Even as the United States and Iran work to consolidate their ceasefire, Israel is expanding its territorial footprint across four fronts in a strategic shift that six Israeli military and defence officials say reflects an acceptance that the country is locked in a semi-permanent state of conflict with adversaries it cannot eliminate outright.
Israel’s creation of buffer zones in Gaza, Syria and now Lebanon — combined with its continued control of the occupied West Bank — signals a new security doctrine that has emerged from two and a half years of fighting since the October 2023 attacks, the officials told Reuters.
“Israel’s leaders have concluded that they are in a forever war against adversaries who have to be intimidated and even dispersed,” said Nathan Brown of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined the scope of the territorial seizures in a video message on 31 March. “We have established security belts deep beyond our borders,” he said. “In Gaza — more than half of the Strip’s territory. In Syria, from the Mount Hermon summit until the Yarmuch River. In Lebanon — a vast buffer zone that thwarts the threat of invasion.”
Lebanon buffer zone takes shape
In Lebanon, Israel launched a ground invasion following Hezbollah’s entry into the war on 2 March, pushing toward the Litani River — a swathe of territory making up roughly 8% of Lebanese land. Hundreds of thousands of residents have been ordered to flee. Israeli troops have begun destroying homes in Shia villages they say were used to store weapons or stage attacks, with one senior military official saying that in some border villages, nearly 90% of homes contained weapons or equipment linked to Hezbollah.
A senior military official said the aim was to clear a strip extending 5 to 10 kilometres beyond the border, putting Israeli towns out of range of Hezbollah rocket-propelled grenade fire. The Lebanese buffer zone plan has yet to be presented to Netanyahu’s cabinet, according to a cabinet member and two of the officials.
Defence Minister Israel Katz said border villages serving as Hezbollah outposts “will be destroyed according to the Rafah and Khan Younis model in Gaza.”
Eran Shamir-Borer, an international law expert at the Israel Democracy Institute, said sweeping destruction of civilian property in southern Lebanon “that is not based on individual analysis would be unlawful.”
Doctrine of preemption
The buffer zone strategy reflects what retired Israeli brigadier general Assaf Orion described as a fundamental shift in security thinking: “Israel no longer waits for the attack to come. It sees an emerging threat and it attacks it preemptively.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has gone further, calling in March for Israel to extend its border to the Litani River — echoing similar calls he has made about Gaza. However, another military official said the Litani would not become a new border, with the zone instead monitored by ground troops carrying out raids as needed.
The strategy has deep roots in Israeli public scepticism toward negotiated peace. A 2025 Pew Research Center poll found just 21% of Israelis believed Israel and a future Palestinian state could coexist peacefully. A separate poll by the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies found only 26% believed the October ceasefire in Gaza would lead to lasting calm.
Ofer Shelah, a research programme director at the institute, warned that patrolling buffer zones across Lebanon, Gaza, Syria and the West Bank would eventually place severe strain on Israel’s military. “We would be better off eventually going back to the international border and maintaining mobile active defences beyond the border, without having outposts there,” he said.