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Settlers Look North: Lebanon and Syria

For most of Israel's history the settler movement's horizon was the West Bank and Gaza. Since 2024 it has moved north. As Israel's army pushed into southern Lebanon toward the Litani River (about 20 miles north of the border) and seized the Syrian side of Mount Hermon after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, settler groups began organizing to live on that ground. This page follows them. The government side of the story, the army's "security zones," is on Lebanon and Syria Since 2024 and in the neighbors, country by country.

Uri Tzafon: "what we were promised, we must conquer"​

Uri Tzafon ("Awaken, North") is a movement founded to settle southern Lebanon. At its June 2024 conference, Hagi Ben Artzi, Prime Minister Netanyahu's brother-in-law, said Israel's borders "should be expanded to include Syria — according to what was promised in the Bible," and "We don't want even one meter beyond the Euphrates River. We are humble. [But] what we were promised, we must conquer" (+972 Magazine). In May 2026 National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who had earlier kept his distance, discussed a "settlement plan" for southern Lebanon, according to L'Orient Today as summarized by Wikipedia, and was filmed saying: "We have a plan for settlement in Lebanon, and we also have plans to encourage the emigration [of Palestinians] from Gaza and the West Bank" (DarnelvaDoo on X, 15 May 2026, caption translation).

"Our bags are ready"​

When Israel invaded Lebanon in the autumn of 2024, settler groups announced a campaign declaring southern Lebanon part of "Greater Israel" and urging Netanyahu to begin construction (The People's Voice, 3 October 2024). A week earlier the Jerusalem Post had published a religious article teaching that Lebanon lies within the promised land and that "we were obligated and commanded to conquer it" (see the deleted article).

In December 2025 the head of Daniella Weiss's Nachala movement said: "There are parties preparing to settle in Lebanon, our bags are ready on our backs, we want to replicate the West Bank, God willing, in Lebanon" (SilencedSirs on X, 29 December 2025). By April 2026, reporting from southern Lebanon described the land south of the Litani being cut off, "at least seven bridges" destroyed, "1.2 million people" displaced and told they will not return, and "Israeli extremists in the Knesset ... already planning settlements" (Ana Kasparian, as captioned by Ounka on X, 15 April 2026). Eighteen Knesset members had pressed the government in April 2026 "to occupy and fully control southern Lebanon up to the Litani River and 'evacuate' the Lebanese population there," according to The Conversation. The Knesset member Yitzhak Kroizer said in March 2026: "There's no choice but to expel and clear out the area up to the Litani River… sovereignty and settlement."

Across the Golan into Syria​

Israel has held the Golan Heights since 1967 and applied its law there in 1981; more than 25,000 Israelis now live there, and in April 2026 the government agreed to spend $334 million to move thousands more (see The Golan Heights). After Assad fell in December 2024 the army crossed the 1974 ceasefire line into Syria. Settlers followed. Truthout reported in April 2026 that "far-right Israeli settlers are increasingly crossing from the occupied Golan Heights into southern Syria in an effort to advance a 'Greater Israel' project, with incursions taking place in areas already under de facto Israeli military control" (Truthout on X, 28 April 2026). In July 2026 Middle East Eye ran the headline "Settler project for 'Greater Israel' sets its eyes on Syria" (Middle East Eye).

How the pattern works​

The pattern is the one the West Bank followed after 1967. The army takes ground for "security." Ministers and lawmakers name it as a future border: Finance Minister Smotrich in April 2026 at a new West Bank settlement, "There will be a conclusive political leg in Lebanon that will expand our borders to the Litani," and "in Syria with the Hermon crown and the buffer zone" (see Smotrich in 2026). The settler movement then moves in, and the state later recognizes what it built. An Israeli reserve colonel, Udi Evental, described exactly this: security zones "create a reality of occupation, in which various actors in Israel, especially on the extreme right, identify available territories for expansion, annexation, and Jewish settlement" (see Udi Evental's warning).

As one activist returning from the region put it: "After Gaza is the West Bank, after the West Bank is Lebanon…and nobody is stopping them" (Aaron White, as posted by Sovereign Media on X, 26 May 2026).

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED that settler organizations and lawmakers have called for settling southern Lebanon and that settlers have entered southern Syria. STRONG that the "security zone" is the first stage of the same settle-then-legalize pattern used in the West Bank.

Status: Hagi Ben Artzi, Itamar Ben Gvir, Daniella Weiss, Yitzhak Kroizer, Bezalel Smotrich, Udi Evental, Ana Kasparian, and Aaron White are alive. Nothing on this page states that any living person committed a crime.

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Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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