A small but passionate group assembled near Haifa on Wednesday, advocating for Israel to secure its northern border by occupying vast swaths of Lebanon.
Haaretz
Hard-line settlers such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are occupying some of the highest positions in Israel’s government, but even they have not yet suggested establishing Jewish settlements in Lebanon.
Yet a group of people gathered in the parking lot of a small shopping center east of Haifa on Wednesday afternoon with just that aim in mind. Most were families corralling their children who, like their parents, were wearing large kippot (the boys) and long skirts (the girls). They affixed posters and magnets to their vehicles, the images showing a cypress tree inside a Jewish Star of David and the text ‘The movement for settling southern Lebanon.’
The idea of Jewish settlement in southern Lebanon is a fringe belief even among West Bank settlers. But the war in Gaza has sparked a fervor about a return to Gush Katif, the Gaza settlement bloc, and some proponents are hoping that this can drive a conversation about the northern border as well.
One of the movement’s organizers, a woman named Leah – a preschool teacher in the Golan Heights who preferred not to give her last name – described to Haaretz how the initiative got started.
‘I’m part of a movement called ‘Returning Home’, which talks mostly about returning to and settling the Gaza Strip,’ she said. ‘I lived in Gush Katif, in Gaza, and they evacuated me from my home in 2005, and I want to return. And through that movement, I joined the one for southern Lebanon.’
The initiative to settle part of Israel’s northern neighbor started during the latest war, during which some 80,000 Israelis have been evacuated from border communities in the north and the south, due to incessant rocket and missile attacks from Hezbollah and Hamas.
‘The moment there’s Jewish settlement, there’s an army that watches over it. It’s not like the army that guarded the border in Lebanon; it’s an army that guards Jewish civilians,’ Leah said. ‘That’s how you protect the rest of the country as well. It hasn’t happened in southern Lebanon and I don’t know exactly why, but it’s a shame.’
She said that because the Israel Defense Forces pulled out of Lebanon completely, it has been engaged in a cycle in which it still has sporadic battles with Hezbollah every few years.
‘Look at how many civilians are now evacuated from their homes because they can’t live safely in the north. As I see it, our call to our enemies, for Gaza as well as southern Lebanon, is that whoever messes with Israel will lose the territory they attack us from. We will conquer that territory, we will settle that territory and we will protect our civilians. If they dare attack us, we’ll take more. We’ll stop conquering when you stop attacking us.’
Leah conceded that the idea hasn’t proved popular. ‘We’re not seeing lots of support yet, there are only a very few people who think like us. But more and more, it’s developing,’ she claimed. ‘We may look like a small group of crazy people, but at the end of the day we have a state. A hundred years ago, nobody thought we’d have a country, and today we do.’
When pressed on the fact that even though Israel has occupied the West Bank, that area has been far from quiet and safe for local settlers, she said, ‘I think when they reach out to the enemy, he feels more comfortable. If on October 7 we went in firmly and decisively, without fear of what others would say, Hamas wouldn’t have dared to mess with us. But the moment we give humanitarian aid to the enemy, and we’re too careful, and we’re afraid, say, of what the United States would think – they can get back up and feel comfortable to continue hurting us.’
The movement to settle Lebanon is named after Israel Socol, a 24-year-old reservist from the settlement of Karnei Shomron who was killed in Gaza in January. His father, Yehoshua Socol, was among those attending Wednesday’s demonstration.
‘Israel, my son, dreamed of living in Lebanon for years,’ he said, while noting that this was not the genesis of the movement. ‘This initiative started when the Holy one, blessed is he, promised us the Land of Israel. Historically, it has always been ours,’ he said, referring to the biblical lands that religious Jews see as part of a ‘greater Israel.’
While Socol said he appreciated messages of condolences for his son’s wartime death, he said ‘Consolation will come when we have settlements in Lebanon, in Gaza, on the other side of the Jordan River and the Third Temple’ in Jerusalem.
The two dozen people at Wednesday’s rally held signs on bright orange posterboard, the color signifying opposition to the 2005 pullout from Gaza. ‘Residents of the north deserve safety. Settling south Lebanon,’ read one. Another quoted Deuteronomy 3:25: ‘That goodly hill-country, and Lebanon.’ In that chapter, Moses gives his final speeches, recalling how he begged God to let him cross over to the Promised Land.
‘It’s clear to me that Lebanon is part of ‘Eretz Yisrael’, the Land of Israel,’ said Yonatan, who immigrated from the United States 24 years ago and now lives in the West Bank settlement outpost of Adei Ad.
A large portion of the ancient tribal land of Asher and Naftali are in southern Lebanon, he said, therefore making it part of Israel. ‘My belief is that the wholeness of the state, of living in the State of Israel, will continue to evoke the holy soul of the people of Israel in a way that will allow us to fulfill our destiny as being a light unto the nations.’
In addition to considering himself a radical follower of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, Yonatan considers himself a member of the far-right. He believes that Hezbollah’s missiles from southern Lebanon justify occupying and settling the area. ‘I don’t expect people in the general population to cooperate, or to see my point of view about things. But in this instance, since there are enough missiles in Lebanon to cause enough damage to the Land of Israel, in similar proportion to a nuclear war, I think that even those who are not religious and radical like myself can understand that it’s a very simple security fact that we have to control that area in order to survive, physically – whatever you believe.’
He said he believed the idea has not gained traction because ‘it hasn’t really occurred to anybody,’ including politicians. ‘I don’t imagine anyone in the secular establishment or even the religious establishment – except for maybe the one party that we all know’ (likely referring to Finance Minister Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party) – ‘going into Lebanon just for the purpose of occupying it,’ he said. ‘However, it seems that we will be forced to go in there for the sake of defending our borders, defending our lives. And so after we’re in there, the question will become realistic.’
As of 2017, there were an estimated 1 million people living in Lebanon’s South and Nabatiyeh governates, the areas that best correspond to the vague geographic lines presented by the settlement movement. ‘What happens to them?’ I ask.
‘I think you understand what we have in mind. I don’t want to say this explicitly,’ Yonatan responded. When pressed, he said that in his ideal scenario, Muslims and other Gentiles would be subjected to a loyalty test, where they disavow the parts of the Quran that discuss jihad.
And if a person is not willing to sign such a loyalty oath, ‘then it’s not safe to be living near such a person,’ because they are ‘biding their time until they have an opportunity to try to implement what their religion says.’
Yonatan returned later with more information. He said he had heard on the podcast of Jonathan Pollard – the former U.S.-Jewish spy who has recently suggested moving Gaza’s Arab population to Ireland – that the true threat comes from central Lebanon, from where missiles can be launched with extreme accuracy. ‘So it’s not enough to just go into Lebanon and create a security region just a few kilometers in, in order to return the security to the nation. We have to occupy both southern and central Lebanon, there’s no other way around it.’
In that case, it seems like the missiles would just move further north and still be able to hit areas that are highly populated with Jewish settlers.
Would that mean then occupying all of Lebanon, and then eventually moving into Syria?
‘I’m not so knowledgeable about geopolitics,’ he said, while noting that Lebanon is divided on ethnoreligious lines. ‘If the missiles are all in the Shi’ite areas, that would mean we’d have to overthrow all the Shi’ite areas, in order to return security to the country.’
For ‘Yisrael’, from Haifa, this movement is not a religious one. ‘We need security for the State of Israel,’ he said, noting that much of his family in the north had been evacuated since October.
‘I’ve learned that they only understand force,’ he said of the region’s Arabs. The government ‘tried everything, but maybe if they do settlement, it’ll solve this problem. In Gaza, if they hadn’t evacuated Gush Katif, what happened on October 7 never would have happened. It was a mistake to evacuate Gush Katif.’
He added: ‘If Hezbollah decides to start a war, that’s what’ll happen, sadly. They’ll evacuate all of southern Lebanon, like they did in Gaza. That’s my opinion,’ he said. ‘Arabs understand force better – that’s the problem. It seems that they don’t understand goodwill. As opposed as I am to violence and all that stuff, the one who started the violence is them and not us. The one who caused all these problems is them.’
After 90 minutes of demonstrating by the roadside as messianic music blared, the jubilant participants called it a day. They were pleased with the turnout, and were bolstered by the many people who honked their car horns in support of them.