Israel’s defense minister drove through the demolished villages of southern Lebanon on Wednesday and told the army to plan for a long occupation. Israel Katz, touring the strip of Lebanese territory his country has held since the spring, said the troops would stay, not for months but indefinitely, and that the same applied to Syria and Gaza.
Katz said Israel would not withdraw from the security zone, the term it applies to the land it occupies, that the army was there to protect the northern communities and its own forces, and that it would clear the area and withdraw under no circumstances from the security zones in Lebanon, Syria or Gaza.
The visit was not a routine inspection. According to reports from the tour, Katz told the military to get ready, on paper and in the field, for a stay of years in Lebanon, while continuing the destruction of houses and what Israel calls terrorist infrastructure. The scale of the occupation is already large: an area of more than 600 square kilometers (about 232 square miles), a strip roughly ten kilometers (about 6 miles) deep along the border, with dozens of villages occupied or razed. Beneath the Crusader castle of Beaufort, where Katz pointed to the destruction of the tunnels that had been there, Israeli forces set off large explosions about ten days ago.
The peace mechanism that is not working
The striking thing is not that Israel refuses to withdraw. It has said so repeatedly since June. What changed on Wednesday is the tone and the administrative order: a minister instructing his military to build for permanence, while the diplomatic machinery designed to end the occupation stands idle.
Under the framework deal struck in late June, the Lebanese Army was to move into the south, beginning with trial zones that Israel would hand over once Hezbollah disarmed. Hezbollah has rejected the deal and keeps its weapons. The condition therefore fails, the pilot zones stay occupied, and Israel keeps clearing villages. A ceasefire has held since June, but it is a ceasefire with demolition crews working inside it.
Washington, meanwhile, is planning another round of Israel-Lebanon negotiations in Rome in early September, according to a US State Department official. The pattern is by now familiar: talks are scheduled, talks are held, the disarmament condition goes unmet, and the occupation continues. Katz’s order on Wednesday tells the army which outcome the Israeli government actually expects.
Three occupations, one doctrine
The Lebanon statement was bundled with two others. In Syria, Israeli forces keep a military presence with no announced exit. In Gaza, Israel occupies more than 60 percent of the territory under a ceasefire that has held since October 2025, and last week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a US roadmap that called for Hamas disarmament and an eventual Israeli withdrawal, saying troops would not leave as long as Hamas was not truly disarmed.
Put the three together and the policy is a single sentence: Israel will keep its army wherever it decides its security requires, until enemies it does not trust disarm, and it is the Israeli government that decides when that has happened. The June agreement was supposed to break that logic by tying withdrawal to a verifiable disarmament. Hezbollah’s refusal has preserved the logic intact.
The costs are already counted
The occupation of Lebanon has a price that is not abstract. According to Beirut, more than 4,300 people have been killed in the war that began in March, when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in support of Iran and Israel responded with airstrikes and a ground invasion. The two countries remain technically at war. The “security zone” is occupied territory under every definition that matters, and the minister responsible for it now says the army should settle in.
There is a case for Israel’s position, and it is not a frivolous one. Northern Israeli communities came under rocket fire; Hezbollah is armed and hostile; the Lebanese state has no army presence in the south to take over. Katz’s argument, that Israel defends its residents against jihadist elements, is the same argument every occupying power has made, and it is not improved by repetition.
But the September talks in Rome now look less like a negotiation than a formality performed while the occupation consolidates. A minister does not order administrative preparation for a long-term stay if he expects to leave. The occupation of Lebanon was presented as temporary. It is being built as permanent, and the same is true in Gaza and Syria.
Sources: Al Jazeera, L’Orient Today (AFP), Daily Sabah, RTE