Back then, I was a soldier in the Givati Brigade. Later, year after year, I returned to the security zone as a reservist. For many younger Israelis today, Beaufort is just an old fortress somewhere in Lebanon. For my generation, it is something else. It is memory. It is history. It is tied to faces, to comrades who did not return.
Three of my friends fell there in southern Lebanon: Oren Kamil, Ronen Weiss and Alex Singer. Their names stand for 256 Israeli soldiers who lost their lives during the years of the Lebanon security zone. That is why the news that Israeli soldiers are once again standing on Beaufort today, 26 years after the withdrawal, is far more than a military update for me. It touches an open wound in Israeli history.
Because with the return to Beaufort, Israel is not merely returning to a strategic ridge. It is returning to a debate that has accompanied our country for decades: Can a withdrawal truly bring security when the other side does not understand it as...
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