Israel Seizes Beaufort Castle in Deepest Lebanon Push

For the first time since its soldiers marched out in 2000, the flag of the State of Israel flies again over Beaufort Castle. On Sunday, May 31, troops from the Golani Brigade scaled the steep ridge above the Litani River and raised their colors over the Crusader-era fortress that crowns the heights near Nabatieh, a high-ground prize that has changed hands across nine centuries of war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the capture a "dramatic turning point" in Israel's campaign against Hezbollah, declaring that the country had "returned to Beaufort stronger than ever." The seizure marks the deepest Israeli advance into Lebanon in nearly three decades and points toward an occupation that defense officials now describe in terms of years, not weeks.

A Fortress Taken at the Summit

The fight for the castle had been building for days. Israeli aircraft and artillery pounded the mountain through the weekend as ground forces battled Hezbollah fighters in the villages ringing the city of Nabatieh, roughly nine miles, or about 14.5 kilometers, north of the Israeli border. By Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces said its soldiers had cleared the slopes and consolidated control of the summit and an adjacent strategic ridge.

"Our brave fighters captured the Beaufort outpost," Netanyahu said. "They proudly raised the flag of the State of Israel and the flag of the Golani Brigade there." Defense Minister Israel Katz went further, announcing that Israeli troops would not be leaving. Beaufort, he said, would remain garrisoned as part of a permanent security zone the military intends to hold across southern Lebanon. The IDF reported that a soldier was killed in a Hezbollah drone strike during the broader operation, a reminder that the high ground was not taken without cost.

Why Beaufort Matters

To understand why a pile of medieval stone draws armies, one need only stand on its ramparts. Beaufort, known in Arabic as Qalaat al-Shqif and to the Crusaders as the "beautiful fortress," sits atop a sheer 300-meter cliff that drops to the Litani gorge below, commanding a panorama from the river valley to the foothills of the Galilee. King Fulk of Jerusalem took the site around 1139, Saladin seized it after a long siege in 1190, and the Mamluk sultan Baibars captured it for Islamic forces in 1268. Whoever holds the summit can see, and shell, for miles.

That logic has not changed. During the Lebanese Civil War, the Palestine Liberation Organization used Beaufort as a platform to fire on northern Israel. The IDF stormed it in June 1982 during Operation Peace for Galilee, in a costly battle that became part of Israeli military lore, and held the position as a forward base until the unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, demolishing its installations as it left. UNESCO has called Beaufort one of the best-preserved medieval castles in the Near East and granted it provisional enhanced protection in late 2024. Its recapture, twenty-six years after the last Israeli soldier left, carries a weight that is both strategic and deeply symbolic.

A War Born From the Strike on Iran

The fall of Beaufort is the sharpest escalation yet in a war that erupted this spring. On February 28, Israel and the United States launched strikes against Iran, Hezbollah's principal patron, killing supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Two days later, on March 2, Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel, and the long-simmering frontier exploded into open conflict.

What began as cross-border fire has since become one of the largest Israeli ground operations in Lebanon in a generation. Multiple divisions pushed north, and by late May Israeli forces had crossed the Litani River, the line that under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 was meant to mark the boundary behind which Hezbollah's fighters would withdraw. Israel now controls roughly 2,000 square kilometers of Lebanese territory, close to one-fifth of the country. An April ceasefire meant to halt the fighting collapsed as Netanyahu ordered the military to expand its ground maneuver, and the seizure of Beaufort has now turned a contested river line into a fortified front.

Villages Emptied, More Than a Million Displaced

For the people of southern Lebanon, the offensive has meant catastrophe. Israeli attacks and demolitions have leveled entire villages, and more than 1.2 million people have been driven from their homes. Even as troops took the castle, the military issued fresh evacuation orders for communities across the south, sending new columns of cars north on roads already cut by airstrikes and bridge demolitions.

Katz has vowed to raze villages along the border and destroy the crossings over the Litani, and Israeli forces have already brought down the main Qasmiyeh Bridge. The agricultural terraces and tobacco fields that ring Beaufort, long a fragile lifeline for the area's farmers, now sit inside an active military zone with no timetable for return. The castle that has watched over the valley since the age of the Crusaders once again overlooks an exodus.

Beirut Protests, Paris Condemns, Capitals Watch

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam denounced the offensive as a "dangerous and unprecedented" escalation and demanded an immediate ceasefire, calling on the international community to halt what Beirut casts as a flagrant violation of its sovereignty and of Resolution 1701. France issued a strong condemnation of the castle's seizure, and warnings against a wider regional war echoed from Western and Arab capitals alike.

The timing has unsettled diplomats. The capture came only days after Lebanese and Israeli military officials held their first direct talks in decades at the Pentagon, a fragile opening that the offensive now threatens to slam shut. UNIFIL, the long-stretched peacekeeping force whose mandate covers exactly this stretch of border, has again found itself a bystander to the unraveling of the very line it was meant to monitor.

For now, Israeli soldiers hold the summit where Crusaders, Palestinian fighters, and earlier generations of their own army once stood. With Katz pledging an indefinite presence and Netanyahu casting the conquest as a turning point, the question hanging over the Litani is no longer whether Israel will leave, but how long it intends to stay. The fortress has fallen before and been given back. This time, its new occupiers say, they have no plans to come down.