KARNEI SHOMRON SETTLEMENT, Palestinian Territories: From her home in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, Anna Sloutskin yearns to expand her country’s borders and one day move to southern Lebanon. And she is not alone.
With fighting between Israel and Hezbollah displacing more than a million Lebanese, a far-right fringe of Israel’s settler movement is turning its gaze northwards.
Uri Tzafon, or “Awake, North Wind,” comprises dozens of families, according to Sloutskin, a 37-year-old research biologist who says the movement has seen growing traction since she co-founded it in 2024.
The group envisages Israel’s northern border extending to at least the Litani river, which runs some 30 kilometers (19 miles) deep into Lebanese territory, and aims to establish a permanent Israeli civilian presence in the area.
“The idea is that most of the population flees, we move the border, and we do not let that population return, and it remains a part of the State of Israel by declaration,” said Sloutskin, who formed the movement in memory of her brother Israel Sokol, an Israeli soldier killed in Gaza in 2024.
