"Very soon, Dahiyeh will resemble Khan Younis, warned Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, earlier in March, referring respectively to a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut and a city in southern Gaza that the Israeli army has almost completely razed to the ground."
"Zvi Sukkot, a member of the government from Smotrich's party, urged: We must conquer territory in southern Lebanon, destroy the villages there and annex the territory to the state of Israel."
"Amit Halevi, a member of Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, vowed that the Litani river located 30km from Israel's border with Lebanon must become the north's new yellow line, alluding to the boundary marking the current occupation by Israeli forces of more than half of Gaza's territory."
Israeli political leaders and military officials are openly discussing plans to escalate military operations in Lebanon following recent airstrikes on Iran, which received 93% support from the Jewish-Israeli population. Israeli airstrikes have killed nearly 1,000 people in Lebanon over two weeks, prompting blanket evacuation orders that displaced over a million residents. The government has announced a targeted ground invasion and plans to mobilize hundreds of thousands of reservists. Senior officials including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, government member Zvi Sukkot, and Likud party member Amit Halevi have publicly stated intentions to destroy Lebanese villages, conquer southern Lebanese territory, annex it to Israel, and establish the Litani River as a new border, explicitly referencing the devastation inflicted on Gaza cities.
#israel-lebanon-conflict #military-escalation #territorial-expansion #gaza-model-application #political-rhetoric
Read at www.theguardian.com
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