{"id":367073,"date":"2026-03-31T06:11:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/367073\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T06:11:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:11:11","slug":"families-in-south-lebanon-confront-threat-of-renewed-israeli-occupation-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/367073\/","title":{"rendered":"Families in south Lebanon confront threat of renewed Israeli occupation \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

By the seafront in the southern Lebanese<\/a> city of Saida, a family discusses the possibility of a new prolonged Israeli<\/a> occupation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael cannot dare to take any centimetre of our land, we\u2019ll put our blood in the street,\u201d declares Sobhaya, a 75-year-old with a wizened face and a young grandson holding one hand. \u201cI will fight Israel with my hands, with my feet, with my fingers.\u201d<\/p>\n

She recalls the last Israeli occupation, which lasted from 1982 to 2000, when Sobhaya says she threw stones and boiling oil at Israeli solders. At the time, Israel also said it was creating a \u201csecurity zone\u201d, something Sobhaya says she is unwilling to go through again. \u201cWe will die or we will stay [on our land], this is our promise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her family is displaced from Nabatiyeh district, a border area southeast of Saida where air strikes are heavy these days. They sleep in their cars at night, and after they wash their clothes they hang them to dry on the metal railings nearby.<\/p>\n

Sobhaya\u2019s daughter Fayzi (56) sleeps in a vehicle with her 14-year-old son. She has memories of the last Israeli occupation too, when she was in Syria and suddenly \u201chad to get a permission\u201d to come home. \u201cI remember every step. They were entering our houses, searching for people accusing them of being terrorists, taking young people.\u201d<\/p>\n

She remembers \u201cdancing in the street\u201d in 2000, when Israeli forces finally withdrew.<\/p>\n

More than one million displaced<\/p>\n

More than 1,200 people have been killed in Lebanon since the return to all-out war between Israel and Hizbullah on March 2nd, including 124 children and 52 medical workers, according to the country\u2019s ministry of health. More than one million people are registered as displaced, and many have no idea when \u2013 if ever \u2013 they can return home. <\/p>\n

Last week, Israel\u2019s defence minister Israel Katz said Israeli forces are planning to occupy the area south of the Litani river \u2013 up to 30km inside Lebanese territory in some places \u2013 and create a \u201cdefensive buffer\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018They weren\u2019t carrying weapons\u2019: Hundreds attend funeral of journalists killed by Israeli strikesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

According to Human Rights Watch, that area is roughly 8 per cent of Lebanon \u2013 making it larger than Bahrain, New York City or Singapore, and twice the size of Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of people usually live there. Katz said the displaced will not be allowed to return \u201cuntil security for Israel\u2019s northern residents is ensured\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"DisplacedDisplaced people who fled Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon sit inside tents near Beirut. Photograph: Emilio Morenatti\/AP <\/p>\n

Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar says about 5,000 rockets, shells and drones have been launched at Israel from Lebanese territory since March 2nd, when Hizbullah fired rockets towards Israel in retribution for the assassination of Iran\u2019s supreme leader Ali Khamenei.<\/p>\n

Hizbullah\u2019s supporters say the Iranian-backed group were responding to Israeli aggression and near daily attacks during the 15-month ceasefire.<\/p>\n

Israeli forces, however, accuse Hizbullah of trying to rebuild and say efforts by the Lebanese state to disarm Hizbullah to date are insufficient. The Israel Defense Forces has continued a campaign of destruction<\/a> in Lebanon\u2019s border areas, including demolishing and blowing up Lebanese homes and preventing local residents from returning to their villages. <\/p>\n

Now, the Israeli military is attempting to isolate the south from the rest of Lebanon, including by destroying bridges that cross the Litani river, saying Hizbullah uses them \u201cfor the passage of terrorists and weapons\u201d. International law generally prohibits attacks on civilian infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Israeli authorities have compared their campaign in Lebanon to the military offensive in Gaza, where Israeli forces are accused by a United Nations commission of committing genocide against Palestinians. The references included dropping leaflets in Beirut referring to the \u201csuccess in Gaza\u201d. In early March, far-right Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs would soon look \u201clike Khan Younis\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"EmergencyEmergency personnel at the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted an apartment building in the southern Lebanese town of Saida. Photograph: Mahmoud Zayyat\/AFP\/Getty Images \"EmergencyEmergency responders carry a body after it was extracted from a building that was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike a day earlier in Saida, Lebanon. Photograph: Ed Ram\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

On Sunday, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said he had ordered his military to \u201cfurther expand the existing security belt\u201d in Lebanon, which he said would \u201cthwart the threat of invasion\u201d and push anti-tank missile fire away from the border. It was not clear whether this would expand on the area already suggested by Katz.<\/p>\n

Evacuation warnings<\/p>\n

Aid agencies estimate that more than 100,000 people could still be living in the area south of the Litani river. Some refuse to move, saying they are worried that, if they leave their homes, they will never be allowed back to them.<\/p>\n

Saida is roughly 24km north of the Litani river, though current sweeping Israeli evacuation warnings cover an area up to the Zahrani river, about 6km south of Saida. The city has filled with displaced people, who worry about their future and reminisce about their homes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael wants everything for herself because they don\u2019t have the treasure that we have in the south,\u201d says Sobhaya.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the most beautiful country in the world,\u201d says Ali (30). \u201cYou can be in the snow in 30 minutes and the sea in 30 mins.\u201d If Israel tries to occupy their land, \u201cwe will smash out their eyes with our fingers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The previous Israeli occupation was a primary factor in the formation of Hizbullah in the 1980s: its fighters waged a guerrilla campaign against Israeli forces.<\/p>\n

\"ClothingClothing owned by displaced people hangs out to dry on the seafront in Saida, southern Lebanon. Photograph: Sally Hayden <\/p>\n

\u201cHizbullah is protecting us now, we don\u2019t trust anyone, not the president, not the prime minister,\u201d says another member of the same family called Ali (38). He pulls up a picture on his phone of his neighbours \u2013 a family with four children \u2013 who he says were just killed by an Israeli strike. He says there is no possibility any more of a \u201chandshake\u201d with Israel. The best Lebanese people can hope for is no \u201ccommunication, no tourism, you stay in your land and we stay in our land. But we don\u2019t believe that will happen, we cannot trust it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By the seafront in the southern Lebanese city of Saida, a family discusses the possibility of a new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[33779,42,46,65589,88,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-367073","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-binyamin-netanyahu","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-israel-defence-forces","12":"tag-lebanon","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-top-news","15":"tag-top-stories","16":"tag-topnews","17":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}