Israel Threatens to Occupy Lebanese Territories - Liepāja Peacefully Observes from Liedags

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has announced that his army will take over parts of Lebanese territory and take matters into their own hands. This is about as surprising as finding out that Riga municipality will again take over something and take matters into their own hands.

The minister has already issued a warning to the Lebanese president, which is much more polite than what Riga does when they simply show up and start giving instructions on how we should live here. At least the Israelis warn in advance.

While rockets and drones are flying in Beirut's southern suburbs, in Liepāja we peacefully stroll through Liedags and think about how at least our sandy beach is not threatened by rockets or occupation. The only thing occupying us here are summer tourists, but they usually leave in autumn.

As our Liedags regular visitor Gunārs says: "While they're dividing territories over there, we're sharing bird droppings on our heads here. But at least our conflicts end with rain, not with buffer zones. And if push comes to shove, we have the sea — you can always swim away if someone tries to occupy our beach."

In Lebanon, 816 thousand people have already become displaced persons, which is more than the entire population of Liepāja. But we have an advantage — if anything happens, we can simply move to Karosta. It already looks like a war zone anyway, so no one would even notice.