Egoz Commandos Seize a Militia Squad Leader on Mount Dov

The Israel Defense Forces said soldiers of the Egoz unit, operating under the command of Division 210, carried out a special night operation in the Mount Dov area of Lebanon and detained a squad commander of an organisation the military called the “Lebanese Brigades”. The operation followed a prolonged period of intelligence surveillance, according to the IDF statement.

The military described the Lebanese Brigades as funded by Hezbollah and directly tied to it, and said its members take part in attack plans against Israeli troops. The man detained was transferred into Israeli territory for further questioning by Unit 504, the IDF said.

Mount Dov, where three claims overlap

Mount Dov is the Israeli name for the Shebaa Farms, a small mountainous strip at the junction of south-eastern Lebanon, south-western Syria and northern Israel. It measures roughly nine kilometres by two and a half; Lebanon claims it, the international consensus treats it as Syrian, and Israel has held it since 1967, when it took the Golan Heights, as Britannica sets out, which also records that Hezbollah has asserted claims to the area and established outposts along that stretch of border.

The area matters militarily as well as symbolically. the Jerusalem Post reported in February 2026 that Israel created a dedicated 810th Mountain Brigade in 2024 to control the Mount Dov and Mount Hermon border region, under the 210th Division (the same divisional command named in this statement) and that the division's troops operate in the Har Dov area of Lebanon alongside activity in Syria.

What Egoz is for

Egoz, formally Unit 621, is an IDF commando unit whose name is a Hebrew acronym for anti-guerrilla and small-scale warfare. It was raised in its current form in January 1995 from paratrooper reconnaissance soldiers and initially attached to the Golani Brigade, before transferring to the army's commando brigade in December 2015, according to a reference profile of the unit. Its speciality is close-quarters fighting in dense terrain (fieldcraft, camouflage and ambush) and its history is largely a Lebanese one, including operations against Hezbollah in the 1990s and heavy fighting at Maroun al-Ras in 2006.

The militia behind the name

The IDF's shorthand “Lebanese Brigades” corresponds to a real and long-established body. The Lebanese Resistance Brigades, known in Arabic as Saraya al-Muqawama al-Lubnaniyya, were founded in November 1997 under the original name “Lebanese Brigades of Resistance to the Occupation”, according to research published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. The Saraya were deliberately recruited across confessional lines (a 1999 survey found members were 38% Sunni, 25% Shia, 20% Druze and 17% Christian) and function as a paramilitary auxiliary, trained and supported by Hezbollah while nominally separate from it. Their historic tasks in southern Lebanon included ambushes, reconnaissance and intelligence gathering against Israeli forces.

Where a detainee goes next

Unit 504 is the IDF's human-intelligence formation. Unlike the Mossad, which works globally, or the Shin Bet, which runs longer-term strategic sources, Unit 504's focus is tactical: gathering intelligence to support operations under way and questioning detainees and civilians at or near the front, as the Jerusalem Post explained in a November 2023 profile, which noted the unit had roughly doubled in size after the attacks of 7 October 2023.

What is still unclear

The IDF did not name the detained man, give his age, or say what he is suspected of beyond his alleged rank. It did not date the operation beyond “yesterday (Tuesday)”, did not say whether anyone was hurt, and did not confirm the full Arabic name of the organisation it referred to. Nor did it say under what legal status the man is being held or whether he will face charges.