Israel announced on Monday that it is expanding its ground in southern Lebanon, claiming to target Hezbollah as Israel’s defense minister pledges that “hundreds of thousands” of people already forcibly displaced by Israeli attacks “will not return” for the indefinite future.

In a statement, Israeli forces said that soldiers are carrying out “limited and targeted ground operations” in southern Lebanon. The purpose is to “establish and strengthen a forward defensive posture … to create an additional layer of security for residents of northern Israel,” the statement claims, ignoring that Hezbollah has maintained in previous conflicts that it would not retaliate against Israel if Israeli forces withdrew from southern Lebanon.

Axios reported last week that Israel is planning a massive expansion of its ground invasion of Lebanon with the goal of seizing the entire area south of the Litani River. This area is protected under a UN Security Council resolution as part of a decades-old ceasefire agreement, and makes up about 8 percent of the area of the country.

A senior Israeli official told Axios the military is “going to do what we did in Gaza.”

Israel and Hezbollah reached a ceasefire agreement in late 2024, but Israel violated it over 10,000 times in the first year, UN officials said. Now, Israel has unilaterally ended the ceasefire — though some argue Israel never adhered to it in the first place — and severely escalated bombardments and forced displacement in Lebanon, as the world focuses on Israel and the U.S.’s horrific war on Iran.

In just the past two weeks, Israel has killed over 880 people in Lebanon, including over 100 children and dozens of health care workers, according to the country’s health ministry.

Israel has bombed residences, health care centers, and other civilian infrastructure, including in the capital of Beirut. The attacks have created a “humanitarian catastrophe,” as one UN official warned, forcing thousands to take shelter in makeshift shelters or on the streets. The UN says that Israel has forcibly displaced 800,000 people thus far.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz pledged on Monday to continue Israel’s displacement campaign.

“Hundreds of thousands of Shi’ite residents of southern Lebanon who ​have evacuated or are evacuating their homes in southern Lebanon and Beirut will not return to areas south of the Litani line until the safety of northern residents is ensured,” referring to northern Israel, Katz said in a statement.

Reuters reports that, over the weekend, Israeli forces surrounded the key town of Khiam, in southern Lebanon, close to the border of Israel and Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The town is on a hilltop that can oversee large swaths of the area, and is situated near the choke point where the demarcation of southern Lebanon by the Litani River and the “Blue Line” that establishes Lebanon’s southern border almost meet. Analysts say that Israel could use the town strategically to advance military occupation, potentially using it to cut off communication between parts of the occupied area.

Some residents of Lebanon, already having faced years of bombardments from Israel, say they fear that Israel will carry out an extended occupation like its 18-year occupation of Lebanon that lasted from 1982 to 2000.

“I feel like this is preparation for an occupation, and I’m afraid history will repeat itself,” said Iman Ibrahim, a resident of Blida, a town in south Lebanon, to The New York Times. “Everything we used to hear from our grandparents about occupation, we’re living it now.”

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.