{ "archive_path": "archive/1789034635.993948", "base_url": "www.middleeasteye.net/news/ali-al-taher-what-israels-operational-control-really-means-hezbollah-and-lebanon", "basename": "ali-al-taher-what-israels-operational-control-really-means-hezbollah-and-lebanon", "bookmarked_date": "2026-09-10 10:03", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/www.middleeasteye.net/news/ali-al-taher-what-israels-operational-control-really-means-hezbollah-and-lebanon", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.middleeasteye.net", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "www.middleeasteye.net/news/ali-al-taher-what-israels-operational-control-really-means-hezbollah-and-lebanon.html" }, "domain": "www.middleeasteye.net", "extension": "", "hash": "1WNKPHMWM9CQ71BBQRQ1", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.middleeasteye.net" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-10T16:28:55.481567+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789034635.993948", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-10T16:28:55.019617+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/ali-al-taher-what-israels-operational-control-really-means-hezbollah-and-lebanon" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-10T16:28:55.730519+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789034635.993948", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-10T16:28:55.490302+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/ali-al-taher-what-israels-operational-control-really-means-hezbollah-and-lebanon", "--format=text" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-09-10T16:29:19.517861+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "ArchiveError: Mercury was not able to get article text from the URL", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789034635.993948", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-10T16:29:02.413874+00:00", "status": "failed" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmpemamyfry", "https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/ali-al-taher-what-israels-operational-control-really-means-hezbollah-and-lebanon" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-09-10T16:29:02.401465+00:00", "index_texts": [ "For months, the south Lebanon hill of\u00a0Ali al-Taher was treated by Hezbollah as an exception to a strategy it had otherwise adopted since the beginning of the war with Israel on 2 March: avoid fighting to hold fixed geographical positions at all costs.\n\nThe shift reflected lessons drawn from the 2024 war, when Hezbollah's attempt to maintain front-line positions produced heavy casualties without preventing Israel from penetrating parts of southern Lebanon.\n\nAn official familiar with the group's thinking said that the experience, including the prolonged fighting around towns such as Khiam, pushed Hezbollah towards a more flexible guerrilla strategy, in which fighters would avoid being tied to territory and instead preserve their ability to operate after Israeli advances.\n\nEven Bint Jbeil\u00a0in April, long portrayed as the \u201cmother of all battles\u201d, was not regarded internally as a position that had to be held to the last fighter.\n\nAli al-Taher was different.\n New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch\n \n \n Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on\n Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters\n \n \n\nIn June, shortly before the ceasefire took effect, a Hezbollah official told Middle East Eye that the hill would be defended \u201cuntil the last man\u201d rather than surrendered.\n\nHe described the position as being of exceptional strategic importance, while stressing that \u201ctactics and strategy change according to the circumstances\u201d and that his comments reflected the conditions of the full-scale war then being fought.\n\nThe distinction is key to understanding what happened next.\n\nAli al-Taher is not simply another piece of high ground. The ridge overlooking Nabatieh and the Iqlim al-Tuffah area, roughly 15 kilometres from the Israeli border and rising to about 600 metres, commands important roads and approaches across southern Lebanon.\n\nThe ridge is suspected of containing Hezbollah underground command and weapons facilities, while Israeli forces have said they found underground routes and military infrastructure beneath it.\n\nPotential shift in the threat\u2019s direction\n\nAccording to the Hezbollah official, the strategic value of Ali al-Taher came from three interconnected factors: the underground facilities beneath the ridge, their links to other strategic underground positions, and the geographical advantage provided by the hill itself.\n\nIts loss last week,\u00a0he argued, would allow Israel to reverse the direction of the military threat: rather than Hezbollah using the territory north of the Litani river to threaten northern Israel, Israeli forces would gain a position from which they could exert pressure and surveillance over the Nabatieh and Iqlim al-Tuffah areas.\n\n\n \n\nIsraeli strikes kill 11 in southern Lebanese village, including two infants\n Read More \u00bb\n\n\nThat calculation explains why Hezbollah continued to fight around the ridge after the June ceasefire, even as it had largely moved away from defending fixed positions elsewhere.\n\nAli al-Taher remained the scene of daily Israeli strikes and Hezbollah drone attacks for weeks after the ceasefire, while the United States had proposed that Hezbollah hand the position over to the Lebanese army as part of a broader disarmament arrangement.\n\nThe battle subsequently became a prolonged contest of attrition.\n\nIsrael maintained aerial and operational surveillance over the ridge, repeatedly striking the area while gradually tightening pressure around the underground complex.\n\nIn August, Israeli officials were publicly discussing expanded air and ground operations around Ali al-Taher, with Israeli reporting claiming that Hezbollah fighters remained inside tunnels beneath the ridge.\n\nA strategic defeat for Hezbollah?\n\nYet, the Hezbollah official argues that the significance of the group\u2019s withdrawal cannot be reduced to Israel\u2019s claim that it now controls the hill.\n\n\u201cThe hill stood for nearly three months with total aerial and operational oversight from Israel, constantly bombarded, and yet our men stood their ground,\u201d he said.\n\n\n'The hill stood for nearly three months with total aerial and operational oversight from Israel, constantly bombarded, and yet our men stood their ground'\n\n-\u00a0Hezbollah official\n\n\nThe eventual decision to withdraw, he added, was a cost-benefit assessment, rather than an abandonment of the strategic importance of the position.\n\nThis distinction has become particularly relevant since Israel announced on 3 September that it had established \u201coperational control\u201d over Ali al-Taher.\n\nThe Israeli military said its forces had cleared Hezbollah fighters from two underground routes and established control both above and below ground.\n\nIsraeli Defence Minister Israel Katz subsequently presented the move as the consolidation of Israel's security zone in southern Lebanon.\n\nHowever, \u201coperational control\u201d is not necessarily synonymous with uncontested or permanent occupation.\n\nHezbollah has not officially commented on the claim, but members of the group denied it the following day, saying there was no Israeli military presence on the ridge and that its fighters remained deployed in the area and prepared to confront any attempt to advance.\n\nThe dispute over terminology therefore matters. Israel has demonstrated the ability to operate on and beneath the ridge, while Hezbollah is seeking to deny that this automatically translates into a decisive strategic defeat.\n\nWhat next?\n\nThe question now is what Israel does with that advantage.\n\nIsraeli officials have said they intend to remain in their security zone until Hezbollah is disarmed, turning Ali al-Taher into more than a battlefield achievement: it is now part of Israel's negotiating leverage over Lebanon.\n\nFor Hezbollah, meanwhile, the challenge is to absorb the loss of a strategically valuable position without allowing it to become a wider erosion of its military posture north of the Litani.\n\nThe party's response is likely to depend less on attempting to immediately retake the hill than on whether Israel can use it as a platform to penetrate or dominate the surrounding strategic terrain.\n\n\n \n\nIsraeli forces reportedly use phosphorus shells in attacks on southern Lebanon\n Read More \u00bb\n\n\nThe Hezbollah official stressed that Ali al-Taher remains overlooked by other strategic hills that the party controls, arguing that Israel's ability to enter the ridge and reverse the threat towards areas north of the Litani is \u201canother matter\u201d for both Hezbollah and Iran.\n\nThat points towards the central question of the next phase: does Ali al-Taher's loss remain a contained tactical setback, or does Israel turn control of the ridge into a broader military and political advantage?\n\nThe answer will depend on whether Israel can consolidate its positions, neutralise the underground infrastructure and use the ridge to constrain Hezbollah's freedom of movement, while Hezbollah attempts to demonstrate that its withdrawal from one strategic position does not amount to the collapse of its wider military network.\n\nRecent reporting already suggests that the contest has not ended with Israel's announcement.\n\nIsraeli strikes around Nabatieh have continued, while reports of Hezbollah attacks on Israeli forces in the area have persisted. In that sense, Ali al-Taher may ultimately prove less important for what happened on the hill than for what happens around it.\n\nIts \u201coperational control\u201d by Israel marks the end of a months-long battle over one of Hezbollah's most important fixed positions. But whether it marks a strategic defeat for Hezbollah, the beginning of a new Israeli push north of the Litani, or simply another stage in the transition from conventional front-line warfare to a more dispersed confrontation remains unresolved.\n\nThe hill has changed hands in the military sense claimed by Israel; the larger contest over the terrain, the underground network and the future security architecture of southern Lebanon has not." ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789034635.993948", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-10T16:29:00.502172+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/ali-al-taher-what-israels-operational-control-really-means-hezbollah-and-lebanon" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-10T16:29:00.493619+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "Ali al-Taher: What Israel\u2019s 'operational control' of the hill really means for Hezbollah and Lebanon | Middle East Eye", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789034635.993948", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-10T16:29:00.464320+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [ { "cmd": [ "wget", "--no-verbose", "--adjust-extension", "--convert-links", "--force-directories", "--backup-converted", "--span-hosts", "--no-parent", "-e", "robots=off", "--timeout=120", "--restrict-file-names=windows", "--warc-file=/data/archive/1789034635.993948/warc/1789057735", "--page-requisites", "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) wget/GNU Wget 1.21.3", "--compression=auto", "https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/ali-al-taher-what-israels-operational-control-really-means-hezbollah-and-lebanon" ], "cmd_version": "GNU Wget 1.21.3", "end_ts": "2026-09-10T16:29:00.454042+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "www.middleeasteye.net/news/ali-al-taher-what-israels-operational-control-really-means-hezbollah-and-lebanon.html", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789034635.993948", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-10T16:28:55.740335+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": null, "dom": null, "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": null, "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "Ali al-Taher: What Israel\u2019s 'operational control' of the hill really means for Hezbollah and Lebanon | Middle East Eye", "warc": null, "wget": "www.middleeasteye.net/news/ali-al-taher-what-israels-operational-control-really-means-hezbollah-and-lebanon.html" }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1789034635.993948", "newest_archive_date": "2026-09-10T16:29:02.413874+00:00", "num_failures": 1, "num_outputs": 5, "oldest_archive_date": "2026-09-10T16:28:55.019617+00:00", "path": "/news/ali-al-taher-what-israels-operational-control-really-means-hezbollah-and-lebanon", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_id": "d06ec000-9ec2-41d6-b785-22c247ad37e7", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1789034635-import.txt" ], "tags": ",pool,escalation,war-wiki", "tags_str": "pool,escalation,war-wiki", "timestamp": "1789034635.993948", "title": "Ali al-Taher: What Israel\u2019s 'operational control' of the hill really means for Hezbollah and Lebanon | Middle East Eye", "updated": "2026-09-10T16:28:55.019387+00:00", "updated_date": "2026-09-10 16:28", "url": "https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/ali-al-taher-what-israels-operational-control-really-means-hezbollah-and-lebanon" }