Israeli Occupation Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that occupation forces will remain entrenched in southern Lebanon indefinitely, declaring outright that Tel Aviv will ignore any withdrawal order from Washington itself. Speaking to the newspaper Makor Rishon, Smotrich said he doesn’t even expect the US to ask, because “they understand our red lines.”
Smotrich confirmed the occupation is moving to build permanent military infrastructure inside Lebanese territory: not temporary checkpoints, but army posts and full bases, built to last. By openly discussing permanent bases and indefinite control, the occupation is signaling a shift from temporary deployment to long-term territorial entrenchment.
To justify seizing land that isn’t his, Smotrich reached back over a century, dismissing the 1916 Sykes-Picot border as geographically illogical. It is a familiar tactic: when international borders are inconvenient, the occupation simply declares them invalid. “We are there until Hezbollah disarms, and I think also beyond that, because we need defendable borders,” he said collapsing any pretense that this was ever about Hezbollah alone. The goalpost was always going to move.
Smotrich made clear this is not one minister freelancing. He said the open-ended occupation is the shared position of the prime minister, the defense minister, and himself, with Israeli occupation forces under instruction not to move “a millimeter.” Smotrich is also shaping the occupation’s military budget for the next ten years, meaning this isn’t a temporary deployment being planned, it’s a decade of occupation being budgeted for in advance.
This is where Washington’s role can no longer be brushed aside as quiet diplomacy. A senior Israeli occupation minister has just said, on record, that he does not expect the United States to object to permanent military rule over another country’s sovereign territory. That is not an accident. It is the predictable result of decades of US arms transfers, UN Security Council vetoes shielding the occupation from accountability, and political cover extended regardless of what the occupation does on the ground. Smotrich is not guessing. He is describing a pattern Washington has reinforced for years.
The UK’s posture fits the same mold continued arms licensing and diplomatic deference to Tel Aviv, even as the occupation openly declares it will defy international borders and entrench itself in another nation indefinitely. Gulf states that have normalized relations with the occupation, or stayed silent while this unfolds, are choosing their own economic and political comfort over Lebanese sovereignty.
For Lebanese civilians, “permanent infrastructure” means permanent danger displacement, restricted movement, and communities living indefinitely under foreign military control with no political process and no end date attached. International law is unambiguous: military occupation cannot become a backdoor to annexation, and no foreign power gets to redraw another country’s borders because its leadership finds the topography inconvenient.
Smotrich has told the world plainly what is being planned: Israeli occupation forces will not leave, will build permanently, and do not believe Washington will stop them.
