The battle over Ali Al Taher Hill is emerging as a key flashpoint in southern Lebanon, with efforts underway to prevent it from triggering a wider confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah.
The ceasefire between the United States and Iran, which was agreed upon at the Islamabad platform, ended yesterday. It appears that both sides agree to extend it for another 60 days.
Once this development is finally confirmed, the relative calm in Lebanon resulting from the tripartite framework agreement between Lebanon, Israel, and the United States will not face a major shock leading to the outbreak of a wide scale war between Israel and Hezbollah.
It is in the Iranians’ interest to buy time and accumulate points in the confrontation with the United States, and to the same extent, it is in their interest in Lebanon to also buy time to rebuild Hezbollah’s military and security capabilities, in parallel with preserving the current military and security status quo.
This means resisting the decision to “confine weapons” adopted by the Lebanese state, and accusing the government decision to “ban security and military activities” of treason, thereby maintaining the status quo.
The above is Hezbollah’s task. As an Iranian arm in Lebanon, it needs to regain its strength, while at the same time continuing to withstand the superior Israeli war machine, even if it loses more of its members. More dangerously, the losses are not limited to its members, but extend to noncombatant civilians who are being sacrificed without any qualms.
We are convinced that the very tragic deaths of civilians are equally the responsibility of Hezbollah, which uses the civilian card without batting an eyelid, and Israel, which has decided to target combatants in various fields, even when they are among civilian populations.
Hezbollah’s current leaders, like those before them, do not hesitate to try to fill the public’s heads with illusions and myths, and even fabricated articles, such as the article that Sheikh Naim Qassem attributed days ago to an “Israeli philosopher and thinker” in which he supposedly criticized the Lebanese negotiating delegation in Washington. It turned out that neither the article nor the philosopher existed!
Even more significantly, Hezbollah, as our colleague Ali Al Amin said in a post two days ago on X , “is not concerned with the tens of thousands of war victims, the destruction of villages, or the displacement of hundreds of thousands.” He adds: “Its priority is Iran, not Lebanon. This is how it thinks, this is what it says, this is how it moves and operates. So expect more calamities in Jabal Amel and Lebanon.”
The battle for Ali Al Taher Hill will erupt soon, so it is very important that the Lebanese state make one final attempt to avoid it by pressuring Hezbollah to hand over Ali Al Taher to the legitimate authorities through the Lebanese Army, in exchange for a settlement providing for the evacuation of Hezbollah and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members trapped in the tunnels, under the protection of the Lebanese Army and with guarantees from the US Central Command. Otherwise, we are steadily heading toward a major battle. All the threats issued by Iran to preserve Hezbollah’s control over the aforementioned site will not succeed.
Meanwhile, we would like to recall the fact that Lebanon will experience neither peace nor prosperity nor security nor safety before Hezbollah’s weapons are disarmed and its military and security infrastructure dismantled, with the aim of ending its regional role and burying its local expansionist ambitions!
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Annahar.
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