Extracting commanders and clearing the subterranean fortresses

The IDF cleared the Ali al-Taher ridge after a summer of siege.

I'm Yoni.

And I'm Ari. This is another episode of All Fronts, a Daily Lion production, where we put a week of Israel's security into one picture.

We have a lot of ground to cover this week. We're looking at the clearing of the Ali al-Taher ridge, the extraction of the internal security chief, and the fight over who controls the West Bank outposts. And then, for our members, we go deep on INS Drakon and the shift in naval strike doctrine.

The military announced that the thirty-sixth division achieved operational control of the Ali al-Taher ridge, both above and below ground. The IDF says that underground complex was built over two decades with Iranian funding.

It's a six-hundred-meter-high ridge overlooking Nabatieh and the surrounding valleys. Historically, Ali al-Taher's been a critical vantage point for controlling the Litani River approaches, making it a focal point in previous Lebanon conflicts.

Taking it this time required a summer of siege. The army ran loudspeakers and shot down relief drones until the fighters trapped below finally broke. Meanwhile, on a separate diplomatic track, Israeli authorities released four Lebanese detainees as a confidence-building measure.

But the diplomatic track to secure the ridge itself failed completely. Back in March, the Lebanese Armed Forces commander effectively refused to coercively disarm Hezbollah. As we said last week, the pilot verification framework in southern Lebanon collapsed precisely because the LAF wouldn't act. Hezbollah then rejected a proposal for the army to enter the site, suggesting they just deploy around it instead.

The diplomatic failure gave way to a psychological war over who was actually trapped down there. Reuters reported that Iran warned the United States through Oman in mid-August. The threat was a massive revenge attack if Israel assaulted the ridge, where regional officials say more than ten Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members are stationed.

Israel completely denies that. Defense sources say no Iranian advisors or IRGC personnel have been found there since the siege began.

One view from the center is that this is a psychological game. Israel chose a long, patient siege rather than a loud assault to avoid forcing Tehran into a direct response.

The writers we read this week agree the IDF took the complex after a prolonged siege.

Segal points out that the United States blinded Tehran in the strait. They have three options: a large response, a small one, or silence. By declining every chance to escalate and settling for an uneasy equilibrium, Iran's letting Israel dismantle Hezbollah's fortresses one by one.

But a column in The Soufan Center points out that the offensive actually jeopardizes the ceasefire efforts. The United States has pressured the Prime Minister to limit military operations against Hezbollah.

In their view, the fact that Iran didn't follow through on its threats to attack Israel suggests Tehran might still be open to diplomacy.

The siege worked because it avoided the red lines of a loud assault. The question it leaves open is whether neutralizing this one fortress actually stabilizes the buffer zone, or just pushes the Iranian threshold closer to breaking.

South of the border, the fighting's moved deep into Gaza City. This past week, an anti-Hamas militia drove an unmarked van into western Gaza.

And the forces walked out with Moain al-Arabid, the head of Hamas's internal security apparatus, the man responsible for hunting down collaborators and protecting the group's leadership.

When the firefight broke out, Israel called in about sixteen fighter jets flying at low altitude to cover the escape.

An eyewitness, Wafika al-Helou, says a jeep started firing indiscriminately in the street, and the Palestinian civil defense agency says four people were killed in the strikes, including three children and a woman.

The target himself is what Israeli security officials are calling an intelligence treasure. Benjamin Netanyahu says al-Arabid's the figure responsible for concealing and moving Israeli hostages, and for protecting senior Hamas officials.

Anonymous security sources in Gaza tried to play this down. They initially claimed the Israeli mission was thwarted, and that the forces just grabbed a security official who was present at the scene.

Except official Hamas publications named him head of internal security for Gaza City back in twenty fifteen.

What we know for sure is that Israeli forces successfully pulled a senior commander out of the Shati refugee camp. The disagreement is over what kind of war they're fighting now.

Amit Segal argues this raid shows Israel has established a new security regime in Gaza. And a senior security official says the battlefield is now a hunting ground.

As we discussed last month, the question was whether the army would preserve its static footprint on the perimeter or pivot to a mobile strike doctrine. Security officials say they're shifting to deep ground infiltrations inside Gaza City, but senior political officials insist they aren't returning to a broad ground offensive.

The counter-argument from Al-Monitor focuses on the civilian cost and a ceasefire that exists only on paper. The Palestinian health ministry reports that Israeli operations have killed at least thirteen hundred and twenty-six people since the ceasefire came into effect.

The diplomacy's completely stalled. The US-backed roadmap wants Hamas to disarm and the IDF to pull back, but Israel insists Hamas must fully disarm before the army cedes any territory.

So the plan's produced few concrete changes on the ground so far. And into that vacuum, you have National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. One view from the religious right notes that he intends to push forward a voluntary immigration plan for Gaza as his party's top priority.

The raid proves Israeli intelligence can reach deep into the Strip. What it leaves open is whether targeted extractions can actually dismantle the military wing before the diplomatic clock runs out.

The focus moves now to the West Bank, where the military's control over the territory is fracturing. You can see the escalation this week in two deadly clashes. A Palestinian stabbed a twenty-year-old Israeli at an outpost near Qusra, critically wounding him. The day before, Israeli settlers raided the Palestinian village of Hajja. The military says its troops fired warning shots into the air, followed by fire toward key instigators, and that troops shot dead a Palestinian during a village raid by settlers.

The defense minister's response treats this as a looming eastern front. Following the stabbing, Israel Katz instructed the military to target senior Palestinian Authority officials if they're found planning an October seventh-style assault.

Like we said last month, the settler siege at Qusra exposed a collapse in Central Command's authority. Now the numbers show how wide that collapse really is. Shin Bet data records that Jewish extremists carried out six hundred and sixty attacks against Palestinians during the first half of twenty twenty-six. The head of Central Command, Major General Avi Bluth, described extremist violence as organized and systematic. And the IDF Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, says these attacks cause extraordinary strategic damage.

That internal fight is happening under massive American pressure. The US ambassador, Mike Huckabee, warned publicly that this violence is damaging the image of Israel as a nation and a people. And that pressure forces the political echelon's hand: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the order to dismantle some of these outposts directly after pressure from Washington.

The security establishment's warning goes much further than international image. Area C is about sixty percent of the West Bank and sits under full Israeli military and civil control, which is why unauthorized outposts there directly challenge the army's administration. For the former officials in Commanders for Israel's Security, the government's measures threaten to bring about the collapse of the Palestinian Authority. That's the same authority whose security forces the IDF and Shin Bet credit with preventing terrorist attacks. These officials warn the policy is also causing a rupture between the Royal Palace and the Prime Minister's Office in Jordan, threatening the eastern border.

The right's argument takes those outposts and treats them as the security architecture itself. Hillel Frisch, writing in the Jerusalem Post, argues that widespread settlement is a strategic necessity. He points out that Nablus is thirty-five kilometers from the Israeli coast as the crow flies. In his view, protecting settlers means less sanctuary, less possibility of unhindered planning, training, and attacking for armed groups. He argues the moral obligation to protect settlers gives the officers and soldiers on patrol a moral imperative to operate in hostile areas.

The case for holding the E-one corridor outside Jerusalem runs on the exact same logic. The argument there is that October seventh fundamentally changed Israeli security doctrine. In this view, the corridor provides a vital route for rapidly moving troops, weapons, and supplies toward Israel's longest border, and giving it up invites armed groups to build right next to Israeli communities.

You can see that tension built right into the physical infrastructure. In the Jordan Valley, the army is constructing the new Scarlet Thread separation barrier. The official explanation for the land seizure orders says the project is meant to prevent weapons smuggling from the eastern border and thwart terror threats. But Oren Ziv, writing in Local Call, reports that the barrier will effectively annex tens of thousands of dunams of land, along with a hilltop outpost. For the head of the local Palestinian council, the security argument is just an excuse to take over agricultural lands.

The military's trapped in the gap between those two realities. It's tasked with securing an eastern border against genuine smuggling routes, using tools that the political echelon is actively turning into an annexation project.