LONDON: About 10 Israeli women illegally entered Lebanon on Wednesday afternoon, Israel’s military said. The area where they crossed over lies on the border between Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, near the village of Ghajar.
Soldiers located most of the women and escorted them back to Israel but continued to search for others, The Times of Israel reported. Sources said they would be handed over to police for questioning.
The women were said to be affiliated with Uri Tzafon, or “Awaken, O North,” a far-right, religious Zionist movement that advocates Jewish settlement in southern Lebanon. Members of the group have crossed into Lebanon several times in recent months with support from lawmakers from the ruling coalition in Israel, the newspaper said.
In late 2024, a small group of settlers linked to the movement briefly crossed into Lebanon near the village of Maroun Al-Ras and established an outpost. The Israeli military initially denied the incursion had taken place but later confirmed that settlers had advanced several meters into Lebanese territory before being dispersed by troops.
A group of around 10 settlement activists, all young women, illegally crossed the border into Lebanon this afternoon, near the village of Ghajar, according to the military.
The IDF says most of the activists have been located and escorted back to Israel by troops, although the…
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Uri Tzafon envisions Israel’s northern border as extending at least as far as the Litani River, about 30 kilometers inside Lebanese territory, and seeks to establish a permanent Israeli civilian presence there.
According to Anna Sloutskin, who formed the movement in memory of her brother Israel Sokol, an Israeli soldier she said was killed in Gaza in 2024: “The idea is that most of the population flees, we move the border and we do not let that population return, and it remains a part of the State of Israel by declaration.”
She told Agence France-Presse in May that her brother “dreamed of settling in Lebanon. He said he wanted to live in a place that is green in the summer and white in the winter.”
The incident involving the women on Wednesday came as attacks by the Israeli military continued in southern Lebanon. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that one person was killed and 11 wounded when a strike hit the roof of a prayer area at a cemetery in Tibnin.
The Israeli military said it carried out “targeted strikes” in southern Lebanon on Wednesday in response to what it described as a Hezbollah violation. The strikes took place during the latest round of US-facilitated talks between Israeli and Lebanese authorities, which began in Rome on Tuesday and will continue until Thursday.
