The raising of an Israeli flag above the historic Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon carries major military and strategic significance. But for many Lebanese and Israelis alike, it also revives painful memories of past wars.
The fortress, known in Arabic as Qalaat al-Shaqif, overlooks vast stretches of southern Lebanon and northern Israel from a steep hill near the Lebanese town of Arnoun. Historians differ on when it was first built — some estimates place it at more than 1,000 years old — but the Crusaders expanded and fortified the site during their campaigns in the region.
Today, the castle offers a commanding view of Israel’s northern border town of Metula on one side and the Lebanese city of Nabatieh and its surroundings on the other, underscoring its long-standing strategic importance.
But the castle occupies more than a geographic high ground. In both Lebanese and Israeli memory, Beaufort has become deeply tied to decades of conflict, occupation and withdrawal.
Mohannad Hage Ali, deputy director of research at the Carnegie Middle East Center, told Reuters the site remains “a symbol of the Israeli occupation” for residents of southern Lebanon, particularly those from the Nabatieh area.
“It represents Israeli superiority and the control that was exercised over the people of the south during the occupation years,” he said. Hage Ali warned that Israel’s renewed occupation of the fortress could signal “a return to controlling people’s lives in that region.”
In Israeli memory, the castle is also linked to a traumatic chapter. The 2007 Israeli film Beaufort — named after the fortress’s French title meaning “beautiful fortress” — follows a group of young Israeli soldiers stationed inside the castle in 2000 as they come under repeated attacks from Hezbollah shortly before Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
According to a New York Times review of the film, the mounting casualties leave the soldiers not only frightened and angry, but also increasingly confused, prompting them to ask difficult questions: why had the Israeli army held Beaufort for so long, and why had it captured it in the first place?
The newspaper said the film captured the final stage before Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, when Hezbollah intensified its attacks in an effort to portray the long-planned Israeli pullout as a retreat under fire.
Danny Orbach, an Israeli military historian, told Reuters the fortress had become “a symbol of heroism,” but also, for many Israelis, “a symbol of the futility of war.”
“The narrative that Israel had nothing to do in Lebanon, that Lebanon was a mud pit and that Israel needed to withdraw and somehow coexist with Hezbollah, became symbolically associated with the castle,” he said.
Palestinian fighters began using the fortress in 1967 after the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War. It later became a fortified base for Fatah fighters and other armed groups.
During Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Palestinian fighters waged a fierce battle to defend the site, but Israeli forces ultimately captured it. Given the castle’s strategic and symbolic importance, then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin visited the site alongside Defense Minister Ariel Sharon.
After Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, the fortress was abandoned as a military position and later restored by the Lebanese state as a tourist landmark.
UNESCO describes Beaufort as one of the best-preserved medieval fortresses in the Middle East. Earlier this year, the agency added the site to a special list for enhanced protection amid the ongoing conflict surrounding it.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
Rami Al Amine
Rami Al-Amin is a Lebanese writer and correspondent for MBN covering political, social and cultural developments across the Middle East. He produces and presents the satirical critique segment Bitter Sweet, which examines current events through a critical lens. He holds a master’s degree in Islamic-Christian Relations from Saint Joseph University in Beirut. He is the author of Ya Ali, We Are No Longer the People of the South, a political booklet on Hezbollah, and The Two Mourners, a book on the history of Beirut’s Martyrs’ Statue.
