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Israel should move its border with Lebanon up to the Litani River, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Monday, amid ongoing military operations against the Hezbollah terror group.
“The current war in Lebanon must end with a radical change, beyond the vanquishing of the terror group Hezbollah,” Smotrich told a meeting of his Religious Zionism faction at the Knesset.
“The Litani must be our new border with the state of Lebanon, just like the ‘Yellow Line’ in Gaza and like the buffer zone and peak of the Hermon in Syria,” he added.
“We must not return to the October 6 situation, where the enemy is on our fences,” Smotrich continued, referring to the day before the 2023 Hamas-led onslaught that sparked the war in Gaza. “We’ll push [the enemy] away on all fronts and create a sterile security cordon that will separate the enemy from our citizens.”
The so-called Yellow Line is the point within the Gaza Strip to which Israeli forces withdrew in accordance with a September 2025 ceasefire agreement. Neither there, nor within the buffer zone held by the IDF in Syria, has Israel sought to annex territory or establish any civilian presence.
A military official told Reuters on Monday he couldn’t comment about politicians’ remarks or the government’s long-term plans, but that Israeli ground troops were limiting their raids to areas near the border.
Smotrich, leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party, has made similar comments about Gaza, which have often gone beyond official Israeli policy.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said earlier this month that Lebanon could face “loss of territory” if it did not disarm Hezbollah.
Smotrich’s remarks were deeply resonant in Lebanon, however, which has gone through repeated conflicts with Israel for decades, including an Israeli occupation of the country’s south from 1982-2000.
The Litani River lies some 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of the current Israel-Lebanon border.
A November 2024 ceasefire agreement obligated the Lebanese national government to exercise a monopoly of force between Israel and the Litani. A 2006 UN Security Council resolution had already barred Hezbollah from operating in the region, but it was consistently violated.
After the Hezbollah terror group attacked Israel on March 2, Israel ordered all Lebanese civilians south of the Litani River to move north, ahead of an Israeli offensive against the Iranian proxy.
The Israel Defense Forces has subsequently pummeled the area with airstrikes, as Hezbollah has fired an average of 150 rockets at Israel every day.
A Lebanese official told Reuters that Beirut was still counting on foreign powers to put enough pressure on Israel to put an end to the war, through an offer from President Joseph Aoun to hold direct talks.
Meanwhile, Israeli strikes hit two more crossings on the Litani River on Monday — a road running near a main bridge hit on Sunday and another small bridge on another section of the river.
Hanna Amil, the mayor of Christian border town Rmeish, whose residents have refused to leave their homes, told Reuters that it was getting increasingly difficult to move around.
“Once or twice a week, a convoy from the Lebanese army accompanies us as we try to get basic goods from nearby areas,” he said.
“Already, we have no state electricity, no water and we have diesel shortages. If all the routes to the north get cut off, who knows what the future could hold for us,” Amil said.
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