LONDON: A massive explosion tore through the strategic Ali Al-Taher ridge overlooking Nabatiyeh on Thursday night after the Israeli military detonated what it said was a Hezbollah underground complex extending for more than 2 kilometers beneath the heights.Lebanon’s National News Agency said the blast was felt across Nabatiyeh and surrounding areas. Israel said it had destroyed command centers, weapons stores, living quarters, rockets, missiles, drones and other military infrastructure and had achieved “operational control” of the ridge both above and below ground.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said the operation completed the consolidation of Israel’s self-declared security zone inside southern Lebanon.For residents of Nabatiyeh below, the destruction gave dramatic new urgency to a political argument that has been building for weeks: Who can actually protect the south?When Lebanese Army vehicles appeared in greater numbers on the streets of Nabatiyeh, residents welcomed the soldiers with flowers and handfuls of rice.
The army had not been absent from the southern Lebanese city, as a security source later stressed. But the enhanced deployment — and its unusual public reception — carried unmistakable political weight.For decades, Nabatiyeh has been synonymous with the influence of Hezbollah and the Amal Movement. Yet the soldiers arrived a day after more than 400 people signed an appeal demanding that the Lebanese state assume responsibility for the city’s security, deploy the army in and around it, and restore decisions of war and peace exclusively to legitimate institutions.Known as “Nabatiyeh 2,” as the second of such petitions, the appeal may not prove that Hezbollah’s southern heartland is turning decisively against the organization. Its significance lies somewhere subtler; it suggests that some southerners — long-cast as steadfast Hezbollah loyalists — are beginning to question not their hostility toward Israel, but whom they trust to protect them from it.Bahjat Mirza, a signatory whose family has been rooted in Nabatiyeh for generations, rejected accusations the initiative was politically motivated.“These appeals are coming from people of the land — people who are not politically inclined in any particular direction,” he told Arab News.“This appeal is not politically motivated. It is simply a civil appeal by Lebanese citizens to their government to deploy the army and official security forces on the ground. In my opinion, they should have been there since 1948, since 1969, since 1975.”Dr. Ali Hassan Wehbe, another supporter of the appeal, is a Lebanese dentist, political and social analyst and former parliamentary candidate who ran in the 2022 elections. His dental clinic in Nabatiyeh has been destroyed three times during successive conflicts — in the 2006 war, again in 2024 and most recently in 2026.He said the campaign was fundamentally about preventing Nabatiyeh from suffering still greater destruction.“The appeal is, first and foremost, about removing Israel’s pretext and saving Nabatiyeh,” Wehbe told Arab News, stressing that “Israel bears the primary responsibility for this destruction and this barbarity.”But he rejected suggestions that calling for state security forces amounted to betrayal.
“Has bringing the Lebanese Army and the Lebanese state into Nabatiyeh suddenly become forbidden? Has this become an act of treason against the country?” he said.“Which is preferable — for the Lebanese Army to enter, or, God forbid, for the Israeli army to enter? Of course, the Lebanese Army should enter. They are our sons.”The appeal explicitly holds Israel responsible for occupation, killing and destruction. But it also demands accountability from those who controlled security decisions and promised that their weapons could protect southern Lebanon.Without repeatedly naming Hezbollah, the target of that criticism is clear.Its most politically charged declaration is that Nabatiyeh must not become “a barricade for any axis” — a challenge to the city’s place in a regional confrontation closely linked to Iran. The appeal also rejects what it describes as the “duality of decision-making” inside Lebanon.This is not merely a request for more soldiers or better policing. It explicitly demands for the state to become the sole authority responsible for security, and for no armed party outside its institutions to determine when Lebanon goes to war.“Hezbollah’s position on this is irrelevant,” Mirza said. “Anybody’s position is irrelevant — even if the president of the country disagreed with us. We are asking the Lebanese state to protect its citizens.”Wehbe put it more starkly.“We are not a bargaining chip and we are not a negotiating card,” he said. “Nabatiyeh is the artery of the south. It is the heart of Jabal Amel.”For him, the conclusion is straightforward: “We have no alternative to the state.”The struggle over Ali Al-TaherThe immediate trigger for the second appeal was the clear and devastating fate of Ali Al-Taher, the strategic heights described as the “gateway to Nabatiyeh.”The petition argues that an opportunity existed to place the area under Lebanese Army control before Israel claimed operational control of it. For critics, the episode has produced a simple argument: Territory that was not handed to the Lebanese state ultimately fell under Israeli control.That argument acquired added force on Thursday when Israel detonated the underground complex beneath the ridge, after weeks of bombardment and ground operations. The blast was powerful enough to register as a magnitude-4.1 seismic event about 13 kilometers west-southwest of Nabatiyeh.
