Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said late Thursday that the IDF destroyed a Hezbollah tunnel system beneath Beaufort Ridge in southern Lebanon using 700 tons of explosives, according to Times of Israel. The two officials said the strike answered Hezbollah’s “blatant” ceasefire violation a day earlier, when the group hit an unmanned IDF bulldozer with an explosive drone. Israel had held the demolition in reserve since before the June truce, postponing it under the ceasefire framework, and carried it out once the drone strike gave grounds to proceed.
Netanyahu and Katz said the tunnel functioned as “a central part of the Hezbollah terror organization’s invasion plan against the Galilee communities.” The IDF said troops spent recent weeks securing the ridge and clearing the underground passages before detonation, and that most of the network there is now destroyed, following a partial demolition on July 13.
Beaufort Ridge is one tunnel system; a second, still-active one beneath Ali Taher Ridge near Nabatieh shows why demolition isn’t always an option. An estimated 40 Hezbollah operatives remain there, and Israeli forces have surrounded the exits rather than moving in, according to JNS. The report said Israeli air strikes previously failed to breach the site because it runs more than a kilometer underground, too deep for aerial ordnance, leaving encirclement and diplomacy as the only tools available while the ceasefire holds.
That same leverage dynamic runs through Israel’s position on withdrawal. Netanyahu and Katz said the IDF will remain in Lebanon’s southern buffer zone and continue destroying what they call terror infrastructure. Israeli officials have told mediators they won’t agree to withdraw further from that zone until Hezbollah disarms, a demand the group has rejected. Technical teams from Israel and Lebanon are due to meet August 4 to 6 to advance the broader framework agreement reached in June, which calls for a gradual Israeli pullback alongside expanded Lebanese army deployment in the south.
