As Israel’s war with Hezbollah intensified over the past week, more voices in Israel are calling for the creation of a security “buffer zone” within Lebanon that will expand the Jewish state’s northern border and allow its displaced residents to return safely to their homes.
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli is the most prominent Israeli government official who has advocated publicly for a security area in Lebanon that will stretch several kilometers north of the current borderline between the two warring countries.
“We must recalculate our position regarding the borderline with the entity that calls itself the State of Lebanon,” Chikli said on X, attaching maps with a newly drawn border and stirring a viral storm.
“The principle [behind the proposal] is to repel the enemy Shi’ite population and to utilize topographical terrain that enables effective defense lines. A scenario of evacuated Israeli communities must not repeat itself in the northern border,” he stated, referring to the approximately 60,000 Israeli residents who were evacuated from their homes following Hezbollah attacks from the north in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas onslaught in the south.
Speaking to JNS over the phone on Monday night, Chikli said: “After Oct. 7, we can’t accept a situation where an Israeli citizen is on one side and 500 meters from him is a terrorist. We can’t.”
The purpose of his proposal, he went on to say, is to avoid future evacuations of residents for fear of a massive terrorist invasion similar to what happened in Israel’s south almost a year ago.
“Nobody can now say that this is some far-fetched scenario,” Chikli said. “No life-loving country can accept 3,000 terrorists entering communities and slaughtering, raping and murdering.”
The minister stressed that the north’s residents were not evacuated due to Hezbollah’s rockets, but because of the grave threat posed by Hezbollah’s special “Radwan Force,” whose mission is to infiltrate northern Israel and repeat Hamas’s atrocities.
The second problem, Chikli relayed, is the commanding terrain on the Lebanese side in Israel’s north. “If the enemy sits on top of Ramim Ridge [a mountainous ridge west of the Galilee panhandle], the entire area [in Israel] beneath it becomes paralyzed,” he said.
Chikli mentioned other areas with topographical disadvantages, such as Hanita and Aramsha in Western Galilee. “A Hezbollah force that crosses this ridge, which stretches from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the Western Galilee, gains control over all of the bottom region, including Rosh Hanikra, Nahariya and Acre. Today, we control only half of this ridge, so we must push northward.”
No annexation
The minister did not think that this security zone should extend to the Litani River, Lebanon’s longest water resource that flows nearly parallel to the border with Israel at a distance of about 29 kilometers (18 miles).
“A significant Shi’ite population lives in this region and we are not on some vendetta against the Shi’ites,” Chikli said. “The rationale is the removal of a security threat and the establishment of defensible borders. We are not talking about annexation and settlements.”
Fending off concerns over terrorist activities that the Israel Defense Forces may face in the long term in Lebanon, Chikli explained that he does not propose a similar security zone to the one maintained by Israel from 1985 to 2000.
“That was a deeper buffer zone and in the midst of a large Shi’ite population. We are talking about a few kilometers, where the Shi’ite population won’t remain. This will create a reality in which the enemy can’t cross a fence and enter a Jewish town in five minutes,” he noted.
Buffer zone mulled at the highest levels
Benjamin Sipzner, 27, is the Director of International Operations for Reservists–Generation of Victory (RGV), a nonprofit organization founded by IDF reservists following the ongoing war over the past 11 months. The organization has urged the IDF to pursue a decisive victory against Hamas since the early days of the war, and published a position paper last week calling for a similar outcome against Hezbollah—naming it the “Third and Last Lebanon War.”
Sipzner, who has been on reserve duty for 230 days as a combatant with the Alexandroni Brigade since Oct. 7, told JNS that his organization’s paper “has gotten to the tables of the highest echelons of the State of Israel, at both political and military levels, and is being [seriously] considered.” Chikli, Sipzner noted, maintains good relations with the heads of RGV.
He further stated that Israel’s intense military operation over the last few days has “caused hundreds of thousands of Shi’ites to leave southern Lebanon … [Hence] our plan is already starting to happen.”
The position paper was crafted by Maj. (res.) Gilad Ach and Dr. Edy Cohen, a specialist in the Arab-Israeli conflict and Lebanese by birth. It proposes four military steps that will lead to a “decisive, swift and inventive war.”
The first step calls for a massive aerial offensive aimed at killing senior Hezbollah commanders, hitting as many long-range missiles and arms depots as possible, and wreaking havoc on Hezbollah’s Dahieh stronghold in Beirut.
The second step proposes an “inventive and surprising” ground operation to outmaneuver Hezbollah’s military defenses and destroy its infrastructure, without specifying how far into Lebanon it should press. The third point urges the establishment of a security buffer zone about 11 kilometers deep into Lebanese territory, cleaning up all Hezbollah positions and basing the new border barrier along the Litani River.
The fourth point calls for spurring opposing sects within Lebanon to partake in the resistance against Hezbollah. The Iranian-backed group, the document states, is perceived by many in Lebanon as an outside force promoting interests that run contrary to the country’s national interest. “If the internal Lebanese forces that want Hezbollah out see that it has weakened, we can estimate that at a convenient time, they will join the fighting against it.”
‘Complicit population’
In recent discussions behind closed doors, IDF Northern Command head Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin called for the implementation of a security zone in Southern Lebanon, Hebrew media reported.
Present conditions are favorable for the Israeli military to swiftly force such a move, he said, as many members of the “Radwan Force” have been killed or withdrawn to the north.
On Monday, IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari revealed that Hezbollah terrorists had planned to launch a cruise missile at Israel from a residential building in Lebanon, backed by footage showing the incident. He urged Lebanese civilians to leave places that stored weapons before the Israeli military would strike them.
“In the past 11 months, the buffer zone has been in Israel. The international community doesn’t talk about it, it’s a forgotten fact. But large percentages of Israel are not inhabited because that buffer zone has become part of northern Israel, and has even expanded much further south,” Sipzner said.
Past borders are irrelevant
In Chikli’s statement on X, he maintained that Lebanon is not a sovereign state, for it lacks the monopoly on force, with militant groups like Hezbollah controlling much of the country’s territory.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement “did not stand the test of time,” he wrote, referring to the wartime treaty struck between Britain and France in 1916, which determined how to partition the Middle East after World War I.
“The sectarian and religious dividing lines, the topographic terrain and military might are what shape the real borders between different populations in the [Middle East] region,” the statement read.
It went on to say that Lebanon “failed” to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for the dismantling of Lebanese militias, and “failed” to implement Resolution 1701, which calls to prevent violent attacks against Israel from southern Lebanon.
Thus, “a renewed buffer zone, free of enemy population, is our obligation and is the right and most just thing to do from a security, political and moral perspective,” Chikli stated.
Expanding the border further north, Chikli told JNS, “is so those who live in Avivim and Dovev [communities adjacent to the Lebanese border] can go to the hen house or run in the field or hike outdoors without fear that they will be taken hostage by Hezbollah terrorists who decided to cross the fence.
“The war needs to be decided on the ground and in the formation of a security buffer zone that will enable the resident to return home.”
