Israel to ‘control’ southern Lebanon as Smotrich urges border shift to Litani River
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Tuesday that the army plans to “control” southern Lebanon, a day after Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the border to be redrawn at the Litani River.
Katz said hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians forced to flee the south would not be allowed to return until “security” for residents of northern Israel is “ensured”. He added that Israel would control a “security zone up to the Litani”.
“The principle is clear: where there is terror and missiles, there will be no homes and no residents, and the IDF will be inside,” he said.
His comments came days after he said the military had been instructed to “destroy all the bridges over the Litani River” and “accelerate the demolition of Lebanese houses” near the boundary.
On Monday, Smotrich said the war in Lebanon should end with “radical change”, including the creation of a “sterile security cordon” deep inside Lebanese territory.
“The current war in Lebanon must end with a radical change, beyond the vanquishing of the terror group Hezbollah,” he told the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
“The Litani must be our new border with Lebanon, like the ‘Yellow Line’ in Gaza and the buffer zone on Mount Hermon in Syria.”
Israel has never formally defined its borders with Lebanon, Syria or the Palestinian territories; instead, they are demarcated by the 1949 and 1967 ceasefire agreements.
In 2024, Israeli forces occupied Mount Hermon in Syria following the fall of Bashar al-Assad, in a move widely seen as a violation of international law. The strategic mount lies near the Syrian border with Lebanon.
The so-called “Yellow Line” in Gaza is a military boundary unilaterally imposed by Israel inside the strip since the US-brokered ceasefire in October, and has since expanded to cover more than half the territory.
The statements by Smotrich and Katz come as Israel is reportedly planning a major ground invasion of Lebanon and aims to seize all territory south of the Litani River, according to Axios.
The river lies about 30km north of the current Israel–Lebanon boundary and is a critical link between southern Lebanon and the rest of the country.
Over the weekend, Israeli forces destroyed key bridges over the Litani and struck homes near the southern border - an escalation that Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, warned could be a “prelude to a ground invasion”.
This article was sourced from Middle East Eye.
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