From Gaza to South Lebanon: The War That Makes Way for Eretz Israel – the Final Solution

Formally, the Israelis want to create a “buffer zone” – but in the Israeli government there is increasingly open talk of the ancient dreams of Eretz Israel and how the Gaza model is now being exported to Lebanon.

“We will do exactly as in Rafah and Beit Hanun,” declared Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz in March 2026. Katz explained Israel’s updated strategy for Lebanon: all homes in the border villages will be demolished, bridges over the Litani River will be blown up, and none of the more than 600,000 residents who have fled the area south of the river will be allowed to return until northern Israel is “secure.”

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – one of the Israeli government’s most extreme Zionists – went even further:

“The Litani River will become our new border with the Lebanese state,” he explained.

The Israeli plan is not limited to a “buffer zone” or even southern Lebanon. Other traditional Shiite areas have also been threatened with destruction. The Beirut suburb of al-Dahiya has been subjected to extensive bombing campaigns on several occasions. According to Smotrich, it is once again the Gaza method that is being implemented:

“Dahiya will soon resemble Khan Younis,” said the Finance Minister in April.

Khan Younis, Gaza’s second largest city, is today little more than smoking ruins.

Israeli drones document the methodical destruction of Lebanese communities. In this phase, engineering troops blow up houses, after which excavators and bulldozers are called in. The operation is called “Eternal Darkness” and began on April 8, just as Iran and the United States agreed to a ceasefire that would also include Lebanon. In Lebanon, this day is instead called “Black Wednesday,” a massacre in which hundreds of people were killed, with targeted attacks also targeting a Doctors Without Borders hospital and a cemetery where a funeral had just taken place. Still image: IDF

But it’s not just about security policy. Wherever the IDF advances, entire villages and towns are being razed – areas where Shia Muslims have lived for centuries will become uninhabitable. Smotrich’s closest ally, Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, has, just as with Gaza, spoken openly about ethnic displacement and a war of conquest rather than a temporary security zone.

At an event at a Talmud school in Jerusalem, where both Smotrich and Ben-Gvir were present, the security minister announced that Israel has a “settler plan for Lebanon.” The ambitions apply not only to the neighboring country to the north but to all areas that the religious Zionists believe they have a divine mandate to conquer. For example, Smotrich revealed that he has developed a plan for how to take over the West Bank.

“I presented a detailed plan to the cabinet earlier this week. I urge the prime minister to adopt it. All of Eretz Israel belongs to us,” he said.

Eretz Israel refers to the Old Testament description of the promised land that God gave to his chosen people, as the land between the two rivers the Nile and the Euphrates.

The Dahiya Doctrine and Israeli State Terrorism

The Shiite Beirut suburb of al-Dahiya was subjected to massive destruction by the IDF during the 2006 Lebanon War. The destruction gave its name to the so-called Dahiya Doctrine, which was formulated by the former Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Gadi Eizenkot.

The doctrine involves putting pressure on the enemy through large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure. The idea is that the civilian population – if subjected to sufficient suffering – will turn against the political and military leadership and force the enemy to sue for peace.

Only ruins remain: The strategically important Shiite town of Bint Jbeil has been the scene of fierce fighting since 2006. But in April 2026, it got the full Gaza treatment in the midst of the ongoing “ceasefire”: After weeks of artillery shelling and airstrikes, IDF engineering troops rolled in and systematically demolished the remaining buildings. Photo: @amitseg on Telegram

Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, describes the doctrine as a clear war crime:

“Civilian infrastructure of opponents such as Hamas or Hezbollah is considered permissible military targets – something that not only constitutes a blatant violation of the most basic norms of the laws of war and universal morality, but also an open recognition of a doctrine of violence that must be called by its rightful name: state terrorism.

It is also questionable whether this works. Historical examples from London to Leningrad show that hardship unites the population and increases the will to resist.”

Hezbollah: Islamic Resistance Movement in Lebanon

When Israel was formed in 1948 and the country’s new rulers expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, the Shia Muslim population of southern Lebanon found new neighbors. The Palestinian tent camps along Lebanon’s border with Israel became the Palestinian resistance movement, PLO,’s most important base area for its armed struggle to reclaim Palestine in the 1970s.

The Shia Muslims in southern Lebanon had long been politically and resource-marginalized, and the area was among the most deprived in the country. As a result, they were particularly hard hit by the fighting between the PLO and Israel. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, Iran sent 1,500 men from the newly formed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to arm and organize a Shia resistance movement.

Under Hassan Nasrallah’s leadership, Hezbollah developed into an increasingly disciplined and strategic military and political movement. While Nasrallah gained a kind of rock star status in much of the Middle East, he was portrayed in the West as one of the world’s worst terrorists. Large parts of Lebanon mourned his killing by Israel in 2024. Photo: The documentary Hezbollah: The Untold Story via Jedaal English on YouTube

The movement that subsequently emerged under the name of the Islamic Resistance Movement in Lebanon soon became better known as Hezbollah – the Party of God. Under leader Hassan Nasrallah, the group developed into Lebanon’s strongest armed actor and a regional power within the Iran-led resistance axis. In the 2006 war, Hezbollah managed to force Israel to abort its invasion without having achieved several of its central goals, which is usually considered one of the group’s greatest successes.

Following Israel’s assassination of Nasrallah in September 2024, which leveled an entire residential neighborhood in Lebanon, and the pager attack that same month, parts of Hezbollah’s leadership and organization were decimated. The group continues to mount armed resistance, and during the new phase of the war in 2026, it has developed modern drone warfare in southern Lebanon and continued to fire rockets and drones at northern Israel.

The Engineer Corps Leave Ash and Rubble Behind

The Israeli offensive was sharply escalated in March 2026, after Hezbollah – following the US and Israeli attacks on Iran – resumed rocket fire on Israel. The IDF responded by announcing a “buffer zone” several kilometers into Lebanon, which would be maintained until the threat from Hezbollah was neutralized. “Operation Silver Plow” was what Defense Minister Katz called the new campaign, and in early May the New York Times reviewed the results. The newspaper’s analysis of recent satellite images from the area south of Israel’s “yellow line” showed that the IDF had already completely destroyed at least twenty towns and villages.

“Villages have been transformed into ash mounds, where the white dust from the rubble marks town after town,” the newspaper writes in its report. Other analyses of satellite images indicate that 46 of 54 towns within the zone have been severely damaged or completely destroyed.

Meanwhile, Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,000 people in Lebanon, according to the country’s health ministry. The agency does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but 619 of those killed were reportedly women, children or medical personnel. More than a million people have been forced to flee their homes, and a large proportion of these have only ruins to return to – if Israel ever allows it.

Uninvited guests: The latest ground offensive in Lebanon is the fifth in a row since the state of Israel was founded in 1948. Lebanon is part of the Zionist dream of Eretz Israel – a biblical “Greater Israel” encompassing large parts of the Middle East to which the Israelis consider themselves heirs. Photo: IDF

An article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz states that the IDF has called in the same private contractors that were hired to demolish Gaza to Lebanon. The newspaper quotes a military commander as describing how civilian homes, public buildings and schools are being demolished in an effort to “clear the area.”

One example is the village of Beit Lif, located a few kilometers from the Israeli border. Once home to a few thousand people, it is now completely wiped out.

“They demolished house after house until they reached the square. Now there are no houses left,” a neighbor who witnessed the destruction from a nearby hill told the Washington Post.

Similarly, Kfar Kila, which has survived the region’s countless conflicts for over a thousand years, has now been reduced to ruins after being designated a “Hezbollah stronghold” by the IDF. The village was demolished according to the Gaza model: bombing campaigns followed by engineer troops with dynamite and finally excavators – today nothing remains of the community. The idea is that there should be nothing to return to for those who fled.

Evacuation and conquest: The purple areas mark the buffer zone in southern Lebanon that the IDF continues to control after the ceasefire in April. During the spring, the IDF has demolished entire villages and towns, with few exceptions, in these areas. Further north, the Litani River is visible, which has been designated as a northern border for Israeli annexation. Graphic: Wikipedia

Israel’s advance in southern Lebanon, coupled with rhetoric about repeating the destruction in Gaza, has led to new accusations of war crimes.

“Deliberately and extensively destroying civilian objects or property, without any military justification for such indiscriminate destruction, is a war crime,” said Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, in a comment to the New York Times.

But according to the IDF, it is staying within the framework of international law. All neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, villages and cities that were completely destroyed in the war are thus classified by Israel as military targets or “Hezbollah infrastructure.”

Evacuation order. Leaflets dropped across southern Lebanon warn that the area will be bombed and urge residents to move north. Christian and Druze communities have been told they will be spared, but on condition that they do not shelter Muslim refugees from neighboring towns. The call has immediately sparked reactions on social media, including: “So Israeli soldiers are going to search for Muslim families that Christians are hiding in their attics? Doesn’t this sound familiar?” Photo: Haaretz

Lebanon’s Christians: Caught between Israeli Bombs and Promises

However, Israeli tools are not limited to guns and bulldozers. For decades, the IDF has successfully managed to use the internal tensions in multicultural Lebanon to its advantage.

Since the Israeli invasion in 1982, it has periodically allied itself with Christian groups and militias formed by the former Lebanese majority population. One such example was the South Lebanon Army (SLA) – a Christian-led proxy militia that served as Israel’s local tool of power in southern Lebanon and collapsed when Israel withdrew in 2000 after years of war with Hezbollah.

Israeli soldiers are repeatedly seen vandalizing and desecrating Christian sites and symbols, which they themselves boast about on social media. This also happened during previous invasions of Lebanon, when a statue of Saint Gabriel was run over with a bulldozer. The pictures above are from the Christian village of Debel from April this year. It is the Palestinian journalist Younis Tirawi, who during the Gaza war found and republished shocking pictures that Israeli soldiers posted on social media, who continued the same work during the war in Lebanon. After the revelations, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu felt compelled to personally go out on social media and claim that Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians live safely, and promised that the incidents would be investigated. However, he was quickly met with facts that indicated that Christians were protected partly by state actors such as Iran, Syria and Iraq, and partly by Muslim militias such as Hezbollah when they were threatened by the Islamic State – which Israel secretly supported. At the same time, Christians are frowned upon in Israel, where it is customary for Jews to spit on churches and religious services are made impossible, most recently the Palm Sunday mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which drew a lot of international criticism. Photos: X

Even during the ongoing conflict, the IDF is trying to play off Christian groups against Shia Muslims in southern Lebanon, despite Hezbollah’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah emphasizing that Hezbollah is the main defender of Christians in Lebanon and the militia has often been seen protecting Christian shrines and cleaning them up after they are attacked by Israel.

Reuters reported in April that the US had received Israeli promises that Christian border villages would be spared from bombing, on the condition that Hezbollah did not enter them. The New York Times has also reported that Israeli military officials have privately tried to pressure Christian and Druze communities not to house displaced Shiite Muslim families, but instead to “force them out” – including with promises that their own homes would be spared.

Destroying civilian infrastructure: A video shows the IDF demolishing solar panels in the Christian village of Debel. The trucks parked nearby are also crushed by the excavator for safety reasons. The aim is clearly to make it as difficult as possible for the population to return. The IDF later commented on the video that the action “does not conform to the values of the IDF”, but the destruction continues anyway. Still image: LBCI Lebanon News on X

In the village of Yaroun, where both Christians and Shiites live, the IDF has destroyed a church that served as a makeshift church, as well as a convent where Brazilian nuns ran an attached school. The Christian population has been forced to flee in stages, only to return to ruins. The IDF began demolishing the village in 2024, but now the village priest, Father Charles Naddaf, says the Christians will probably never see their homes again.

“This is without a doubt one of the greatest disasters this society has ever suffered,” he says in a comment to the Christian aid organization ACN International.

The destruction of the Brazilian convent has made international headlines. The IDF has only been willing to admit that “some residential structures” were damaged in the demolition of “Hezbollah infrastructure.”

“The IDF is careful to only destroy terrorist infrastructure and has no intention of damaging religious buildings,” a statement from the Israeli military said.

Today, there are only three Christian border villages that are more or less intact and inhabited: Rmeish, Ain Ebel and Debel. In the media, it is Debel that has received the most attention, after the IDF destroyed, among other things, the solar panels that supplied the village with electricity and water – clearly with the aim of making the area uninhabitable.

Ambulances targeted. As in Gaza, emergency services are a target for the IDF. This video, published on April 16, shows emergency workers arriving in the southern Lebanese town of Mayfadun, only to find that an ambulance that had arrived before them had already been bombed. While they were tending to the injured paramedics, they were hit by two more attacks. In total, four paramedics were killed and six more were injured from three different ambulance teams. According to Lebanese health authorities, a total of 91 paramedics have been killed by Israel this year. Still image: The Guardian

It was in the same village that an IDF soldier desecrated a statue of Jesus by taking the body down from the cross and smashing its head with a sledgehammer. The image, which reportedly first spread from the soldier’s own social media, received widespread attention when it was published by Palestinian journalist Younis Tirawi. The IDF later confirmed the incident and distanced itself from the action, while promising an “investigation.”

Despite this, just over a week later, a picture emerged showing an IDF soldier placing a cigarette in the mouth of a statue of the Virgin Mary – again in Debel. The IDF has subsequently announced that all those involved in the incidents have been sentenced to between 14 and 30 days in military prison.

The three villages remain as lonely islands in a sea of ruins and Israeli forces. Completely isolated from the outside world, the Christians are at the mercy of the IDF, now that the Lebanese army has left the area.

Father Tony Elias, Maronite Catholic priest of Rmeish, appealed for help in April.

“There is no way in or out. All the roads are blocked. We are struggling immensely just to get supplies of water, infant formula and diesel,” he told Vatican News.

Journalists targeted. On March 28, three journalists who were in the Christian town of Jezzine, about 30 kilometers from the front line between Israel and Hezbollah, were killed in a targeted Israeli attack. They were Ali Shoaib, a reporter for Al-Manar TV, Fatima Ftouni, a reporter for Al-Mayadeen TV, and Mohamad Ftouni, a freelance photojournalist and Fatima Ftouni’s brother. Israel later tried to justify the attack by saying that one of the journalists was a “militant.” Photo: X

Seven Gaza Methods Now Being Used in Lebanon

In addition to the obvious similarities in the IDF’s warfare, the independent news site Zeteo points to seven concrete methods that Israel is using to transform southern Lebanon into a new Gaza:

1. Killing of journalists: In 2026, at least nine journalists were killed by the IDF in southern Lebanon. This follows the strategy in Gaza, where hundreds of journalists were killed – more than in the two world wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined.

2. Attacks on healthcare workers and infrastructure: In just four weeks, Israel has killed over 50 healthcare workers, attacked ambulances, and forced the closure of five hospitals – four of which had maternity wards. Nine hospitals and over 50 health centers have been damaged or closed completely. This is exactly the same pattern as in Gaza.

3. Genocidal rhetoric: Israeli politicians openly talk about expelling the population from southern Lebanon and moving the border north. The IDF has, among other things, dropped leaflets over Beirut with the text: “Given the resounding success in Gaza, New Reality Newspaper is now coming to Lebanon.”

4. “Evacuations” and buffer zones: Just like in Gaza, Israel has issued evacuation orders to over 1.2 million people south of the Litani River. The message: “Leave or risk your lives.”

5. Blocking access to water and humanitarian aid: By bombing bridges over the Litani River, Israel has created a blockade similar to that around Gaza. Airstrikes have knocked out water reservoirs and pumping stations in the Bekaa and Baalbek, while bombed roads prevent humanitarian aid from reaching them.

6. Human shields: Israel consistently accuses Hezbollah of using civilians as human shields. However, according to reports, it is the IDF that is placing military operations close to villages along the border, thereby endangering the civilian population – the same tactic criticized in Gaza.

7. White phosphorus: Israel has, as in Gaza, used artillery shells containing white phosphorus over residential areas in southern Lebanon. The shells ignite houses, farmland, and civilian objects. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International consider the use to be a violation of international humanitarian law because it is indiscriminate and causes unnecessary suffering to civilians.