Smotrich proposes Litani River as new border with Lebanon

The Israel Defense Forces should establish the Litani River as the Jewish state’s “new border with the Lebanese state,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared on Monday.

The ongoing campaign against Hezbollah “must end with a radical change” beyond the vanquishing of the Iranian-backed terror group, the senior Cabinet minister told reporters during a faction meeting of his Religious Zionism Party at the Knesset in Jerusalem.

“The Litani [River] must be our new border with the Lebanese state, just like the Yellow Line in Gaza and like the buffer zone and peak of the Hermon in Syria,” said Smotrich.

The Litani River lies some 20 miles north of the Blue Line, which currently demarcates the unofficial border between Israel and Lebanon.

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“We must not return to the Oct. 6 situation where the enemy is on our fences,” Smotrich continued, in reference to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 people on the southern border. “We’ll push him away on all fronts and create a sterile security cordon that will separate the enemy from our citizens.”

“Today, we are evacuating the residents of Southern Lebanon. We are destroying the terrorist villages and rebuilding the northern communities,” he declared.

Hezbollah again began firing rockets and suicide drones at Israel on March 2, in retaliation for the Jewish state’s targeted killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes of “Operation Roaring Lion/Epic Fury” against the regime on Feb. 28.

In response to the terrorist organization’s violation of the U.S.-brokered Nov. 27, 2024, truce agreement, Jerusalem launched an aerial campaign against Hezbollah and ordered IDF troops to advance and take control of additional areas in Southern Lebanon to halt cross-border attacks.

Responding to Smotrich’s remarks on Monday, fellow Religious Zionism Party lawmaker Simcha Rothman told JNS that the principle of not allowing terrorists in close proximity to Israeli civilians should apply equally to Lebanon and Gaza.

“When you share a border with a sovereign country that protects that border and does not seek to harm you, that is one thing,” Rothman said. “But when the border is with a terrorist organization, that is not something any country—certainly not the State of Israel—should accept.”

“Israel must ensure that its border is not situated near northern towns and civilian populations, and that the IDF is able to carry out its duty to protect citizens,” he added.

“Before Oct. 7 and the IDF’s operations in Lebanon, Hezbollah terrorists were positioned just meters from civilians. No one can accept that level of danger,” he said.

Addressing why such a policy was not implemented earlier, Rothman invoked the Hebrew term “conceptzia"—a flawed strategic mindset that guided Israeli policy for years, but has since shifted.

“My party and I did not need the events of Oct. 7 to understand this,” he said. “Unfortunately, some only adopted this view afterward. They were operating under illusions of peace and prosperity with terrorist organizations—ideas that have proven irrelevant.”

“We have all seen what these groups are capable of,” he added. “Hezbollah forces are no less capable than Hamas’s Nukhba Force terrorists of carrying out attacks like those of Oct. 7.”

Addressing Lebanon’s sovereignty, Rothman argued that the country cannot be considered fully sovereign while allowing a terrorist organization to operate freely along its own southern border.

“The right of any country to self-defense must prevail,” he said. “If Lebanon is sovereign, then it is effectively attacking our civilians daily. If it is responsible for what happens on its territory, it has forfeited its ability to control that land while Hezbollah continues to fire on our civilians from there.”

Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened on March 12 that if Lebanon’s official government fails to prevent Hezbollah rocket and drone attacks on the Jewish state, Jerusalem would “take control of the territory and do it ourselves.”

“The prime minister and I have instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare to expand its operations in Lebanon and to restore quiet and security to the northern communities,” the defense minister stated.

During a situational assessment on Tuesday, Katz again emphasized that “hundreds of thousands of residents of Southern Lebanon who evacuated northward will not return south of the Litani River until security for the residents of the north is ensured.”

“The IDF is maneuvering into Lebanese territory to establish a forward defensive line, eliminating Hezbollah terrorists and destroying the terror infrastructure built there ... in order to create a defensive buffer and push the threat away from Israeli communities,” he added.

Overnight on Monday, the IDF struck Hezbollah infrastructure in Beirut and across Lebanon, the military said in a separate statement.

The strikes in Lebanon’s capital targeted several Hezbollah headquarters, including bases of its elite Radwan Force, “from which terrorists operated to advance and execute terror attacks against IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians,” it said. The IDF also struck a headquarters of Hezbollah’s intelligence branch, it said.

“The Hezbollah terrorist organization operates systematically from civilian infrastructure in Lebanon, from which it advances terrorist activity that harms the civilians of the State of Israel and endangers Lebanese citizens,” the army noted.

The IDF also struck a “key crossing used by Hezbollah terrorists to move from north to south across the Litani River,” it said, accusing the terror group of having used the bridge to transfer weapons with which to carry out attacks on IDF soldiers.

“The strike adds to other crossings that were struck over the past week,” it stated.

Meanwhile, ground troops of the IDF’s 810th “Mountain” Brigade located a Hezbollah tunnel shaft and weapons compound during operations in the Mount Dov area close to the Blue Line, according to another statement on Tuesday.

“The IDF is operating decisively against the Hezbollah terrorist organization in response to its deliberate decision to attack Israel on behalf of the Iranian terror regime, it said. “The IDF acts to remove threats to civilians of the State of Israel.”