Israeli Defense Minister Accuses Lebanon Army of Negligence, Dials Up Threats

A week before the Israeli elections, their assorted offensive wars are becoming a particularly important issue, and high ranking figures are attaching themselves to various hawkish narratives, particularly as it related to the ongoing invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon. Defense Minister Israel Katz has been at the fore in this regard. Last week he threatened significant escalation of the war , taking more territory further north and potentially leading to the outright annihilation of the Lebanese Shi’ite community.

He’s now accused the Lebanese Army of “negligence” and is threatening more escalations on that basis. The Israeli Army issued a statement adjoining this allegation, accusing the Lebanese Army of failing to disarm Hezbollah in 2024 and 2025, and accusing them of not taking actions to that effect they’d publicly reported. The statement added they were holding the Lebanese Army “responsible” for dragging Lebanon into the war, which is to say Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in March.

Katz went on to reiterated the threat to expand the war northward into the Litani and Nabatieh areas, which they’re already actively attacking . Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz visits southern Lebanon The US State Department also reportedly forwarded Katz’s recent threats to Lebanon, and said that President Trump would give Israel the “green light” to expand the occupation further north into Lebanon if Hezbollah “joins Iran in attacking Israel.”

Since Israel is actively at war with both Iran and Lebanon, it’s not clear how they would determine such an attack as taking place. Over the weekend, Katz had framed that territory seized by Israel as a “permanent buffer zone,” apparently resolving the question of whether this occupation is permanent. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich pushed for the immediate annexation of the currently occupied territory, adding that if Hezbollah opposed them they should expand the occupation “all the way to Beirut.”

A new round of trilateral US-Israel-Lebanon talks are scheduled to begin today in Tampa, Florida. Lebanese officials are reportedly expected to be pressured to accept “direct coordination” with the Israeli military, but are likely to resist that. Arab League officials have expressed concerns that the ongoing negotiations are being done primarily at Lebanon’s expense, Secretary-General Nabil Fahmy called on Arab League leaders to support Lebanon’s stability.

The last seven deals resulting from the trilateral talks have not resulted in a single timeline commitment for Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, and at most expressed the idea that there might come a day when the Israeli military was no longer present. There was similarly no commitment for Israel to stop attacking Lebanese territory. If you liked this article, please support Antiwar.com. We are 100% reader-supported.