Worse still, their MO is incredibly transparent. They want to establish a “buffer zone” in southern Lebanon, but Israel’s “buffer zones” are just a way of slowly expanding their borders. The problem is that a buffer zone like the DMZ only works as a buffer zone if you keep your own civilian population from moving in to that buffer zone! Israel lets it’s ‘settlers’ move into what are supposed to be buffer zones like the DMZ. After awhile, the settlements are retroactively recognized and made legal. Now you have civilians in ordinary communities living in what was supposed to be a buffer zone. And since they’re right on the border again, they’re now in range of attack from the angry people whose former land they are now living on.

“Buffer zones” only work if you arrest and/or shoot any of your own people who try and move into them. Otherwise, they’re just a slow-motion conquest via bureaucracy. The same thing has happened in the West Bank. Israel takes Palestinian land around Israeli settlements, declaring them to be security buffer zones. Then they let their settlers move in there. Suddenly they have vulnerable civilians within easy reach of angry Palestinians, so they need to establish a new buffer zone. Rinse and repeat.

It’s slow-motion ethnic cleansing via zoning code and bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, Ji knocks on the door and says, “well, you could buy yourself a new Chernobyl, or you could buy these solar panels and batteries from us that will give you more power for half the price, won’t make you dependent on anyone for a fuel source, and don’t risk creating an exclusion zone.”