Every Army Wants That Hill

When the Israeli forces pulled out of Beaufort in May 2000, Hezbollah fighters climbed to the top and raised their flag, and within hours thousands of Lebanese civilians made the drive up to see it.

Not because they all supported Hezbollah, but because getting that castle back meant something.

Para muchos libaneses, el castillo es parte de su historia.

For many Lebanese, the castle is part of their history.

Es su patrimonio.

It is their heritage.

Heritage.

And now it's gone again, captured during a ground offensive that happened while a ceasefire was nominally in effect.

Both sides were violating that ceasefire, I should say, Hezbollah was firing rockets and drones into northern Israel at the same time.

But the optics of Israeli forces taking a medieval castle, a UNESCO-recognized site, in the middle of a supposed pause in fighting, those optics carry weight.

El castillo es muy viejo.

The castle is very old.

Tiene casi novecientos años.

It is almost nine hundred years old.

La guerra lo daña.

The war damages it.

That's something that gets almost no attention in the strategic coverage, the physical castle.

The stone walls, the Crusader-era towers, the archaeological layers underneath.

Every time this site becomes a military position, it takes damage.

The 1982 battle left marks that are still visible.

You cannot un-shell a twelfth-century wall.

En España también tenemos castillos con mucha historia.

In Spain we also have castles with a lot of history.

Pero no hay guerra allí ahora.

But there is no war there now.

You're thinking of the Alhambra, I imagine.

Granada, the Reconquista, centuries of Christian and Muslim culture layered into the same architecture.

There are parallels worth drawing here, because Beaufort is also a place where you can read competing civilizations in the stonework.

Sí, la Alhambra es diferente.

Yes, the Alhambra is different.

Nadie lucha por ella hoy.

Nobody fights over it today.

Beaufort, sí.

Beaufort, yes.

And that difference is the whole story, isn't it.

The Alhambra became a museum.

Beaufort became, and keeps becoming, a military objective.

Which raises a question I genuinely don't know the answer to: at what point does a place become too historically significant to be a military position?

Is there such a point?

No.

No.

En la guerra, el lugar más importante es el lugar más alto.

In war, the most important place is the highest place.

Siempre.

Always.

You're probably right about that.

The military logic doesn't pause for cultural heritage.

And yet there's a reason the international community has rules about this under the Hague Convention, the protection of cultural property in armed conflict.

Rules that are, let's be honest, honored more in the breach than the observance.

El Líbano tiene mucha historia.

Lebanon has a lot of history.

Los fenicios, los romanos, los cruzados.

The Phoenicians, the Romans, the Crusaders.

Todo está allí.

It's all there.

Which is part of what makes the ongoing destruction so particular.

Lebanon is one of the most archaeologically dense countries on earth.

You can't dig a foundation in Beirut without hitting a Roman column or a Phoenician jar.

The country sits at the crossroads of every major civilization that ever moved through the eastern Mediterranean.

Y Hezbolá usa esa historia también.

And Hezbollah uses that history too.

Dice que defiende el Líbano.

It says it defends Lebanon.

Pero hace daño al Líbano.

But it harms Lebanon.

That tension is everything.

Because in 2000 when Hezbollah claimed the liberation of Beaufort, many Lebanese who had no love for the organization still cheered, because it felt like sovereignty restored.

The castle was a vehicle for national feeling that Hezbollah was very skilled at channeling.

And now that same castle is gone again, and the question is what story gets told about why.

Los libaneses normales no quieren esta guerra.

Normal Lebanese people don't want this war.

Tienen miedo.

They are afraid.

Tienen problemas económicos.

They have economic problems.

Lebanon has been in economic collapse for five years.

The currency lost ninety percent of its value.

The banking sector froze people's savings.

The port of Beirut blew up.

And then this war started on top of all of that.

The civilians in the Nabatieh area, in the south, they have been displaced repeatedly.

Some of them are living in schools in Beirut.

The castle is a symbol, but the human cost underneath that symbol is staggering.

Y el castillo ya fue de muchos pueblos.

And the castle has already belonged to many peoples.

Los cruzados, los árabes, los turcos, los franceses.

The Crusaders, the Arabs, the Turks, the French.

The French, right, under the Mandate after the First World War.

And before that the Ottomans for four hundred years.

And before that the Mamluks, and the Crusaders twice actually, they lost it and won it back.

Every time the region changed hands, Beaufort was part of the transfer.

It's like the castle itself is a barometer for who controls the Levant.

Cada ejército dice que protege el lugar.

Every army says it protects the place.

Pero lo usa para la guerra.

But it uses it for war.

Every army says it protects the place.

That line should be carved into the gate.

It's true of almost every militarized heritage site I've ever seen.

¿Qué pasa ahora?

What happens now?

¿Israel queda allí?

Does Israel stay there?

¿O sale otra vez?

Or does it leave again?

That's the question.

In 1982 Israel stayed for eighteen years before withdrawing.

The presence radicalized a generation of Lebanese, contributed directly to Hezbollah's founding and growth.

There's an argument that occupying Beaufort and the surrounding territory creates more of the problem it's trying to solve.

Israeli strategists know this history.

The question is whether the immediate security calculus overrides it.

La historia del Líbano es muy triste.

The history of Lebanon is very sad.

Hay mucha guerra.

There is a lot of war.

Muy poco tiempo de paz.

Very little time of peace.

Fifteen years of civil war ending in 1990, the 2006 war with Israel, the Syrian spillover, the port explosion, the economic collapse, and now this.

Lebanese people my age have lived through all of it.

And yet there's something about Beirut, something about Lebanese culture, the food, the literature, the stubborn cosmopolitanism of the place, that has survived all of it.

That survival is itself remarkable.

Los libaneses son muy fuertes.

Lebanese people are very strong.

Tienen mucho orgullo de su cultura.

They have a lot of pride in their culture.

And that pride is bound up in places like Beaufort, which is why the capture matters beyond the military news cycle.

It will cycle out of the headlines by next week.

The castle will still be there, whoever's flag is flying from it, carrying all that weight.

Mira, usaste la palabra 'patrimonio' antes.

Look, you used the word 'patrimonio' before.

¿Sabes qué significa exactamente?

Do you know exactly what it means?

Heritage, I said heritage.

But now that you're asking, I'm second-guessing myself.

Patrimonio feels like it carries more weight than heritage does in English.

It feels like it's saying something about inheritance, something you receive from your ancestors.

Sí.

Yes.

Patrimonio viene de pater, padre en latín.

Patrimonio comes from pater, father in Latin.

Es la herencia del padre.

It is the inheritance of the father.

Es tuyo porque es de tu familia, de tu pueblo.

It is yours because it belongs to your family, your people.

So patrimonio cultural is not just heritage in the abstract, it's specifically what has been passed down.

What you are responsible to pass on in turn.

That changes how you think about destroying it.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Y 'patrimonio' no es solo para los edificios.

And 'patrimonio' is not only for buildings.

También es la música, la comida, las tradiciones.

It is also music, food, traditions.

So when people in Lebanon look at Beaufort Castle in enemy hands again, they are not just watching a military position change.

They are watching part of what they were supposed to hand to their children disappear.

That framing, patrimonio, makes the grief make a different kind of sense.

Sí.

Yes.

Y en España decimos también 'es nuestro patrimonio' cuando algo importante está en peligro.

And in Spain we also say 'it is our heritage' when something important is in danger.

Es una palabra con mucha fuerza.

It is a word with a lot of force.

Patrimonio.

I'll remember that one.

And given my track record with Spanish vocabulary, let's hope I never find a way to use it embarrassingly at a family dinner.

No hay problema.

No problem.

'Patrimonio' es más difícil de usar mal que 'embarazado'.

'Patrimonio' is harder to use badly than 'embarazado'.