Why Israel is Trying to Conquer 10% of Lebanon

0:00 While most of the world's attention is currently fixated on the part of the war

0:03 in the Middle East taking place across Iran and the Strait of Hormuz,

0:06 there's a separate, potentially even more consequential

0:08 theater of operations in the long term that's

0:10 also taking place in Lebanon that could end

0:13 up resulting in a permanent change in borders.

0:15 Two days after the US and Israel started the war

0:18 in Iran by killing Iran's former supreme leader in a missile strike,

0:22 Hezbollah, a heavily armed paramilitary and political party in Lebanon

0:25 that is strongly supported by Iran with arms and cash,

0:29 decided to retaliate by firing rockets and drones

0:31 into northern Israel again for the first time since

0:34 they'd agreed to a ceasefire with Israel after

0:36 the last war between them ended in late 2024.

0:39 And since then, full-scale war between Israel

0:42 and Hezbollah has returned back to Lebanon once again.

0:46 And this time, it'll likely have much worse

0:48 consequences than even any prior fighting between them did.

0:51 Israel has since conducted hundreds of heavy air strikes all

0:54 across Lebanon in a campaign they have said is targeting Hezbollah.

0:58 While Hezbollah has fired more than a thousand rockets

1:01 and drones into northern Israel at the same time.

1:03 In the middle of March, the Israeli ground forces launched a renewed

1:06 invasion across the border into southern Lebanon

1:09 with a stated goal of pushing Hezbollah away from their border once and for all.

1:14 [music] And then, most escalatory of all,

1:15 Israel's defense minister stated plainly on the final

1:18 day of March that Israel's current military objective

1:21 is to seize control over all of the territory

1:24 in southern Lebanon up to the Litani River,

1:26 some 30 km or 19 mi deep into Lebanon away from the Israeli border,

1:32 which is all a chunk of land

1:33 that represents roughly 10% of Lebanon's entire sovereign territory.

1:38 Shortly before this announcement,

1:40 the Israeli military also ordered the entire Lebanese population

1:43 that lives within this territory and beyond up to the Zahrani

1:46 River to evacuate further northwards with additional evacuation orders given

1:50 for the Shiite majority southern suburbs of the capital Beirut.

1:55 [music] Some 600,000 Lebanese people have since been reported to have

1:58 fled their homes in the south from below the Litani

2:01 River and another 400,000 more from between the Litani

2:04 and the Zahrani rivers and from the southern suburbs of Beirut.

2:08 The overwhelming majority of whom are members of Lebanon's

2:10 Shiite community and which collectively

2:12 represents the largest forced displacement

2:14 of people in Lebanon's entire modern history that is

2:17 affecting roughly one in six people in the whole country.

2:21 The Israeli defense minister has since openly stated that after

2:24 his country finishes its occupation

2:26 of southern Lebanon beneath the Litani River,

2:28 Israel will continue occupying it as a so-called buffer zone

2:32 even after the current war with Hezbollah and Iran concludes until

2:35 an undetermined point in the future when Israel feels confident

2:38 that the threat posed by Hezbollah to northern Israel is ended for good.

2:43 With no clear timeline established for how long that could potentially be,

2:46 it has led to fears within Lebanon

2:48 that the Israelis are moving towards an indefinite,

2:50 open-ended occupation of the south of their country

2:52 again like they did for nearly two decades between

2:55 1982 and 2000 or even worse towards a full-on

2:59 permanent annexation of all of the land instead.

3:02 Fears that are not being assuaged by the ongoing rhetoric and actions

3:06 taking place within the halls of the highest authorities in Israel.

3:10 The Israeli defense minister has explicitly stated that absolutely none

3:14 of the some 600,000 Lebanese residents who have fled from the area south

3:18 of the Litani River will be allowed to return home again until

3:21 the open-ended mission of ensuring

3:23 the security of northern Israel is accomplished.

3:26 Meaning in other words, that there is no clear timeline for when

3:29 or even if they will be allowed to return again.

3:31 The defense minister has also added that in order to root

3:34 out Hezbollah from the border area once and for all,

3:37 the Israeli military will have to conduct operations based

3:39 on the model they pursued in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza.

3:43 Meaning that they're going to completely demolish and raze all

3:46 of the Lebanese villages that border Israel down to the ground.

3:49 Israel might consider this militarily important in order to remove any structure

3:53 along the border that Hezbollah could use to fortify or store rockets said.

3:57 But to most everyone in Lebanon right now,

4:00 it also looks like Israel is laying the groundwork

4:02 to eventually annex this territory beneath the Litani River.

4:06 And those fears haven't been helped by the comments

4:08 of Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, either.

4:12 Just a week before the Defense Minister said that Israel was going to occupy

4:15 all of the territory beneath the Litani for an indefinite amount of time,

4:18 Smotrich said plainly during an interview on the radio that the new Israeli

4:22 border needed to be expanded up to the Litani River in the war's aftermath.

4:26 Effectively arguing that the same area

4:28 of Lebanon currently being invaded and occupied

4:31 in the name of rooting out Hezbollah should

4:33 be formally annexed and incorporated directly into Israel,

4:36 the same way that the Golan Heights were previously from Syria.

4:40 Indeed, after repeatedly having come under attack

4:42 from the Golan Heights by the Syrian army,

4:44 Israel eventually counterattacked and occupied

4:46 the territory under similar arguments about transforming

4:49 it into a temporary buffer zone in 1967 to defend the homeland.

4:54 Only to then allow Israeli settlers to begin moving in later that led

4:57 to Israel formally annexing the buffer zone 14 years later in 1981.

5:02 And now, many in Lebanon fear that the precedent set by the Golan

5:05 Heights is being applied to the south of their country next in real time.

5:09 Officials at the UN have even warned

5:11 in recent weeks that the world should be preparing

5:13 itself for an imminent new addition to the list

5:15 of Israeli occupied territories in the Middle East.

5:18 And in order to understand how we even

5:20 got here and what it means for the future,

5:22 let's just rewind back a few years ago in order to gain some context.

5:25 [music] Even before the start of this current war,

5:28 Lebanon as a country was teetering on the brink of collapse

5:31 and had been devastated by years of compounding crises and wars with Israel.

5:36 Going back to 2019, Lebanon suffered one

5:38 of modern history's most severe financial crises when

5:41 an unprecedented banking crisis contributed to a catastrophic

5:45 90% collapse of the country's currency value,

5:48 which wiped out the majority of savings for millions of Lebanese residents.

5:53 The financial crisis led to Lebanon defaulting on its sovereign

5:56 debt for the first time in its history in 2020,

5:59 and led to the country's GDP collapsing by more than 40% in one

6:03 of the top three worst financial implosions

6:05 that any society has seen since the 19th century.

6:09 And then, just months after that, a massive explosion rocked the port in Beirut,

6:14 the country's capital city,

6:16 which killed more than 200 people and according to the World

6:18 Bank caused more than 8 billion dollars in financial damages,

6:23 equivalent to nearly a third of Lebanon's entire remaining GDP by that point,

6:27 that triggered a firestorm of criticism against

6:29 the government on accusations of corruption and mismanagement.

6:33 And then, just a few years later in 2023,

6:36 in this environment of an already deep crisis for the country,

6:39 Hamas launched its October 7th attack on Israel from Gaza,

6:42 which led to Hezbollah deciding almost immediately join the war in support

6:46 of Hamas by firing rockets across the border into northern Israel,

6:50 which in effect dragged the entire rest

6:52 of the country of Lebanon into the war as well, whether they wanted to or not.

6:56 Hezbollah is a powerful militia, paramilitary,

6:58 and political party within Lebanon that has long

7:00 functioned as essentially a state within the state.

7:03 Hezbollah's base of support overwhelmingly

7:05 comes from Lebanon's Shiite Muslim population,

7:08 who represent roughly 27% of the country's total population,

7:11 and who make up regional majorities in South

7:13 Lebanon immediately across the border from Israel,

7:16 as well as in the fertile Bekaa

7:17 Valley that makes up Lebanon's most valuable farmland,

7:20 and in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

7:23 Hezbollah was originally formed as a Shiite resistance

7:25 militia back in 1982 after Israel invaded Lebanon

7:29 for the first time in response to attacks

7:31 that were then coming from southern Lebanon by Palestinian militants,

7:34 and after they came to occupy a swath

7:36 of southern Lebanon as a so-called buffer zone.

7:39 Hezbollah and the Lebanese Shiite community more broadly,

7:43 each came to see this Israeli occupation

7:44 in the south as an occupation of historically Shiite lands,

7:48 and fought bitterly over the next 18 years to push the Israelis out.

7:53 While they began receiving heavy financial and military

7:55 support from their natural ally, Iran, as well.

7:59 Israel eventually withdrew from the occupation zone in South Lebanon in 2000,

8:03 but Hezbollah was able to maintain its position within Lebanon as a heavily

8:06 armed Iranian proxy force beyond the reach of the central government.

8:10 And then they entered into another war with Israel in 2006.

8:14 That war only lasted for about a month before a ceasefire went into effect,

8:18 including the now infamous UN Resolution 1701,

8:22 which called for Hezbollah to fully withdraw away

8:24 from the Israeli border to the north of the Litani River,

8:27 and for the eventual disarmament of Hezbollah as an organization,

8:30 with the implication that it was up

8:31 to the Lebanese government to actually enforce it.

8:34 But for two decades since then, the Lebanese government has either never

8:38 enforced it or only half-heartedly enforced it.

8:41 Not necessarily out of a lack of will,

8:43 but out of a deep fear of what trying to do so would actually mean.

8:46 You have to understand that Lebanon doesn't really

8:49 work the same way that a normal country does.

8:51 Lebanon is an immensely diverse country in terms of religious beliefs,

8:55 where roughly 55% of the country are Muslims,

8:58 evenly divided between Sunnis and Shiites.

9:01 Another 40.5% of the population are Christians,

9:03 divided between a variety of different sects, while another 4.5% are Druze.

9:09 Lebanon suffered a devastating sectarian civil war between all

9:13 of these groups for nearly 15 years between 1975 and 1990,

9:17 that killed more than 100,000 people,

9:20 and ended with the country establishing a delicate

9:23 balance of power between all of its many religious

9:25 groups to try and put as much of a lid

9:27 on the internal tensions going forward as possible.

9:31 Under this convoluted system,

9:32 the country's president must always be a Maronite Catholic Christian,

9:36 the prime minister always a Sunni Muslim,

9:38 the Speaker of Parliament, always a Shiite Muslim,

9:41 the Deputy Speaker of the Parliament,

9:42 always a Greek Orthodox Christian, the Deputy Prime Minister,

9:45 also always a Greek Orthodox Christian,

9:47 and the Army Chief of Staff, always a Druze.

9:50 The country's Parliament is similarly divided along strict sectarian lines,

9:54 with 50% of all the seats reserved for the Muslims and Druze,

9:57 and the other 50% reserved for the Christians.

10:00 They are all further strictly subdivided by sect.

10:03 The Lebanese government's long fear,

10:05 and actually ever forcing Hezbollah to disarm

10:07 itself and withdrawing north of the Litani River,

10:10 is that it would trigger Hezbollah

10:11 and the Shiite community more broadly in the country

10:14 to each revolt and re-trigger the civil war of the 1970s and '80s again.

10:19 Even worse, the Lebanese government has never been sure or even

10:22 optimistic that they would actually win a fight [music] against Hezbollah,

10:25 because Hezbollah is, by most metrics,

10:27 even more powerful than the Lebanese Armed Forces themselves are.

10:31 Hezbollah wields an annual budget of around $1 billion,

10:34 $700 to $800 million of which are directly provided by the Iranian government,

10:39 which is even larger than the budget afforded to the Lebanese Armed Forces,

10:43 which only amounts to $635 million a year as of 2024.

10:47 $230 million of which is also provided by the United States.

10:52 Hezbollah has been able to maintain a standing army

10:54 that's nearly the same size as the Lebanese Armed Forces,

10:57 [music] and their fighters are even better paid,

10:59 better equipped, better trained, have greater real-world combat experience,

11:04 and undoubtedly have higher morale and motivation

11:07 and unit cohesion than the Lebanese Armed Forces have.

11:10 Since Hezbollah's fighters are almost entirely Shiites,

11:13 while the Lebanese Armed Forces are similarly divided along sectarian lines,

11:17 just like the government is.

11:18 This is why it has always been viewed as extremely

11:21 difficult for the Lebanese government to ever actually rein Hezbollah in.

11:25 And now Hezbollah has been able to maintain a completely

11:27 separate foreign policy from the rest of the government.

11:30 By By time of Hamas's October 7th, 2023 attack on Israel,

11:33 the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel from the 2006 war was still holding.

11:38 But, Hezbollah had also never withdrawn to the north of the Litani River,

11:42 nor had ever disarmed.

11:43 But, the government had never made any serious

11:45 attempt to actually force them to do so.

11:48 And then, Hezbollah decided to attack Israel again and drag the rest of Lebanon

11:52 into a war with them during an unprecedented

11:54 time of crisis that they could hardly afford.

11:58 This then triggered a 13-month-long war between and Israel

12:01 that brought enormous devastation upon Lebanon and Hezbollah alike.

12:05 That included the killing of Hezbollah's long-time leader, Hassan Nasrallah,

12:10 and a pager attack that simultaneously

12:11 [music] blew up thousands of Hezbollah-affiliated

12:14 pagers that wounded thousands of Hezbollah's

12:17 officers and fighters and civilians.

12:20 By the end of it in November of 2024,

12:22 when the two sides finally agreed on another ceasefire,

12:25 up to 5,000 of Hezbollah's fighters have been killed,

12:28 13,000 more had been wounded,

12:30 and $11 billion worth of estimated damages had been inflicted

12:34 all across Lebanon by the relentless Israeli aerial attacks and bombardments.

12:39 Israel also conducted a more limited ground invasion of southern Lebanon

12:43 this time that concluded with them

12:44 largely withdrawing after the November 2024 ceasefire,

12:48 save for five small strategic high points immediately across

12:51 the border that they still maintain their control over.

12:54 Additionally, under the terms of this latest November 2024 ceasefire,

12:58 Hezbollah was once again supposed to disarm

13:00 itself and withdraw away back to the north

13:02 of the Litani River under the supervision of the Lebanese government and army.

13:07 While Israel was supposed to halt all of their attacks.

13:10 Neither of them ultimately upheld their end of the agreement, however.

13:14 Even though Hezbollah had been badly weakened

13:16 and bloodied by the war with Israel,

13:18 the Lebanese government was still afraid of the same

13:21 problem it had always faced with actually confronting them.

13:24 The risk that doing so would trigger a revolt among the Shiites

13:27 in the country and lead to a restarting of the civil war again.

13:30 The will was there with many of the Christians, Sunnis,

13:33 and Druze in Lebanon being furious with Hezbollah over them dragging the rest

13:37 of the country into a devastating

13:38 and expensive war with Israel against their wishes.

13:42 [music] But as usual, the actual capability of a weak and fragmented

13:45 central state to confront Hezbollah was still absent.

13:49 Nonetheless, some progress by the government

13:51 on Hezbollah was finally being made.

13:55 In February of 2025, a new government came into office in Lebanon

13:58 headed by President Joseph Aoun and Prime

14:00 Minister Nawaf Salam that promised to finally

14:04 implement UN Resolution 1701 after nearly two decades.

14:08 In August, this new government for the first time declared that the Lebanese

14:12 state had the exclusive right to full

14:14 control over all weapons within its territory,

14:17 effectively declaring that Hezbollah's separate arsenal was illegal.

14:21 And then the following month in September,

14:23 the government ordered the Lebanese Armed Forces

14:25 to create a plan to actually implement this policy.

14:28 The new government also put substantial efforts into eliminating

14:31 the flow of weapons and cash to Hezbollah coming

14:33 in from abroad and was beginning to even clamp

14:36 down on Hezbollah's presence south of the Litani River.

14:39 But it was still never capable of actually fully confronting Hezbollah.

14:42 While Israel maintained almost daily airstrikes against

14:45 Hezbollah all throughout the whole ceasefire anyway.

14:48 Between November of 2024 when the last ceasefire

14:51 began and March of 2026 when it ended,

14:53 continued Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon still killed

14:57 around 350 Hezbollah fighters and 127 Lebanese civilians.

15:02 The Israeli government was accusing the Lebanese government of not actually

15:06 doing enough to clamp down on Hezbollah like they had agreed to.

15:09 While the Lebanese government was accusing the Israelis of not

15:12 making it any easier for them by giving Hezbollah

15:14 repeated reasons for continuing to resist by bombing them

15:17 and by maintaining their small five occupying outposts within the country.

15:22 And then, after all of this continued simmering

15:25 violence after the Israelis and Americans began attacking Iran,

15:28 Hezbollah decided to begin firing rockets and drones

15:31 into northern Israel again in early March of 2026,

15:35 which Israel was then able to use

15:37 as a pretext to completely kill the ceasefire altogether.

15:41 And as a piece of evidence that the Lebanese

15:43 government actually was making some progress against Hezbollah,

15:47 most of the rockets and drones that Hezbollah fired into Israel

15:50 at this time came from north of the Litani River,

15:53 rather than from the south of it.

15:55 Nonetheless, Israel began dramatically ramping up its airstrikes

15:58 again and initiated a full-scale ground invasion into southern

16:02 Lebanon under the argument that the Lebanese government

16:04 was supposedly still doing nothing to stop Hezbollah,

16:08 and that the threat of Hezbollah on Israel's

16:10 northern border had to be permanently removed

16:12 once and for all after more than 20

16:14 years of consistently refusing to withdraw or disarm.

16:19 Now, multiple things are happening in Lebanon

16:21 during this current struggle between Hezbollah,

16:23 the Lebanese government, and Israel.

16:25 Hezbollah's now openly refused to consider disarming

16:28 itself and has actively portraying its current war

16:30 against Israel as an existential fight

16:33 for the survival of the Shiite community within Lebanon,

16:36 a narrative that's being reinforced by Israel's evacuation

16:39 orders from the Shiite majority areas and threats

16:41 that Shiites will not be allowed to return back

16:43 to their ancestral homes south of the Litani River.

16:47 Hezbollah's new leadership have plainly stated that while they know they cannot

16:51 stop the Israelis from taking over southern Lebanon up to the Litani River,

16:54 they're still going to fight against them

16:56 anyway and make it as difficult as possible.

16:59 And Israel's ground invasion,

17:00 its bombing of Shiite majority areas all across the country,

17:03 and its rhetoric about taking over the south

17:05 of Lebanon is also fueling Hezbollah's entire purpose for existing

17:10 in the first place at a time when

17:12 many in Lebanon were questioning and even doubting that.

17:16 The Lebanese government, meanwhile, is now facing a mounting humanitarian crisis

17:20 from the resumption of the war that is only adding onto the pile of crises

17:24 that has already been constantly experiencing since 2019.

17:28 More than 1,300 people have already been

17:30 killed in Lebanon since the war resumed again.

17:32 While Israel's targeted evacuation orders and bombardments of Shiite majority

17:36 areas have triggered the displacements of more than a million people,

17:40 the overwhelming majority of whom are Lebanese Shiites.

17:43 And this, in particular,

17:45 is greatly exacerbating the delicate underlying sectarian

17:48 balance and fault lines within the country.

17:51 Israel has repeatedly conducted aerial assassination

17:54 strikes against Hezbollah and Iranian IRGC

17:56 members in the country within civilian

17:58 areas like apartment buildings and hotels,

18:01 which have caused considerable collateral damage

18:03 to Lebanese civilians and have fueled a deepening

18:06 sense of paranoia among Lebanon's Christian

18:08 and Sunni communities towards the Shiites collectively.

18:12 With more than a million Shiites fleeing

18:14 their homes and seeking refuge elsewhere in the country,

18:17 distrustful and paranoid Christian, Sunni,

18:19 and Druze Lebanese are resorting to either vetting them

18:22 or refusing them shelter outright out of a fear

18:25 of putting a target on their own backs

18:26 to the Israelis if they let in Hezbollah members.

18:30 And if hundreds of thousands of Shiite Lebanese are

18:32 permanently disallowed from returning back to their homes again,

18:35 it will inevitably significantly change the delicate

18:38 demographic balance across Lebanon's Christian, Sunni,

18:41 and Druze majority areas instead,

18:43 which greatly risks stoking sectarian tensions and sparking internal conflict.

18:49 The Lebanese government has done their best

18:51 to try and diffuse the war and the crisis,

18:53 but it's also largely out of their own hands [music] now.

18:56 The same day that Hezbollah began firing rockets

18:58 and drones into Israel again on the 2nd of March,

19:01 the Lebanese government, for the first time,

19:03 declared an explicit ban on Hezbollah's military activities in the country,

19:07 expelled all of the members of Iran's IRGC from the country,

19:11 ended all of their visa-free agreements with Iran,

19:13 and even withdrew their ambassador from Iran.

19:16 They have also called for direct negotiations with Israel to end the war,

19:20 something that the Lebanese government has

19:21 consistently refused to do for decades now.

19:24 In response, and for declining to respond against the Israeli invasion directly,

19:28 Hezbollah's leadership have openly accused

19:31 the Lebanese government of committing treason.

19:33 And the government is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

19:37 If it pushes too hard back against Israel's invasion,

19:40 it looks like they are siding with Hezbollah,

19:41 and the vastly more powerful Israeli military will turn their guns on them, too.

19:46 And they'll also risk losing more than a third of their military

19:49 budget that comes from Israel's top ally, the United States.

19:53 And if they push back too hard against Hezbollah,

19:55 the Shiite population in the country

19:56 will increasingly perceive them to be traitors,

19:59 and it risks pushing the whole country into a civil war.

20:02 Thus, the best option for the Lebanese government has

20:04 basically been what it's already been for decades now.

20:07 Just do nothing at all.

20:09 Meanwhile, and perhaps most importantly,

20:11 Israel's ultimate objectives and intentions

20:13 in Lebanon right now are still mysterious.

20:16 The Israeli military's officials have insisted [music]

20:18 that their objectives are limited to ensuring

20:20 that Hezbollah is removed from the land south of the Litani River for good,

20:24 and that the establishment of a temporary

20:26 Israeli-controlled buffer zone between the Litani

20:28 River and the Israeli border is necessary in order to ensure this.

20:32 But at the same time, as discussed at the beginning of this video,

20:35 a lot of Israel's actions and rhetoric suggest that it

20:38 is actually planning something much more ambitious and escalatory.

20:41 If Israel had been strictly interested in just weakening Hezbollah further,

20:45 they could have cooperated with the Lebanese government that was

20:48 actually finally making some progress on reigning them in.

20:51 They could have helped to strengthen and solidify

20:53 the Lebanese central government and army against Hezbollah.

20:57 But they didn't and decided to act against Hezbollah unilaterally,

21:00 and invaded Lebanon instead.

21:02 Israel's policy of ordering the evacuations

21:04 of hundreds of thousands of mostly Shiite residents

21:07 from the south and its declared policy

21:09 of bulldozing towns and villages along the border

21:12 that will prevent many of them from being able to return and its recent call

21:15 up of more than 450,000 Israeli reservists suggests

21:20 that it is truly planning for a long-term,

21:22 if not indefinite, occupation of South Lebanon beneath the Litani River.

21:27 While members of Netanyahu's own cabinet, like Bezalel Smotrich,

21:30 are already openly calling for Israel to annex

21:33 the whole territory after they complete their conquest.

21:36 While Netanyahu's energy minister, Eli Cohen,

21:39 has similarly begun calling to scrap

21:41 the landmark maritime deal between Israel and Lebanon

21:44 that was sorted out in 2022 that had

21:46 resolved the two countries' long-standing maritime boundary dispute,

21:50 which now seemingly could be back in jeopardy again.

21:53 Worse still, the Trump-appointed US ambassador to Lebanon

21:56 has made statements that the Trump administration has

21:59 reportedly requested Israel to spare the fates

22:02 of Lebanese Christian villages and towns in the south,

22:05 but has said nothing about the fates of the Lebanese Shiite villages and towns,

22:09 implying that the US government is actively encouraging a policy of ethnic

22:13 cleansing of the Shiites from southern Lebanon that is being pursued by Israel.

22:17 A policy that will inevitably lead to a stoking

22:19 of internal tensions within Lebanon's delicate sectarian balance,

22:24 something that Israel itself almost certainly wants in order to ensure

22:27 that Lebanon cannot mount a collective unified response against them.

22:32 To further isolate South Lebanon from the rest of the country,

22:35 the Israelis also bombed and destroyed every single major bridge

22:39 that crosses over the Litani River since the newest war began.

22:43 The Israelis have stated that they did this in order to prevent Hezbollah

22:46 from easily being able to move weapons and fighters to the front lines,

22:50 but it has also effectively left South Lebanon

22:52 logistically isolated from the rest of the country,

22:54 too, which will make Israel's potential long-term

22:57 control over it significantly more easy to manage.

23:00 It'll be much more difficult for the hundreds

23:03 of thousands of Lebanese residents who have fled

23:05 from South Lebanon to ever return without any usable

23:08 bridges over the Litani River they can actually cross,

23:11 and without posts set up over on the other side of it,

23:14 set up by the Israeli military.

23:16 Well, it's also effectively made it impossible for humanitarian

23:19 aid to reach South Lebanon now as well.

23:22 The mostly Shiite refugees who've been evacuated and forcefully

23:25 displaced from the South now fear the echoes of history,

23:28 and that their fate right now might end up

23:30 becoming the same as what just happened to the Gazans,

23:33 or what happened to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were also forced

23:37 from their homes and never allowed to return again after the 1948 and 1967 wars.

23:43 Israel has stated that their war in Lebanon is separate from the war in Iran,

23:48 and therefore that any potential settlement and end of the war

23:50 with Iran will not mean an end of the separate war in Lebanon.

23:54 So, the way that I see it, after the Israelis finalize their occupation

23:57 of South Lebanon beneath the Litani River,

24:00 three possible scenarios are likely going forward.

24:03 First, is that Israel eventually decides to withdraw after suffering too

24:07 many casualties and too much pressure

24:08 from Hezbollah in the international community,

24:11 which I don't think is very likely.

24:13 Second, Israel might eventually use its control of South

24:16 Lebanon as a bargaining chip with the Lebanese government,

24:19 offering to trade it back to Lebanon in return for Lebanon extending

24:23 its formal recognition of Israel and firmly agree to rein in Hezbollah.

24:28 Based on a similar deal the Israelis made with Egypt in the 1980s when

24:32 they returned the occupied Sinai Peninsula back

24:34 to them in exchange for Egyptian recognition.

24:37 And thirdly, Israel might maintain an indefinite occupation of South Lebanon,

24:41 believing that its value as a militarily controlled buffer zone separating

24:45 northern Israel from Hezbollah is too important to ever give up,

24:48 which might eventually lead to them allowing Israeli settlers into the territory

24:52 in order to establish a firmer demographic control over it,

24:55 and an eventual full-on annexation of the land like they

24:58 did with the Golan Heights that they occupy from Syria.

25:02 And whatever ends up happening, Lebanon itself continues being pushed ever

25:06 closer to the brink of complete collapse, which if it happens will be a calamity

25:12 for the entire world to have to deal with.

25:16 Meanwhile, in the United States, one of the most concerning things about living

25:19 here is that there are pretty weak data privacy laws and a ton of personal data

25:23 that gets put out into the public record,

25:25 frequently by local, state, and federal governments themselves.

25:28 It's always been like that here and it wasn't

25:30 ever a huge problem before the advent of the internet.

25:33 But these days it means that people are able to turn a profit off

25:35 of making it easier for other people

25:37 to get your personal information and they do.

25:39 They're called people sites and if you want to see for yourself,

25:42 just search your name and address

25:44 or phone numbers and you'll probably come across

25:45 a bunch of these sites that list at least some of your personal information.

25:49 But you also have the power to change this.

25:52 You have the legal right to request that your personal

25:54 data is removed from each one of these sites.

25:57 The biggest problem is that it takes forever to actually do that.

26:01 They make it as hard as possible and you have to do it individually

26:04 over and over again for every single one of the endless sites that have it.

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