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 Lebanese society, talk of a buffer zone is an echo of the long history of invasions and occupation in the south, which lasted until the year 2000. When Israel destroys bridges across the Litani and drives the population from their homes, it is in effect creating the conditions for a new prolonged presence. Even if Israeli rhetoric presents this merely as a security zone, the result for residents looks very much like a classical model of military control. That is why French President Emmanuel Macron has stressed the need to preserve Lebanon's territorial integrity, while the United Nations has described such rhetoric as deeply alarming.

Massacres and targeted strikes

The bloodiest moment in this campaign came with the strikes of April 8. On that day, Israel carried out the heaviest air assault on Lebanon since the start of the March war. Israeli forces said they had struck more than one hundred Hezbollah targets in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and the south of the country, with a large share of the blows falling on densely populated areas. According to the Lebanese Civil Defense, 254 people were killed and more than 1,100 were wounded. Lebanon's Health Ministry gave a lower, though still horrific, figure at the time and stressed that the count was not yet complete. Reports described scenes in which people were carrying the wounded away on motorcycles because ambulances were overwhelmed after central Beirut was hit without prior warning. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Trk, called it a massacre that undermined any chance of a sustainable ceasefire.

The war did not stop there. On April 10, an Israeli strike in Nabatieh hit a government building and killed 13 members of Lebanon's state security services. This was an especially telling episode. Once not only Hezbollah strongholds but also state institutions and Lebanese security structures come under attack, the line between a war against an armed movement and a war against the Lebanese state itself begins to dissolve. At that point, Lebanese authorities were estimating that at least 1,953 people had been killed since March 2. Another 6,303 had been wounded. More than one million people had been displaced from their homes. Israeli evacuation orders covered roughly 15 percent of Lebanese territory.

Israel continues to justify these actions as necessary to push Hezbollah away from its border, deprive it of the capacity to fire on northern Israel, and create a depth barrier. Military officials and experts alike are speaking about Israel's new 'forever war' doctrine - in which conflict is a semi-permanent condition and buffer zones are created not only in Lebanon but also in Gaza and Syria. This is a crucial - a strategy no longer built around the idea of definitively destroying Israel's adversaries, but around their permanent weakening, displacement, and containment through the holding of territory.

Why Netanyahu is averse to peace

That is why, for Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition, the war has become not only an instrument of foreign policy but also a condition of domestic political survival. Netanyahu wants to avoid snap elections, which he would likely lose, and the war helps shift public attention away from failures and internal crises toward the language of national mobilization. Polling does not show any major political boost for him, yet the war still gave him something a ceasefire would not. It allowed him to preserve a security-centered agenda, delay opposition pressure, and postpone the moment of direct political reckoning. If the shooting stops, the uncomfortable questions will remain: Why was such vast destruction deemed necessary? Why were the stated goals not achieved? And what is to be done about the political erosion of Netanyahu himself?

Hezbollah under mounting pressure

At the same time, Hezbollah is in a difficult position of its own. On the one hand, it retains the capacity to strike back. Since early March the group had launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel. In early April, a missile triggered air raid sirens in areas including Tel Aviv, while Hezbollah claimed strikes on Israeli military infrastructure in Haifa. After Israel's massive assault on April 8, Hezbollah resumed rocket fire, saying it was responding to a violation of the ceasefire. At least four Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting in southern Lebanon by late March. This means that the Israeli offensive is meeting real resistance. There are confirmed losses among Israeli servicemen. As for losses in equipment, reports of damaged or destroyed Israeli armor and infrastructure often come from Hezbollah or other parties to the conflict and are not always independently verified in full detail. Still, the broader picture is clear. Even with Israel's overwhelming superiority in the air and in firepower, this war is not a bloodless march. Hezbollah remains capable of inflicting damage and of preventing the south from being fully and safely absorbed by Israel.

On the other hand, pressure on Hezbollah today comes not only from Israel but also from within Lebanon. The government has banned its military activity. President Joseph Aoun expressed readiness for direct talks with Israel even at the start of the war, and by early April it had become known that a meeting between the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors was being prepared in Washington under American mediation. Lebanon's formal position is that a ceasefire must come first, with broader talks to follow. Yet the very fact that Beirut is entering such a framework reflects an unprecedented level of domestic rejection of Hezbollah's armed autonomy and a profound exhaustion with war. At the same time, Hezbollah opposes direct negotiations with Israel and prefers a format in which the Lebanese question is treated within the broader framework of American-Iranian dialogue. Lebanese officials close to Hezbollah appear to support the Pakistani track of US-Iran negotiations, considering it more appropriate than a separate Washington process. This is what makes Hezbollah's current predicament so serious. It has to resist the Israeli offensive, withstand pressure from the Lebanese state, and prevent its future from being decided without it at external talks.

The bigger picture

At this point, the Lebanese front connects directly with the Iranian one. In its negotiations with the US, Iran has insisted that any ceasefire must extend to Lebanon, not only to the direct US-Iran theater of war. The Iranian Foreign Ministry stated that it was in contact with Lebanon to secure compliance with ceasefire commitments on all fronts. One of Iran's central demands at the Islamabad talks was a ceasefire in Lebanon, alongside sanctions relief and the question of compensation for the strikes. In other words, Tehran does not view the Lebanese front as peripheral. For Iran, it is part of a single regional bargain involving both allied states and affiliated movements. In the Iranian view, the situation cannot truly be stabilized while Israel remains free to continue its war against Hezbollah and then apply the same model of pressure against other forces aligned with Tehran.

That is why Israel's position that the ceasefire with Iran does not apply to Lebanon appears not as a technical reservation but as an attempt to preserve an exemption from any broader regional de-escalation. Netanyahu explicitly stated that Lebanon was not covered by the ceasefire with Iran, and on that same day Israel launched the most devastating strikes on Beirut of the entire March war. In effect, Israel is trying to secure the right to participate in negotiations over a new regional architecture while continuing at the same time to reshape neighboring spaces by force. This formula is convenient for Netanyahu's government, but it almost guarantees a prolonged conflict. For Lebanon, it means negotiations under bombardment. For Hezbollah, it means the threat of gradual expulsion from the south. For Iran, it means that its allies are being methodically weakened at the very moment when it is expected to sit down at the negotiating table.

Against this background, it is especially important not to oversimplify. Yes, Hezbollah is weaker than it was in previous years. Reuters, citing sources familiar with the movement, reported that at least 400 of its fighters had been killed since the war began. Yes, its disarmament is now being discussed inside Lebanon as an element of state policy. Yes, the US is pressuring both Beirut and Israel to create a negotiating framework. But none of this means that Hezbollah has been broken or that the Israeli army has already achieved its goals. On the contrary, the very need to build a buffer zone, raze villages, and destroy bridges shows that Israel cannot obtain lasting security through an ordinary military raid. It wants to alter the geography of resistance itself. Projects of that kind almost always mean a long war, new waves of refugees, further radicalization, and an extremely high price for civilians.

The balance at the current moment looks like this. Israel is waging against Lebanon not simply a campaign of retaliation for Hezbollah fire, but an offensive that bears the clear features of a project for long-term control over southern Lebanon. Israeli right-wing politicians are speaking ever more openly about the territory up to the Litani as a desirable new frontier. For part of that camp, the idea of occupying the south and eventually extending Jewish settlement there no longer looks like a fringe fantasy but like a direction of travel that the war is making more tangible. Hezbollah is indeed under severe strain, because it is being squeezed by the Israeli army, the Lebanese state, and the logic of international negotiations all at once. Yet it continues to strike back and inflict losses on Israel, which means that a quick and clean victory for the IDF still does not appear to be within reach. Iran, for its part, is trying to make an end to Israeli aggression against Lebanon and against other states and movements allied with Tehran part of the broader framework of its negotiations with Washington. And for Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition, war remains politically necessary, because without it the question of the price of their rule, the failures of their strategy, and their accountability to the electorate would return with full force. That is the most dangerous aspect of the current crisis. The war has long ceased to be only an instrument of security. For a significant part of Israel's ruling establishment, it has also become a way of prolonging its own political time.