• Netanyahu calls capture a ‘dramatic shift’ after forces raise Israeli flag at Beaufort castle for the first time since 1982
• UN Security Council to hold emergency meeting on Lebanon offensive at France’s request
• Hezbollah says it has targeted Israeli army positions, infrastructure
QLAYAA: As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to push deeper into Lebanon after the capture of Beaufort castle, calling it a “dramatic shift” in the fight against Hezbollah, France requested for an emergency session of UN Security Council on Monday over the offensive.
Hezbollah said on Sunday it targeted Israeli army positions and infrastructure in Shlomi and Nahariya in northern Israel, while air raid sirens blared in the Acre area.
A truce to halt the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began on April 17, but has never been observed.
Both sides accuse each other daily of violating the ceasefire and justify their attacks by the other’s alleged breaches.
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting Monday over Israel’s expansion of its offensive in Lebanon, diplomatic sources said.
The meeting was requested by France and will take place immediately after an emergency meeting over the crash of a Russian drone into a Romanian apartment building, which is scheduled for 1900 GMT (12am in Pakistan), the sources said.
Israeli forces used the Beaufort castle, also known as Qalaat al-Chakif, as a base during their previous two-decade occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in 2000.
In a video statement released hours after the military took Beaufort, Netanyahu said “we have returned united, determined and stronger than ever”.
He added, “Now my directive is to deepen and expand our hold in places that were under Hezbollah’s control. The capture of Beaufort is a dramatic stage and a dramatic shift in the policy we are leading.”
Shelling was audible and smoke rose from the surrounding area as an Israeli flag was seen above the castle.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said troops had captured the historic strongpoint, which commands sweeping views of south Lebanon, as they expanded their ground operations.
“Forty-four years after the heroic Battle of Beaufort, and on this day commemorating the soldiers who fell in the First Lebanon War (1982), our troops have returned to the summit of Beaufort and once again raised the Israeli flag there,” Katz said in a social media post.
‘We will return’
In a shelter for the displaced in Sidon, southern Lebanon’s largest city, Zeinab Fakih, from Nabatieh, told AFP that “of course we are afraid”.
“It is impossible for us to return to our home, because the city is in great destruction,” she said, adding that the arrival of Israeli forces at the castle was “tragic”.
Issa Tfaily, also displaced from Nabatieh, said: “We will return… if not today, then tomorrow, as long as there is resistance.”
The push to Beaufort came as the Israeli military issued a sweeping evacuation order to areas south of the Zahrani River, north of the Litani and around 40km from the border.
It said it was targeting “Hezbollah infrastructure in Tyre and several additional areas in southern Lebanon” as Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported a series of strikes in the area.
According to Unesco World Heritage Convention, Qalaat al-Chakif (Beaufort Castle) was originally built by the King of Jerusalem around 1137AD, with subsequent expansions and modifications by the Ayyubids, the Mamluks, and the local feudal governors of the Al Saabi family. Perched on a 300-metre-high cliff overlooking the Litani River, the castle’s altitude and line-of-sight view into Israeli territory meant Israel viewed it much like the Golan Heights after the 1967 war.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam had accused Israel on Saturday of pursuing a “scorched-earth policy and collective punishment” in the south, urging a halt to the fighting.
Military delegations from Lebanon and Israel held security talks in Washington on Friday, with more US-brokered negotiations planned next week.
The Israeli army said on Sunday that one of its soldiers had been killed a day earlier by a Hezbollah drone, bringing to 25 the number of Israeli military deaths in Lebanon since early March.
An Israeli strike near a hospital in Tyre wounded 13 staffers, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2026