Moshe Phillips is national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel, AFSI, (www.AFSI.org), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.
For decades, critics of Israel’s security policy have insisted that buffer zones "don't work" and that only negotiations can stop terrorism. J Street’s recent campaign against a possible long-term Israeli security presence in southern Lebanon repeats the same argument yet again.
According to J Street, the controversial Jewish pressure group that was created to lobby for a Palestinian state, Israel is supposedly "carrying out the Gaza playbook in Lebanon," and any continued military presence north of the border will only create "more instability". (No surprise here: J Street recently called for ending US aid to Israel, including support for programs such as Iron Dome and was called "a cancer" by Israel's US ambassador, ed.)
But critics of buffer zones never provide an answer to the most basic question: what is the alternative? In its recent "No Occupying Southern Lebanon" email, J Street states, "Expulsion and occupation have never led to security. They produce resistance and hatred." But this argument is a meaningless distraction.
The explicit goal of Hezbollah is clear from direct evidence found in the group's own founding text. In its 1985 Open Letter (Manifesto), the group explicitly rejected any coexistence with Israel. Hezbollah states that the confrontation with Israel "will only cease when it is completely obliterated from the face of the earth." For 40 years, Hezbollah has conducted terrorism in pursuit of that goal. J Street cannot wish this away.
Since its very founding, Israel has repeatedly been forced to cross into Lebanon because terrorist armies entrenched themselves directly on Israel’s northern frontier. First, it was the PLO. Then Hezbollah. Israeli civilians in Kiryat Shmona, Metula, Nahariya, and dozens of other communities have spent generations running to shelters while the world lectures Israel about “restraint."
The historical record really matters here. Israel did not wake up one morning in the 1980s looking for territory in Lebanon. Israel entered Lebanon because northern Israeli towns were under relentless attack. The same reality exists today. Hezbollah spent decades transforming southern Lebanon into a forward operating base for Iran’s war against Israel.
And then on October 7, in addition to the thousands of Hamas-led terrorists who invaded southern Israel, Hezbollah began to target its rockets at Israeli cities and towns throughout northern Israel. As a result, 18,000 Israeli children were displaced for about a year due to Hezbollah rocket fire. Nearly 1,000 Israeli children have been orphaned. Tens of thousands suffer from trauma and displacement, yet they remain largely invisible to UNICEF and the many celebrities who are quick to speak out when they can demonize Israel - and it seems, to J Street as well.
On July 27, 2024, a Hezbollah rocket hit a soccer field in Majdal Shams, a non-Jewish, Druze town in the Golan Heights. The explosion killed 12 children from the Druze community and injured at least 42 others. Most of the victims were between 10 and 16 years old.
As the Israeli Embassy in Washington noted in a recent statement: “Over the last 65 days, Hezbollah has fired more than 8,000 rockets and drones into Israel - directly targeting civilian communities, homes, and families. No other country in the world would be expected to sit back and accept this reality."
This is the reality, and J Street has no realistic answer to it. Hezbollah has shown no interest whatsoever in negotiations and J Street knows it.
Every serious military planner understands that sovereign borders alone do not stop terrorist armies. The international border between Israel and Lebanon did not stop Hezbollah from building missile depots, tunnel systems, drone infrastructure, and launch sites embedded within civilian villages. UNIFIL did not stop it either. Neither did repeat United Nations resolutions demanding Hezbollah withdraw north of the Litani River.
The uncomfortable truth is that “international guarantees" have repeatedly failed. Israel has learned this lesson in blood over and over again. Hezbollah's terrorism is rooted in revolutionary Islamist doctrine and support for Iran's regional ambitions and has nothing to do with a border dispute. Pretending otherwise is a dangerous fantasy.
Critics also point to Israel’s previous security zone in southern Lebanon from 1985 to 2000 as proof that buffer zones fail. But that argument is also a false one. For fifteen years, the security zone significantly reduced infiltration into northern Israel and created strategic depth against terrorist attacks. The Four Mothers emotion-based protest movement (Hebrew: ארבע אמהות) successfully pressured the Israeli government to execute a unilateral withdrawal from the security zone in Southern Lebanon in 2000, perhaps saving their own soldier sons but paving the way for other soldiers' deaths.
The real lesson of the IDF's 2000 withdrawal is not that the buffer zone failed. The lesson is that Israel left without a plan for Hezbollah's terrorism would, inevitably, begin again to be a daily threat.
What followed was catastrophic. Hezbollah rapidly transformed southern Lebanon into one of the most heavily armed terrorist enclaves on earth. Israel’s withdrawal was interpreted across the Middle East not as a gesture of peace, but as proof that sustained terrorism works. The consequences arrived in 2006 and again after October 7.
J Street’s email speaks hopefully about diplomacy and the Lebanese government supposedly moving to marginalize Hezbollah. Israelis have heard versions of this same promise for decades. Meanwhile, Hezbollah became stronger than many NATO militaries, amassed over 150,000 rockets, and embedded itself throughout Lebanon’s entire political system - in violation of the UN Resolution 1701 that it signed. No responsible Israeli government can gamble the lives of northern residents on optimistic press releases from Beirut or diplomatic theories promoted at Washington think tank events.
Buffer zones may not be ideal. No Israeli parent wants soldiers stationed indefinitely in hostile territory. Israelis understand the cost of war better than most of the people commenting from abroad. But security policy is not built on idealism. It is often built on choosing between bad options and worse ones. And after October 7, Israelis know exactly what happens when genocidal enemies are allowed to entrench themselves directly on their border.
The central obligation of any government is protecting its citizens. If diplomacy genuinely dismantled Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, Israelis would welcome it. But diplomacy without enforcement has repeatedly failed. UN resolutions failed. International observers failed. The Lebanese state failed.
Israel simply cannot risk an October 7-style invasion of its north. The many Hezbollah terror tunnels that the IDF has discovered and destroyed are evidence of just how far along such nightmarish plans really were.
A defensible security buffer north of the border may not produce perfect peace. Nothing in the Middle East does. But it can create strategic depth, disrupt terrorist operations, reduce infiltration risks, and buy critical response time for Israeli civilians and soldiers alike. Most importantly, it can save lives.
That is the part critics of buffer zones consistently ignore. Their proposals are filled with slogans about “occupation" and “de-escalation," but they never explain how Israel is supposed to defend its northern communities against an enemy openly committed to its destruction.
The truth is that opposition to buffer zones stems from an abstract ideological discomfort. The debate should center instead on what can be done so that Israeli families can live without thousands of rockets aimed at their homes from a few miles away.
Every nation has the obligation to secure its borders against terrorist armies. Israel is no exception. And until Israel’s critics can offer a realistic alternative to Hezbollah’s militarized frontier, condemning buffer zones is toxic.