The battle over a strategic hill in southern Lebanon is becoming a wider test of Hezbollah’s weapons, the Lebanese state’s authority, and the regional struggle involving Iran, Israel and the United States.
Ali al-Taher Hill is no longer merely a military point in southern Lebanon, nor simply a new position in the record of the confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel. What is happening around it carries a much greater meaning: it is a test of who holds the security and military decision-making power in Lebanon, who can impose the rules of the game after the war, and whether the issue of Hezbollah’s weapons will remain a Lebanese matter or return, once again, to the table of regional bargaining between Iran, the United States, and Israel. So, has the loss of Ali al-Taher to Israel become less costly for the party than handing it over to the Lebanese state?
The answer leans toward “yes.” For Hezbollah, the problem lies in the precedent that could be created by handing the hill over to the Lebanese Army. If Hezbollah can hand over a fortified military position north of the Litani to the state, then why not hand over other positions? Here lies the real danger.
Hezbollah can explain the loss of a position to Israel through the logic of war: an imbalance of power, the intensity of fire, air superiority, or even a tactical withdrawal. But it will have greater difficulty explaining the withdrawal from a military facility and voluntarily handing it over to the Lebanese Army.
In Hezbollah’s understanding, this would not be a military withdrawal; rather, it would be an implicit acknowledgment that the decision over weapons has effectively become in the hands of the state. From this perspective, the loss of the hill in a confrontation, even a bloody one, with Israel may appear less threatening to the party’s standing and future than handing it over to the Lebanese military institution.
At Iwo Jima, the Americans possessed overwhelming superiority in the air, at sea, and in firepower, but the Japanese built their defenses inside the ground: tunnels, caves, storage facilities, command centers, and interconnected positions beneath the island’s surface. Therefore, occupying the land above their heads did not mean that the battle was over. The U.S. Navy itself states that the Japanese established deep, fortified positions connected by extensive tunnel networks, and that a large number of them could not be destroyed by bombardment, but had to be stormed or have their entrances sealed from close range.
A photo from Shaqra, southern Lebanon, showing an Israeli military vehicle crossing the al-Salouqi Valley, August 21, 2026 (AFP).
The resemblance to Ali al-Taher is striking. The information circulating about the "Imad 4" facility, the tunnel networks, and the command centers beneath the heights has not been independently verified and should be treated with caution. But multiple Lebanese and Israeli sources agree that what lies beneath the hill is more important than what is above it, and that the fighting has partially shifted from an attempt to strike the facilities from the air to reaching them on the ground.
Israel’s announcement that it had taken control of the heights last June was also met with a denial from Hezbollah, which in itself reflects the problem of defining “control”: does it mean the summit? The entrances? Or the entire tunnel network? At Iwo Jima, something symbolically similar happened: the Americans raised the flag over Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945, but the battle on the island continued for more than a month, and Japanese fighters continued emerging from hidden positions and tunnels.
If the hill falls into Israeli hands after a fierce battle, the nature of the Lebanese debate will immediately change: how dare the “authorities” demand that Hezbollah disarm while Israel is advancing inside Lebanese territory? This is not a simple matter of propaganda. It is at the heart of the struggle over the legitimacy of weapons.
Hezbollah always needs three pillars to justify the continuation of its arsenal: the existence of an Israeli threat, the state’s inability to deter the threat, and the continuation of an occupation or aggression that can be presented as evidence of the need for “resistance.” Every new Israeli advance gives it a new opportunity to reproduce this equation, and to reinforce the demagoguery it builds before its constituency: the state is demanding that we give up our weapons while we are fighting, and it cannot prevent Israel from advancing. This narrative, regardless of how Lebanese people differ over its validity, is more useful to the party than another image in which it appears to be loving its surrounded elements on Ali al-Taher Hill.
Here too, one of the most complex paradoxes of the Lebanese-Israeli conflict emerges. There is no need to talk about any coordination between Israel and Hezbollah, as there is no evidence for such a claim. But one can speak of an objective convergence of political interests: Israel says that the continued presence of Hezbollah’s weapons justifies the continuation of its operations and military presence and pressure on Lebanon, while Hezbollah says that the continued Israeli presence and attacks justify its retention of weapons. In this sense, each side needs the other’s conduct in order to convince its audience that its strategy is correct.
Any bloody confrontation at Ali al-Taher is useful to Hezbollah in its confrontation with the Lebanese state, which is determined to disarm it. This is the most dangerous thing Beirut can face. Its current project is based on a simple idea: stop the war, extend the army’s authority, restrict weapons, and then demand that Israel withdraw and stop the attacks.
