Deterrence and a security policy known in Israel as “mowing the grass” have failed. Allowing groups like Hamas and Hezbollah to sit on the borders while Israel periodically slaps them down like misbehaving mutts is no longer tenable. There must be real, permanent repercussions for the events of Oct. 7, 2023 and the days that followed, and there must finally be a policy that provides real security to residents of Israel’s border regions.
That was the message delivered by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and his Religious Zionism party on Tuesday.
In Lebanon, Smotrich argued that such a policy requires conquering the southern region of that country and reinstating an Israeli-controlled security zone.
Smotrich told reporters after a party meeting that the war against Hezbollah cannot end with another temporary round of airstrikes, another international understanding, or another return to the old fiction that quiet can be outsourced to Beirut, the UN, or wishful thinking. His proposal was far more explicit: the Litani River, roughly 20 miles north of the current Blue Line, should become Israel’s new security line, effectively...
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