The Return to Beaufort: Israel Captures the Crusader Castle in Its Deepest Lebanon Incursion in 26 Years
Beaufort Castle, Southern Lebanon — On Sunday, Israeli forces captured the 900-year-old Beaufort Castle, a Crusader fortress perched on a rocky spur 717 meters above the Litani River valley. The last time Israel held this ridge was the night of May 23, 2000, when the final Israeli soldiers slipped away in darkness, ending eighteen years of occupation in southern Lebanon. Twenty-six years later, they are back.
The castle—known in Arabic as Qal’at al-Shaqif, “the Castle of the High Rock”—stands on a sheer cliff that drops 300 meters to the Litani below. From its ramparts, one can see the whole of the Upper Galilee in northern Israel and deep into southern Lebanon. The ridge commands the roads to Nabatieh, the region’s fifth-largest city, and overlooks the Wadi Saluki, a valley that became a graveyard for Israeli armor in the 2006 war. To hold Beaufort is to hold the keys to the south.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed the capture on social media, posting a photograph of an Israeli flag raised over the castle walls. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared it a “dramatic shift” in Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah. “Today, we have returned to Beaufort,” he said. “United, determined, and stronger than ever.”
What Happened
The capture of Beaufort did not happen in isolation. It is the culmination of an expanding ground operation that the Israel Defense Forces launched several days ago, focused on the Beaufort Ridge and the Wadi Saluki area. The IDF says the operation was approved by Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir and is aimed at dismantling what it describes as “significant Hezbollah infrastructure built under Iranian guidance.”
The military’s Arabic spokesman, Avichay Adraee, issued new mass displacement orders for towns and villages across southern Lebanon, expanding the evacuation zone beyond the Litani River. The IDF has effectively declared the entire region below the Zahrani River a combat zone. Residents of Nabatieh and Tyre have been told to leave. The scale is staggering: since the war began in March, more than 1.2 million people have been displaced from southern Lebanon, according to figures from the Lebanese government and the United Nations.
The fighting that preceded the capture was heavy. Hezbollah launched one of its most intense barrages of rockets and drones toward northern Israel on Saturday, closing schools and restricting movement in Israeli border communities. An Israeli soldier was killed and four others wounded by a Hezbollah explosive drone strike in southern Lebanon on the same day the castle fell.
Why It Matters
The strategic value of Beaufort Castle is not romantic—it is brutally practical. From this ridge, one can direct artillery fire across the entire border region. The castle’s elevation gives its occupiers visual control of the Litani crossing points, the main north-south highway through southern Lebanon, and the approaches to Nabatieh. In the 1982 war, the Palestine Liberation Organization used the castle to spot for mortar and Katyusha rocket attacks on Israeli communities in the Galilee. Israeli artillery shelled the fortress repeatedly but could not dislodge the PLO because the castle’s basalt walls, nearly a meter thick in places, absorbed the bombardment.
The capture of Beaufort also means Israeli forces have crossed the Litani River in strength. The Litani has served as a de facto red line since the 2006 war, when United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 called for the area between the river and the Israeli border to be free of armed personnel except for the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers. That resolution has been a dead letter for years—Hezbollah rebuilt its presence south of the Litani and beyond. But an Israeli ground crossing of the river at brigade strength is a different matter. It is the deepest penetration of Lebanese territory since 2000, and it signals that Israel is no longer content to operate within the narrow strip along the border.
The Beaufort Ridge also controls the Wadi Saluki, a valley that was the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting of the 2006 war, when Hezbollah ambushed an Israeli armored brigade attempting to cross it. The IDF’s decision to target this area now suggests a determination to clear the ground that has historically favored the guerrilla.
The Other Side
Hezbollah has not been silent. The group claimed responsibility for the drone strike that killed the Israeli soldier and continued to fire rockets toward Kiryat Shmona, Safed, and other northern Israeli communities. In a statement, Hezbollah said its fighters had clashed with Israeli forces in towns north of the Litani River, though the group did not confirm the loss of Beaufort Castle.
The Lebanese government, which has been largely sidelined by the war, condemned the Israeli advance. Prime Minister Najib Mikati described the offensive as a “dangerous escalation” and called for an immediate ceasefire. But the Lebanese state exercises little authority over the south, which Hezbollah has controlled militarily for decades. The irony is that Israel and Lebanon are scheduled to hold peace talks in Washington this week, with delegations from both countries set to meet under American mediation. The capture of Beaufort Castle makes those talks look less like diplomacy and more like an attempt to negotiate from a position of maximum force.
The civilian cost is mounting. More than 3,100 people have been killed in Lebanon since the war began, according to the Lebanese health ministry. The city of Tyre, a UNESCO World Heritage site in its own right, has been heavily bombarded. Shelters in Sidon are full. The road north to Beirut is crowded with families who have fled with little more than the clothes on their backs.
Context
Beaufort Castle has been a theater of violence for centuries. The Crusaders first built the fortress in the 12th century to control the Muslim caravans and armies moving between Damascus and the coast. Saladin besieged it and took it in 1190. The Mamluks captured it later. In the 20th century, the castle found new strategic relevance: it sits on what was once the boundary between French-mandated Lebanon and British-mandated Palestine.
In 1982, Israel captured Beaufort in one of the bloodiest battles of the First Lebanon War. The Golani Brigade’s elite reconnaissance unit assaulted the castle at night, climbing the steep, winding approach under fire. Six Israeli soldiers were killed, and the battle entered Israeli military lore as both a triumph and a tragedy. When Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon visited the site the next day, they did not know of the casualties—Sharon had not bothered to ask.
Israel held Beaufort for the next eighteen years, turning the castle into a military outpost with observation posts, bunkers, and a helicopter landing pad. It was the last position Israel evacuated in May 2000, when Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered the unilateral withdrawal from the south Lebanon security zone. Hezbollah fighters overran the abandoned positions within hours, planting their yellow flags on the castle battlements. The image of an Israeli soldier lowering the flag at Beaufort became the symbol of an inglorious retreat.
The current war began on March 2, 2026, when Hezbollah opened a front against Israel in support of Iran, firing rockets and drones across the border days after the US-Israeli campaign against Iran began. Israel responded with airstrikes and, by mid-March, ground incursions. An April ceasefire held briefly but collapsed as both sides accused each other of violations.
In 2024, during an earlier round of fighting, UNESCO granted Beaufort Castle “provisional enhanced protection” as one of 34 cultural heritage sites in Lebanon. The designation was meant to shield the castle from military use and bombardment. In the 2026 war, Israeli strikes have already damaged the castle’s remaining structure, and the current ground occupation places the site directly in the combat zone. Whether UNESCO protection can survive an Israeli flag flying from the ramparts is an open question.
Bottom Line
Beaufort Castle is not a decisive objective in any conventional military sense. It is a ridge with a medieval ruin on top, and modern warfare does not turn on the possession of stone fortresses. But Beaufort is a symbol, and symbols matter in this war.
For Israel, holding Beaufort means returning to a piece of ground that carries immense emotional weight in the national memory—a place of heroism and loss, occupation and withdrawal. It allows Netanyahu to project strength at a moment when his campaign against Hezbollah has expanded beyond anything previously attempted since 2000. It tells the Israeli public that the military is winning.
For Hezbollah, the loss of Beaufort is a propaganda wound. The group built its legitimacy on the 2000 withdrawal, which it claimed as a victory for armed resistance. The image of Hezbollah fighters on the castle walls was a staple of its iconography. Now Israeli soldiers occupy the same ground. The narrative of victory has been inverted.
For southern Lebanon, the capture of Beaufort means the war is not winding down—it is expanding. Israeli forces are north of the Litani, displacement orders cover more than a tenth of the country’s territory, and the peace talks in Washington have not stopped the bombing. The castle, which has witnessed so many invasions in its nine centuries, is watching another one.
The question now is whether Israel intends to hold Beaufort as a permanent outpost, the way it did from 1982 to 2000, or whether this is a tactical operation aimed at degrading Hezbollah before a negotiated withdrawal. The answer will determine whether this incursion is a new occupation or a deep raid. For the people of southern Lebanon, who have seen their homes shattered and their families scattered, the distinction may not matter much.
The castle sits on its cliff, looking south toward Israel and north toward Nabatieh. It has been captured by Crusaders, retaken by Muslims, bombed by Israelis, and occupied by Palestinians. Now it belongs to the IDF again. Whether the pattern holds—that every occupier of Beaufort eventually leaves—is a question for another day.