The Return Of Colonialism

Today In Real Estate: Start A War, Kill Your Neighbors & Steal Their Land

Uri Tzafon’s informal, oft-repeated motto is “occupation, expulsion, settlement.” It has advanced the idea that Israel must move its northern border to the Litani River—which bisects Lebanon about 15 miles north of the current Israeli boundary—and occupy a depopulated southern Lebanon, comprising some 10% of Lebanon’s total territory.

That idea is now a “broad and troubling consensus” in Israel, as the journalist Moshe Gilad wrote in Haaretz on April 9th. In early March, soon after Hezbollah launched attacks on Israel in response to the joint US and Israel war on Iran, Israeli public figures began calling for the occupation and depopulation of southern Lebanon — a claim repeated again and again by mainstream Israeli media personalities. Retired military leaders and politicians also voiced their support, and members of Knesset soon joined the call for occupation. On April 7th, 20 members of Knesset (MKs) wrote to the Israeli cabinet advocating for “occupation and full control” of southern Lebanon alongside “the complete displacement of the population.” One poll found that 62% of Israelis now support the idea of occupying all of Lebanon south of the Litani River.

62% of them seem nice.

These aspirations are being translated into policy: On March 24th, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that the military would control southern Lebanon up to the Litani, and prevent the return of hundreds of thousands of residents. A week later, he said that all homes near the border would be destroyed, “like in Rafah and Beit Hanoun,” in order “to permanently remove border-adjacent threats.” Israel has now issued evacuation orders for about 15% of Lebanon’s territory, part of its campaign to ethnically cleanse the southern part of the country, specifically of Shiite Muslims. (Hezbollah is a Shiite organization.) “Every home in southern Lebanon, the Shiite homes, are control command centers, they hold weapon supplies, they have tunnels going beneath them,” Israeli military spokesperson Doron Spielman recently said, in comments chillingly reminiscent of Israel’s justification for the destruction of Gaza. Over a million people have already been displaced from southern Lebanon, and over 2,000 people have been killed, with nearly 6,000 injured.

Some call it gentrification, some call it "ethnic cleansing".

[JewishCurrents, via Att'n. To The Unseen.]