Tensions are rising between Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel. The Jewish state vowed Sunday to “strike the enemy with force” the day after a deadly strike on the Golan Heights, annexed by Israel, which left 12 dead. Israel blames the shooting on the Lebanese Islamist movement, but the latter denies these accusations.
Israel said Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian Hamas and backed by Iran, had “crossed all red lines” by shooting “at civilians.” Hezbollah will pay “a high price” for this attack that will not go “unanswered,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned before returning earlier Sunday from a trip to the United States to chair a security cabinet meeting.
These threats raise fears of a regional conflagration in the midst of the war in the Gaza Strip. The international community has since increased its calls to avoid escalation. The UN has warned of a “wider conflagration” in the region, the European Union (EU) has called for an “independent international investigation” and Berlin has called for “acting with cool blood”. Paris, which condemned the attack, has also called for “everything to be done to avoid a new military escalation”.
Iran, for its part, warned Israel of the “consequences” of a retaliatory attack in Lebanon. “Any action (…) can lead to the aggravation” of “the war in the region,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani. Syria denounced Israel’s “lies” and “false accusations” against the Lebanese movement.
A “decisive offensive”
Washington, for its part, assured that it “supports the efforts” of Israel “to defend its citizens against terrorist attacks” and aimed at “putting an end to these terrible attacks”. “But we also do not want the conflict to get worse. We do not want it to spread. That has been one of our goals since day one, since October 7, and we will continue to do so”, declared US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, from Japan. According to him, “all indications” show that the rocket was fired by Hezbollah.
According to Israel, the rocket was fired from Lebanon and hit a soccer field in the town of Majdal Shams, killing 12 youths aged 10 to 16 and wounding about 30 others. Israel says the rocket was an Iranian Falaq rocket with a 53-kilogram warhead. Hezbollah is the only one to possess them, according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
The shooting came after the announcement of the death of four Hezbollah fighters in an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon. On Saturday evening, the Lebanese movement said it had launched rockets towards military positions in the Golan, including a Falaq, before denying being behind the shooting on Majdal Shams.
Already on Friday, an Israeli army commander had indicated that troops in the north of the country were preparing for a “decisive offensive” against Hezbollah, after months of almost daily exchanges of cross-border fire. Hezbollah opened a front against Israel on October 8, the day after the unprecedented attack by Hamas in Israel, in support of the Palestinians in Gaza. At the end of June, Israel had assured that in the event of a war against Hezbollah, it had the capacity “to inflict enormous damage on Lebanon.”