Israeli Soldiers Use Seized Lebanese House as Polling Station in Occupied Village

Footage filmed from a distance and circulated by Lebanese media appears to show Israeli soldiers using a house in Zawtar al-Sharqiya, a village in occupied southern Lebanon, as a polling station for Israel's 27 October parliamentary election.

Israeli media, including Haaretz and the Times of Israel, have separately confirmed that soldiers stationed in occupied Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian territory began voting on Wednesday. Lebanese outlets reported troops casting ballots at positions stretching from Naqoura to Zawtar al-Sharqiya.

The military has established roughly 850 polling stations for personnel deployed beyond Israel's borders, according to Israeli press reports, including 40 sites inside Gaza, multiple positions across southern Lebanon, and nine outposts in southwestern Syria. An estimated 3,000 soldiers have been assigned to run the operation, which began this week and continues through election day.

"Our mission is to enable all IDF service members to exercise their democratic right to a secret ballot, including during operational activities and combat beyond the border," Colonel Vered Ben Yehuda, who oversees the military's election preparations, told the Times of Israel.

The statement describes a domestic democratic process. The territory it is occurring on is not domestic. Israel has maintained forces in parts of southern Lebanon since its October 2024 invasion and expanded that presence into a declared "security zone" in March, a period in which dozens of Lebanese towns and villages have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Lebanese civilians remain unable to return home. Lebanon itself has postponed its own parliamentary elections because of the war's devastation.

Other videos have surfaced in recent weeks of Israeli soldiers filming themselves destroying Lebanese property, including one that circulated Tuesday showing troops at an undisclosed southern Lebanon location boasting as they rigged a house with explosives. Beirut has repeatedly demanded Israeli withdrawal from the south; Israeli officials have said forces will stay.

The same voting apparatus extends into Syria, where Israeli troops seized territory including the Syrian side of Mount Hermon after the fall of the Assad government in December 2024, in addition to the Golan Heights it has occupied and annexed in violation of international law since 1967. In Gaza, where Israeli forces hold roughly 70 percent of the territory after three years of war that has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, the military has set up 40 polling outposts for deployed soldiers.

The arrangement means a civilian home in an occupied Lebanese village was converted, however briefly, into infrastructure for the political system of the country occupying it.