Arnoun, Lebanon
“Until we see signs of the Lebanese Army coming to disarm them, we’re keeping the knife to Hezbollah’s neck,” an officer of the Israel Defense Forces’ 36th Armored Division said. We were speaking last week at Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon, where the division is deployed. The 36th conquered this ground in May from the Iranian proxy Shiite Islamist organization in a large-scale operation. The flag of the Golani infantry Brigade, a ground combat component of the division, now flies over Beaufort’s 12th-century tower.
The 36th Division’s maneuver was one of the IDF’s most complex ground operations in recent years. It involved capturing and destroying a complex system of tunnels, built on Hezbollah’s behalf and at Iran’s behest by North Korean engineers over the past decade.