By Angus McDowall and Benjamin Raab
JERUSALEM/BEIRUT, June 1 (Reuters) - The medieval Beaufort Castle's stone ramparts tower so far above south Lebanon that Israel could hail their capture as a strategic victory, even as it evoked the miseries of a previous occupation.
When Israeli forces entered the 900-year-old castle on Saturday, they were returning to a fortress they held throughout their 1982-2000 presence in southern Lebanon, a campaign that years of Hezbollah attacks ultimately drove them to end.
Now at war once more with the Iran-backed Shi'ite group, Israel returns to the Crusader-built stronghold - a UNESCO-registered cultural site - in a campaign that has devastated the surrounding country, driving hundreds of thousands from their homes.
CRUSADERS, SALADIN, PLO, ISRAEL AND HEZBOLLAH WERE HERE
The return was hailed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has faced internal criticism for his handling of the wars in Lebanon and Iran.
"I remind you that, 44 years ago, this place was a symbol of a heroic battle by our fighters, but it was also a symbol of deep division among us," he said.
"Today, we returned to Beaufort differently. We returned united, determined, and stronger than ever."
Hezbollah said it had not had a military presence in the castle when Israeli troops entered, but that fighting in the surrounding area continued.
Perched high above the Litani River, commanding views across to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights 10 km (6 miles) to the east and the Mediterranean 25 km to the west, Beaufort has long been the region's strategic keystone.
Built by a Crusader ruler in the 12th century atop earlier fortifications, the castle was captured by the great Muslim warrior Saladin and later held by the crusading Knights Templar and Egypt's powerful Mamluk dynasty.
Despite the tactical changes drone warfare has wrought on the 21st-century battlefield, Beaufort's military value remains, said independent Middle East security analyst Riad Kahwaji.
"The site for the castle was chosen because of its significant strategic location. The significance has not declined with time. It's still important, especially in ground operations," he said.
By modern times, Beaufort was a picturesque ruin, but as Lebanon sank into civil war after 1975, Palestine Liberation Organisation fighters appropriated it as a base in their guerrilla campaign against Israel.
When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, marching as far north as Beirut, it seized the castle as a centre of its own operations in the south, where the population is majority Shi'ite Muslim.
The castle walls still bear the scars of fighting from Israeli strikes on the PLO base there in the 1970s and Hezbollah attacks on the Israeli garrison in the 1980s and 1990s.
For many Lebanese, Beaufort came to symbolise that occupation, Israel's flag constantly visible atop one of the region's most prominent hills with its soldiers looking down.
"The fact that they're back now in Beaufort I think is reminiscent of that era and that level of control over people's lives," said Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director for research at the Carnegie Middle East Center.
"It's an occupation that you can see."
CASTLE A SYMBOL FOR HEZBOLLAH, TOO
When Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, worn down by years of fighting, the yellow flag fluttering from the battlements became a focus of Hezbollah's message of triumph.
As a result, Beaufort evokes mixed feelings among Israelis.
"It was a symbol for heroism," said Danny Orbach, a military historian at Israel's Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
"But it was also a symbol in the eyes of many of the futility of war; the narrative that Israel has nothing to do with Lebanon."
But since Israel's military hammered Hezbollah in 2024 and seized swathes of Lebanon this year, that perception may be changing.
"Israel occupying Beaufort is actually telling Hezbollah and the world: we overcame the trauma. We're not afraid anymore," Orbach said.
Israel and Hezbollah fought another brief war in 2006 but in the years afterwards, Beaufort was largely abandoned as a military site, and carefully restored as a tourist attraction.
The U.N. cultural agency UNESCO, of which Israel is not a member, calls it one of the best-preserved medieval castles in the Middle East and this year added it to a special list for enhanced protection in the conflict.
(Reporting by Benjamin Raab in Jerusalem and Tom Perry in Beirut; Writing by Angus McDowall)
