A large group of terrorist Jews crossed into Syria and Lebanon this week, calling for the establishment of settlements in areas currently occupied by the military.
According to Israel’s Walla news site, around 40 Jewish terrorists from the Halutzei HaBashan movement crossed the Syrian border on Wednesday and entered the village of Hader in the Quneitra governorate.
Some of the group barricaded themselves inside a building, tying themselves to it, and urging the public to pressure Israeli ministers not to remove them from Syrian territory.
The settler group, translated as the ‘Bashan Pioneers’, referring to the biblical name of the area, said they would only leave once their families were authorised to settle in the area.
‘The right-wing government should capitalise on the time it has left to set facts on the ground,’ the group added.
In another incident on Wednesday, several Israeli activists from the settler group Uri Tzafon crossed into Lebanon in the Manara cliff area, which is called the Ramim Ridge by Israelis.
The group, translated to ‘Awaken North’, said it had marked Israel’s Independence Day inside what it described as a ‘renewed Lebanon’, adding that members had carried out a ‘family tour’ and visited trees planted earlier this year near the border.
‘We held a family tour and observation and also drove to visit the cedars that were planted at the end of the month of Shevat, on both sides of the fence,’ the group said, referring to an earlier invasion of Lebanon this year.
‘We demand full sovereignty of the State of Israel in Lebanon, both up to the Litani River and beyond,’ the group added.
Expansion of Israel’s borders
The incursions coincided with Israel’s 78th Independence Day, marking the country’s establishment in 1948 after Zionist militia ethnically cleansed Palestine, in what the Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe.
Both groups have previously attempted similar crossings following Israel’s occupation of more territory in Syria and Lebanon since 2024.
The incidents come amid growing calls from settler movements to expand Israel’s borders. The more established Nachala group has also voiced support for settling Lebanon.
Ayelet Schlissel, a spokesperson for Nachala, told settler news site Srugim on Sunday that ‘any area from which the enemy poses a threat – we must eliminate it, expel, and settle’.
‘Occupation, expulsion, settlement,’ she added about Lebanon, echoing a longtime demand of the movement regarding Gaza.
On Wednesday, the group said that ‘around 2,000 people marched today with one clear demand: to return to settle in the Gaza Strip’.
Earlier this month, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said during a speech in a settlement in the occupied West Bank that ‘there will be a clear political strategy in Gaza that expands our borders’, adding that Israel will do the same in Lebanon and Syria.
Israel has occupied Syrian territory since Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell in December 2024, while in southern Lebanon, Israel has held territories for most of the last two and a half years.