لحظة ادراك

 

The Beast on the Mountain

A mountain is never merely a mass of rock defying the wind, nor are fortresses simply stones stacked upon lofty peaks. Some places, with time, become ideas; and some ideas become curses that haunt their owners generation after generation. Such has always been Beaufort Castle (Al-Shaqif), suspended between earth and sky, between history and geography, between memory and war. Whoever stands upon its walls sees not only southern Lebanon, but an entire century of conflict, as though gazing from the balcony of time onto a story that refuses to end.

Forty-four years ago, Israeli soldiers climbed Al-Shaqif for the first time. It was 1982, and the entire region was entering a new era of blood and fire. At the time, it was said that the objective was security; that controlling the high ground would bring reassurance; that rifles positioned on the summits could impose new rules upon geography. Since then, governments, leaders, parties, and flags have all changed. Yet one thing has remained constant: the belief that controlling a place means controlling the future.

Today, the Israeli army returns to Al-Shaqif, as though time has completed a full circle and arrived back at the same point. It returns to the same mountain, the same language, and nearly the same calculations. It is as if forty-four years of wars, invasions, withdrawals, and agreements were merely a brief pause in a much longer text that has yet to be finished.

This is not merely the story of a fortress. It is the story of a political and military mindset that has changed very little. When an army returns to a position it abandoned decades earlier, it returns not only to the stones, but to the idea that led it there in the first place: the notion that security can be built through force alone; that geography can overpower history; and that weapons can resolve what politics has failed to settle.

Yet the other side of the story appears little different.

On the opposing side, throughout the past four decades, the mode of thinking has not fundamentally changed either. Flags, slogans, and names have shifted, but the essence of the approach has endured: waiting for a decisive victory that never arrives, and wagering that time will accomplish what reality could not. While Israelis placed their faith in military power, their adversaries placed theirs in endurance alone. Between these two wagers, the entire region remained trapped in a closed circle, where details changed while the broader picture stayed remarkably the same.

Today, Al-Shaqif resembles a vast mirror reflecting everyone's inability to leave the past behind.

The Israeli who returns to it believes that the high ground offers additional security, while history suggests that these same heights neither prevented wars, nor rockets, nor the fear that has inhabited Israeli homes generation after generation. The Lebanese, Palestinian, or Arab observer who looks upon the fortress from afar sees a symbol of occupation and domination, yet often pauses too little before another question: why have the same scenes repeated themselves for decades while the outcomes remain unchanged?

Perhaps because the conflict in this region is no longer merely a struggle over land; it has become a struggle over narrative.

Each side lives within its own story. The Israeli sees himself surrounded by a sea of enemies. The Arab sees himself as the victim of a colonial settlement project that never ceases to expand. Between these two narratives, truth becomes lost beneath dense layers of fear, memory, and blood.

That is why the return to Al-Shaqif is more than a military maneuver. It is an indirect declaration that everyone remains a prisoner of the past.

Forty-four years later, Israel still speaks the language of buffer zones, military superiority, and strategic high ground. Forty-four years later, its opponents still speak the language of total liberation or perpetual resistance, as though time itself had failed to impose new questions upon anyone.

Meanwhile, the entire region changes.

Regimes fall and others emerge. Regional and international alliances shift. Maps of influence are redrawn. Generations are born that never experienced the wars of the 1980s and know them only through books and collective memory. Yet Al-Shaqif stands as a witness to a painful truth: minds are often slower than history.

Weapons evolve. Aircraft become more intelligent. Missiles become more precise. Yet human beings remain prisoners of old ideas. Thus wars return under new names and with new tools, while their underlying causes remain unchanged.

The true beast upon the mountain is not the army that has returned to the fortress, nor the artillery positioned on the heights, nor even the aircraft circling overhead.

The real beast is the deeply rooted belief—shared by all sides—that what failed yesterday can succeed tomorrow if only it is repeated in exactly the same way.

A beast that feeds on memory, fear, and revenge.

A beast that lives not only in fortresses, but in minds as well.

The Israelis have experimented with force for decades, yet force has not delivered the peace they sought. Arabs, Palestinians, and Lebanese have likewise experimented with various forms of steadfastness and confrontation, yet they too have not fully achieved the outcomes they desired. Even so, everyone continues returning to the same instruments, as though history has nothing left to teach them.

For this reason, Beaufort Castle today resembles an old theater whose doors have been reopened after decades of closure. The actors have changed. The costumes have changed. Some scenes have changed. Yet the script remains almost exactly the same.

The soldier standing upon its walls today is different from the soldier of 1982, yet he is haunted by the same fears. The fighter looking toward it from the opposite side is not the same one who stood there four decades ago, yet he carries almost the same dreams. As for the mountain, it seems indifferent to all of this. It stands in its ancient stone silence, watching human beings repeat their mistakes generation after generation.

Perhaps the saddest reality is that the entire region has come to resemble Al-Shaqif itself:

Elevated above piles of memories, surrounded by the ghosts of the past, and unable to descend into the valley where ordinary people live—people who desire something extraordinarily simple: a life not measured by the number of wars they have survived.

Conclusion

The return of the Israeli army to Beaufort Castle after forty-four years is not merely a military event. It is a political and cultural metaphor for a broader condition afflicting the entire Middle East. The problem was never solely the fortress, the mountain, or the border. It lies in minds that continue to view the future through the window of the past.

That is why the beast that has returned to the mountain is older than the soldiers, larger than the artillery, and more dangerous than the missiles.

It is the Beast of Repetition—the belief that the road which led to the impasse can somehow lead to salvation.

And from the walls of Al-Shaqif, where clouds embrace the scars of old wars, one can still hear the same question that history has been asking for decades:

How many times must the same story be repeated before everyone realizes that something, somewhere, must change?