Uri Tzafon
| Uri Tzafon | |
|---|---|
| Type | Settlement campaign |
| Logo | |
| Founded | |
| Founder(s) | |
| Dissolved | |
| Registration ID | |
| Status | |
| Headquarters | |
| Location | Israel |
| Area served | |
| Services | |
| Registration | |
| Key people | Anna Slutskin, Yaakov Socol, Amos Azaria |
| Website | |
| Remarks | |
Uri Tzafon (עורי צפון, “Awake, O North”) is an Israeli settlement campaign, set up in March 2024, which calls for the annexation and settlement of Lebanon south of the Litani, and more recently south of the Zahrani. It publishes maps of Lebanese towns under Hebrew names and has advertised plots it does not own, from about 300,000 shekels, as “future settlements.” The slogan on the maps is “head north.” Members have been arrested for crossing into Lebanon. It is not a company and it is not a state agency. It is the public end of the argument that the occupied villages are land for sale.[1][2]
The people
The three co-founders named in accounts of the movement are Anna Slutskin, a biologist, Yaakov Socol, and Amos Azaria, a university professor. Slutskin and Socol are siblings of Yisrael Socol (also given as Israel Sokol), a Givati Brigade soldier whose death is described as the inspiration. A WhatsApp forum reached about 3,000 members in a month. The talk on it, as reported, was kayaking trips in southern Lebanon, Hebrew names for Lebanese cities, and complaints that Israeli policy in the north was docile. Some members state a Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates. The campaign’s own published aim is narrower and still crosses the border: settle south of the Litani, and “Judaize” it.[2]
The claimed outpost, December 2024
On 7 December 2024 the movement said families had crossed into southern Lebanon, set up tents, planted trees and made a memorial corner for Yehudah Dror Yahalom, a soldier from a West Bank settlement killed in combat in southern Lebanon that October. It placed the act at Maroun al-Ras, a Shia village less than a mile from the border, in ground then held by the Israeli army under the ceasefire. The military spokesman said the activists never crossed, that the encampment was inside Israel near a border community, and that soldiers dispersed them because the area was a closed military zone. The claim and the denial were published the next day. Nachala used the same moment to call for settlement in Lebanon, Gaza and the Syrian Golan, and said the land “must not be abandoned to foreigners.” No minister had called for settlement in Lebanon. Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir had called for it in Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu had denied an intention to resettle Gaza.[3]
The maps
The maps cover communities from the mouth of the Litani east to Kfarkila, including the western Bekaa, Hasbaya and the Shebaa Farms, and the cities of Tyre, Bint Jbeil, Marjayoun and Hasbaya. Towns are given Hebrew names, often biblical. Plots are advertised from about 300,000 shekels, about $80,000. Earlier material invited buyers to purchase homes with a view of the mountains while Israeli operations in the same area were still running. Riad Al-Asaad, director general of the South Reconstruction Company, cited the advertisements in calling for a Lebanese ban on sales. About 82,000 people remained displaced in the south at the time of the later map. The movement is selling land whose owners are Lebanese, and whose villages are under occupation.[1][2]
What it is not
Uri Tzafon is not the caller from a US law firm, and it is not an Emirati or Cypriot company. Those approaches, reported by owners and by Al-Asaad, are unnamed. The movement is the part of the campaign that publishes its map. Al-Asaad separately accused Israeli forces of bulldozing land-registry offices and taking property records, and of a scorched-earth policy in Shia villages to stop return. That is a military act, reported by him. It is not a line on the movement’s advertisement. The two together are the condition of the sale: the owner is absent, the record is gone, and a movement in Israel is offering the plot.[1]
See also
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Najia Houssari, Who will protect occupied southern Lebanon from controversial land sales?, Arab News, 30 September 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Israeli extremist publishes updated map promoting land sales in southern Lebanon, Roya News.
- ↑ Settler group claims to have entered Lebanon and established outpost; IDF denies it, Times of Israel, 8 December 2024.