During Israel’s 78th Independence Day commemorations this week, two separate far-right Israeli settler groups carried out coordinated illegal incursions into neighboring Syrian and Lebanese territory, escalating long-simmering expansionist demands that have put Israeli security forces in the position of intervening to remove the activists.
The first incident unfolded along Israel’s northern border with Syria, when approximately 40 activists linked to the right-wing Halutzei HaBashan — or Bashan Pioneers, a movement named for the biblical term for the Golan Heights-adjacent region — crossed into the village of Hader, located in Syria’s Quneitra Governorate on Wednesday. Multiple members of the group barricaded themselves inside a local building, tying their bodies to the structure to resist removal. They launched a public appeal, urging ordinary Israelis to pressure government ministers to defy military orders and allow them to remain on Syrian territory. Footage circulated online confirmed the presence of the settlers on the building’s rooftop in Hader. Israeli military forces ultimately intervened, removing all the activists and escorting them back across the border into Israel.
In a second separate incursion just days after a similar crossing into Syria on Monday, a small group of activists from another far-right settler organization, Uri Tzafon (translated as Awaken North), entered Lebanese territory near the Manara Cliff, an area Israelis refer to as Ramim Ridge. Local Israeli media correspondent Itay Blumental of public broadcaster Kan 11 confirmed the group advanced hundreds of meters into Lebanese land before Israeli security forces detained them and transferred the activists to national police for processing.
In a statement released after the incident, Uri Tzafon claimed the incursion was framed as a “family tour” to visit cedar trees the group had planted near the border earlier in 2026, and said the action was meant to mark Israel’s Independence Day in what they called “renewed Lebanon.” The group doubled down on its long-held expansionist platform, saying: “We reiterate our call for true independence and full sovereignty of the State of Israel in southern Lebanon – up to the Litani River and beyond.”
For their part, the Bashan Pioneers said they would not abandon their goals, noting they would only withdraw from the territory permanently once the government authorized their families to move to and settle the occupied areas. In a direct appeal to the current right-wing Israeli administration, the group stated: “The right-wing government should capitalise on the time it has left to set facts on the ground.”
Israeli officials have formally condemned the unauthorized incursions. The Israel Defense Forces labeled the Hader incursion “a serious offence” that endangered both the civilian activists and deployed military troops. Israeli police have issued formal warnings that crossing into Syria or Lebanon without authorization is a criminal offense, carrying a maximum penalty of four years of prison time for convicted violators.
These two incursions are not isolated events: both groups have carried out similar illegal border crossings repeatedly since Israel expanded its occupation into new portions of Syria and Lebanon starting in 2024. The actions come amid a growing coordinated push by multiple Israeli settler movements to formally expand Israeli state borders and authorize civilian settlement in newly occupied territories.
One of the most prominent established settler organizations, Nachala, has publicly joined the call for settlement in southern Lebanon, echoing expansionist language previously used for the Gaza Strip. Ayelet Schlissel, a spokesperson for Nachala, told Israeli settler news outlet Srugim on Sunday: “any area from which the enemy poses a threat – we must eliminate it, expel, and settle.” She repeated the slogan “Occupation, expulsion, settlement” when referring to southern Lebanon, mirroring the movement’s longstanding demands for the Gaza Strip. Just days later on Wednesday, Nachala organized a mass march of roughly 2,000 people on Israeli territory near Gaza, with all participants holding a single clear demand: to be allowed to return to and resettle the Gaza Strip. Unlike the incursions into Syria and Lebanon, the protest remained inside Israeli-designated borders.
Top Israeli government officials have already signaled openness to these expansionist goals. Earlier this month, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told a crowd of settlers in the occupied West Bank that the government would pursue “a clear political strategy in Gaza that expands our borders,” adding that the same policy would apply to both Lebanon and Syria. Currently, Israel has maintained full military occupation of captured Syrian territory since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in December 2024, and has occupied large swathes of southern Lebanon for most of the past two and a half years.