Q9F

That thing Western media do when they say “southern Lebanon,” as if it were some kind of floating entity, not really Lebanon, is telling.

If a country occupied the south of France, Italy, or England, no one would use that kind of euphemism. They would just say the name of the country, without the numbing territorial qualifiers. We'd clearly say: “France is under attack.” Period. But when it's Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, or Syria, we hear about “zones,” “disputed borders,” “sensitive territories,” as if these peoples had no bodies, no land, no history.

Saying “southern Lebanon” as if it were a detached, amorphous zone without sovereignty is a sneaky way of depoliticizing an occupation. As if it weren't Lebanon being attacked, but some kind of no man's land, a vague in-between, unstable and prone to “tensions.

It's a form of internalized colonial cartography, reactivated in every news report. Space is segmented to dilute responsibility. Countries of the Global South are broken into fragments to more easily deny their right to wholeness.