Smotrich Openly Calls For Israeli Annexation Of South Lebanon.

Israel's Real Motives In Lebanon Revealed.

I recently covered the Israeli media’s push for an Israeli annexation of South Lebanon and the establishment of Jewish settlements, after Israel displaced over one million people .

The Israeli media used this displacement to push for an Israeli annexation of South Lebanon up to the Litani River.

Likud-friendly journalist Amit Segal in the Miriam Adelson-funded Israel Hayom wrote , “Trump, a man with no sentimentality for old borders, already shook the Middle East when he agreed in principle to recognize Israeli sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria in the framework of the Peace to Prosperity plan, and when he supported mass emigration from Gaza. The mass migration from southern Lebanon has already happened. The only question is whether he will give Israel merely de facto approval of its new northern border or de jure approval as well”.

The Jerusalem Post wrote an even more explicit article by a former deputy communications director under Benjamin Netanyahu, Michael Freund, where he explicitly called to “incorporate southern Lebanon into sovereign Israel and settle it with Jews” adding, “If Hezbollah is pushed north of the Litani River and Israel maintains control of the territory south of it, the establishment of Jewish communities there could transform the region from a temporary military zone into a stable frontier.”

Now Israel’s extremist finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has explicitly endorsed this idea.

Reuters reports that , “Israel should extend its border ​with Lebanon up to the Litani River deep inside the country’s south, Israel’s finance minister said on Monday as Israeli troops bombed bridges and destroyed homes in ‌the area in an escalating military assault.”

The outlet reported that in an interview with an Israeli radio program, Smotrich openly said that the mass displacement and ethnic cleansing of South Lebanon, “needs to end with a different reality entirely, … with the change of Israel’s borders” adding, “the new Israeli border must be the Litani”.

Smotrich’s comments give further evidence that Israel’s real motive in South Lebanon is not “security” or “defeating Hezbollah” but taking South Lebanon as Israeli territory in the service of the Greater Israel Project.

As journalist Rania Khalek put it :

The Israeli campaign in Lebanon is not about Hezbollah or security.

It is about expanding Israel’s borders to the Litani river. They are saying it out loud. The displacement orders are meant to permanently ethnically cleanse Lebanese from their land and replace them with Jewish settlers.

The only thing preventing this outcome is the armed Lebanese group fighting Israel’s invasion in the south.

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