Israel this week has claimed to have established operational control over the strategically vital Ali al-Taher ridge in southern Lebanon, after an extended operation against positions of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah. In a statement on Friday, Defence Minister Israel Katz claimed Israeli forces had driven Hezbollah fighters out of what he said was a network of tunnels under the contested highland, 15km (10 miles) from the border. However, hours before Katz’s comments, news agency reported that Iran had warned the United States last month that it would respond forcefully if Israeli attacks on the ridge, which rises 600 metres above sea level (1,970 feet), continued.
Israel and Hezbollah have been fighting, with varying levels of intensity, since October 2023. Israel has twice escalated the conflict – first in September 2024 and then in March this year, following the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran. Israel has been working to embed its occupation of southern Lebanon since the latest escalation, when it announced the creation of a “security” or “buffer” zone, which rights groups say has involved the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure – potentially a war crime – and is responsible for the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese.
Israeli strikes and ground operations around the Ali al-Taher ridge continued despite a ceasefire agreed in June, after Israel gained control of nearby Beaufort Castle and part of the higher ground overlooking much of southern Lebanon and northern Israel. According to Mohanad Hage Ali, of the Carnegie Middle East Centre, Israel’s success has partly been down to technological superiority but also due to the complete absence of “inhibition” in their assaults upon Lebanese towns and villages, which have often accrued daily casualty rates of dozens of people. It’s ethnic cleansing.” Pitched as a measure to protect citizens of northern Israel, who Israeli analysts such as Ori Goldberg described as being owed an electoral debt by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of crucial elections later this year, the occupation is also a means of exerting additional pressure on the government in Beirut.
It could be that Israel is exaggerating what it means by ‘operational control’,” he said, noting that neither the extent of Israel’s military control over the ridge, nor the infrastructure contained within it, is known. Katz has described an attack against Israel as freeing its military “from all constraints”, and that in such a scenario, the military would “strike all infrastructure – including energy infrastructure – and return Iran to the Stone Age and darkness”, all of which would almost certainly constitute war crimes. However, how far Israel – diplomatically, economically and militarily dependent upon the US – can proceed beyond rhetoric is open to question.
With Netanyahu predicted to struggle in October’s elections, what happens in southern Lebanon may prove crucial.
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