MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Israel and Lebanon held historic talks today in Washington. They're seeking a diplomatic resolution to Israel's conflict with Hezbollah. But on the ground, Israel is expanding its occupation of southern Lebanon, maybe for years to come, as NPR's Daniel Estrin reports from Tel Aviv.
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UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER: (Speaking Hebrew).
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Speaking Hebrew).
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Soldiers cheered crossing the border from northern Israel into southern Lebanon a few weeks ago. The Israeli military posted these morale-boosting videos on Instagram.
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SAGIV DAHAN: (Speaking Hebrew).
ESTRIN: Like this one with Brigadier General Sagiv Dahan radioing into his troops as their tanks rolled into southern Lebanon, telling them the mission is to protect Israelis who live near the Lebanese border.
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DAHAN: (Speaking Hebrew).
ESTRIN: "Families know we are standing between them and the enemy," he says.
It's a massive military deployment. Five Israeli maneuvering divisions are in Lebanon, the same amount that were inside Gaza at the height of the war there. Israel has a long history of invading southern Lebanon. In the early 1980s, Israel occupied it to fight Palestinian militias there. Israel called that occupation a security zone to protect Israel's north. That's when the Lebanese militia Hezbollah was formed to fight Israel's occupation. After two decades, Israel retreated from Lebanon. But in the last couple of years of war, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah has fired rockets and drones at Israel, killing soldiers and civilians, and Israel has gone back into Lebanon.
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PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: (Speaking Hebrew).
ESTRIN: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked soldiers on a rare visit to southern Lebanon this week, then later briefed Cabinet ministers on his visit.
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NETANYAHU: (Speaking Hebrew).
ESTRIN: He said soldiers have expanded their presence in Lebanon in the last several weeks, beyond the five Israeli outposts established there in 2024. "We are talking about a solid, deeper security zone," Netanyahu said. The stated goal is to prevent Hezbollah from invading Israel, like Hamas did in 2023, and to push Hezbollah militants away from Lebanese villages near the border so Israelis aren't under threat of close-range rocket fire.
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NETANYAHU: (Speaking Hebrew).
ESTRIN: "Every terrorist position - and there are many - is simply being flattened," Netanyahu said.
Lebanese officials say Israeli evacuation orders have displaced more than a million people, mostly from southern Lebanon. They say Israel has destroyed about 40,000 homes and killed more than 2,000 people, mostly Hezbollah fighters, Israel says, and also civilians. Lebanese officials haven't said how many of those killed were combatants.
Some ultranationalist Israeli lawmakers are calling to annex southern Lebanon permanently. Buffer zones in Lebanon and also in Gaza are part of Israel's new defense doctrine after it was surprised by Hamas' attack in 2023. Shira Efron, a senior fellow at the research group RAND describes Israel's view.
SHIRA EFRON: We clearly messed up judging adversaries' intentions. So now we're just looking at capabilities and the potential capabilities. We are preemptively taking out adversary capabilities, and we're creating buffer zones to distance our communities - border communities - from the adversaries. And this is what you see here at play.
ESTRIN: Under pressure from the U.S., Israel finally agreed to Lebanon's calls for diplomatic talks. Lebanon wants to negotiate a ceasefire. Israel first wants to see Lebanon take steps to disarm Hezbollah. A person briefed on the matter not authorized to speak publicly told NPR that until Israel sees progress, it has no intention of withdrawing from the buffer zone for the coming months and maybe years. Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Tel Aviv.
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