reverse. Formally, the new phase of the war began on March 2, when Hezbollah opened fire on Israel after American and Israeli strikes on Iran and the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel responded with a broad air campaign against Lebanon and then expanded its ground operations in the south. At that point, the government of Nawaf Salam tried to distance itself from Hezbollah’s decision and took the unprecedented step of banning the movement’s military activity outside state institutions, demanding that its weapons be handed over to the state. This was an important sign of a shifting balance within Lebanon itself. Hezbollah can no longer act as though its armed autonomy is automatically accepted by the entire state. Yet the move also revealed the other side of the crisis. Beirut is exerting political pressure on Hezbollah, but it has neither the resources nor the internal consensus to disarm it quickly without risking a deeper internal fracture. A land grab by any other name From a military point of view, Israel rapidly moved far beyond the boundaries of retaliatory strikes.

By late March, Defense Minister Israel Katz had openly declared the intention to hold southern Lebanon up to the Litani as a security zone, which means nearly a tenth of Lebanese territory. This was followed by strikes on bridges, the destruction of homes in border villages, and evacuation orders for residents south of the river. Soon afterward, Israel was already constructing new fortifications and destroying increasingly empty villages, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was openly speaking of expanding the security strip. The Israeli military machine was no longer concealing the long-term nature of the operation. This was no raid. It was a project of territorial transformation under the military pretext of combating Hezbollah. This is where the central political question emerges. For the Israeli right, southern Lebanon is increasingly becoming an ideologically charged space. The bluntest statement came from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said in late March that Israel’s new border should run along the Litani – the clearest call yet by a senior Israeli official for the seizure of Lebanese territory. True, at the current moment there is no officially approved government program for the construction of Jewish settlements in southern Lebanon in a formal cabinet document. Yet when a senior minister speaks of changing the border, while the army simultaneously burns out the border zone, destroys homes, and prepares for prolonged control of the territory, the analytical conclusion is already clear. This is occupation, from which the idea of future settlement expansion follows almost naturally. For the far right in Israel, that appears to be a desired outcome. The stated pretext is the struggle against Hezbollah. The real content is the consolidation of a new coercive order on the ground. This is precisely why fears inside Lebanon are so acute. For Lebanes