“I Want to Occupy”: Inside the Israeli Movement Pushing to Raze and Settle Southern Lebanon |
Special Investigations
Press Freedom Defense Fund
“I Want to Occupy”: Inside the Israeli Movement Pushing to Raze and Settle Southern Lebanon
In the communities closest to Israel’s northern border, residents argue the only way to keep themselves safe is to displace their Lebanese neighbors.
Eyal Adom, head of security for an Israeli community on the border with Lebanon, has a clear vision for the land just a few hundred meters away.
“I want to occupy,” he told The Intercept. “Yes, occupy, the word nobody likes. I want to occupy southern Lebanon. Move all the Arabs from there, up to the Litani River.”
We’re sitting in the command and control center in Moshav Netu’a, a village so close to the U.N.-brokered “Blue Line” separating Israel and Lebanon that one can see the physical barrier from the windows of many homes. Here, amid a temporary pause in fighting between the U.S.–Israeli alliance and Iran, there’s no sense of peace.
Putting Fuel on a Ceasefire: Israel Tries to Kill U.S.–Iran Talks
Under muddied terms for the two-week ceasefire with Iran, Israel has kept fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon, launching an all-out war on the country’s armed elements and civilians alike. The Israeli military bombed villages and ordered more than 1 million Lebanese civilians to evacuate from the south, territory that is often viewed as Hezbollah’s stronghold due to its significant Shia Muslim population and weapons caches. Israel blew up bridges linking the north and the south of Lebanon. In defiance of previous ceasefire conditions set in November 2024, Hezbollah forces that were supposed to retreat north have remained in the south, and Israeli forces continued to hold five “strategic” hilltops in the north, accumulating more than 10,000 total ceasefire violations.
“The Arabs’ only motivation to stop fighting is if you take their land.”
“The Arabs’ only motivation to stop fighting is if you take their land.”
For the residents of Netu’a, Hezbollah is a problem to be solved, and one to fix with military power.
“The Arabs’ only motivation to stop fighting is if you take their land,” Adom said. “You kill them, it doesn’t matter. You hurt them, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Only taking territories. This is the only thing that matters to them.”
At least seven Netu’a residents told The Intercept that they see the eviction of Lebanese civilians as the only sure way to prevent their own displacement. After October 7, 2023, fearing a follow-on attack by Hezbollah, the Israeli government evacuated kibbutzim and other settlements near its border with Lebanon, including Netu’a, scattering families in hotels across the country.
The evacuation was “like a piece of gum being pulled apart,” said Oranit Manasseh, a mother of four who lives in Shtula, another kibbutz on Israel’s border with Lebanon. “That is what happened to our community, day after day that we were living in hotels away from the kibbutz.”
Manasseh and her children have since been able to return to their home, which was not damaged during the evacuation. When she spoke to The Intercept, the family was staying at a villa in Shtula that would normally host tourists for holidays like Passover but has been sitting largely empty since October 8, 2023, with few Israelis wishing to visit the north for a vacation with incoming missile fire.
Manasseh’s hope, she told The Intercept, is that the Israeli military “depopulate the south, get rid of........