Beaufort Castle<\/a> and part of the higher ground overlooking much of southern Lebanon and northern Israel.<\/p>\nAccording to Mohanad Hage Ali, of the Carnegie Middle East Centre, Israel\u2019s success has partly been down to technological superiority but also due to the complete absence of \u201cinhibition\u201d in their assaults upon Lebanese towns and villages, which have often accrued daily casualty rates of dozens of people.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere aren\u2019t any consequences to their actions,\u201d he said. \u201cThey can demolish entire villages and wipe out whole societies in a way they could never do before. It\u2019s ethnic cleansing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Politics of resistance<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Israeli \u2018operational control\u2019 over the ridge is no doubt a tactical, even strategic, gain, enabling Israel a better control over southern Lebanon,\u201d said Ahron Bregman, an Israeli security analyst and senior teaching fellow at King\u2019s College London. \u201cFrom an Israeli perspective, it is a way to put pressure on the Lebanese government: Tackle Hezbollah head-on, or we stay here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nicholas Blanford, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and an authority on the group, said Hezbollah\u2019s lack of comment on the Israeli claims raised a number of questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could be that a deal\u2019s been done. It could be that Israel is exaggerating what it means by \u2018operational control\u2019,\u201d he said, noting that neither the extent of Israel\u2019s military control over the ridge, nor the infrastructure contained within it, is known.<\/p>\n
![\"Defence](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/AFP__20241110__36M39P9__v2__HighRes__IsraelPolitics-1756974286.jpg\")
Defence Minister Israel Katz, who faces re-election later this year, has threatened to \u201creturn Iran to the Stone Age\u201d if it responds to Israel\u2019s latest attacks in southern Lebanon. [File: Menahem Kahana\/AFP]<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we do know is that Hezbollah appears ready to get back into the resistance business, but no longer seems to be making the decisions,\u201d he said. \u201cThose are coming from Iran, who appear to want to keep things quiet for now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Analysts also suggested that a lack of a response from Tehran may frustrate Netanyahu, who has invested much of his electoral stock in finishing the war with Iran, an opponent he has characterised as posing an existential threat to the country since at least the early 1990s.<\/p>\n
Katz has described an attack against Israel as freeing its military \u201cfrom all constraints\u201d, and that in such a scenario, the military would \u201cstrike all infrastructure \u2013 including energy infrastructure \u2013 and return Iran to the Stone Age and darkness\u201d, all of which would almost certainly constitute war crimes.<\/p>\n
However, how far Israel \u2013 diplomatically, economically and militarily dependent upon the US \u2013 can proceed beyond rhetoric is open to question.<\/p>\n
With Netanyahu predicted to struggle in October\u2019s elections, what happens in southern Lebanon may prove crucial.<\/p>\n
\u201cWill Iran come to Hezbollah\u2019s aid?\u201d Bregman asked. \u201cOne person for sure \u2013 a certain Benjamin Netanyahu prays that they do \u2013 as it could even postpone the forthcoming elections in Israel in which, if judged by current polls, he will be defeated.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel this week has claimed to have established operational control over the strategically vital Ali al-Taher ridge in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1002802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[4783,83,99,18299,13192,3097,50,272944],"class_list":["post-1045356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-hezbollah","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-israel-attacks-lebanon","tag-lebanon","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-us-israel-war-on-iran"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117219712716082308","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1045356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1002802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1045356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1045356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1045356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}