Israel has agreed to a complete withdrawal from Lebanon and at least a partial withdrawal from Gaza—on the condition that the Lebanese Army curtails Hezbollah in the South and Hamas loses power in the war-torn strip.
"But neither Lebanon nor Hamas appear likely to meet those conditions," our Andrew Tobin reports from Jerusalem, so Israel is taking matters into its own hands.
The Jewish state "has been secretly building military outposts in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip as part of a plan to create buffer zones along both borders," current and former Israeli officials and reserve soldiers tell Tobin.
The push "is based on an assumption that U.S.-brokered ceasefire deals in Lebanon and Gaza are unlikely to endure," and Israeli officials "believe the two zones—along with a third one that the military openly maintains in southern Syria—are necessary to protect its border communities, which have been devastated by terrorism over the past 16 months of war."
Israel’s thinking, according to former senior Israeli military official Amir Avivi, "is that we will not withdraw from these buffer zones unless someone else comes in who can credibly deal with the threat."
"Hezbollah needs to be dismantled in Lebanon, Hamas needs to be out of Gaza, and Syria needs to be liberal and democratic," he said. "As long as these things don't happen, Israel is going to stay in the perimeter."
The Israeli goal, Avivi added, is to eventually leave Lebanon. Gaza is a different story: The Jewish state plans to stay in the buffer zone "indefinitely after the ceasefire ends."