🔶 Netanyahu claims that some villages in southern Lebanon have requested “annexation to Israel” Benjamin Netanyahu, in an interview with Fox News, claimed that some Christian villages in southern Lebanon “have expressed a desire to join Israel in order to benefit from this country’s protection against Lebanon’s Hezbollah, because this organization intends to kill them.” The Israeli prime minister referred only to these villages being located near the Israel-Lebanon border, but did not name the villages. Netanyahu’s claim was met with an immediate response from local officials in Lebanon. According to the Lebanese news agency NNA, Hanna al-Amil, mayor of the Christian village of Remish near the Israel border, said that taking such a step is “completely out of the question.” Fifteen Christian villages in southern Lebanon also, two days earlier, had rejected the idea of joining Israel in a joint statement.