Israel’s military said it struck Hezbollah targets deep inside Lebanon on Sunday after a rocket strike from Lebanon killed 12 people, most of them teenagers and children, on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, raising the spectre of all-out war.
Sunday’s strikes, on what the Israeli military said was Hezbollah weapons caches and infrastructure, fell short of the furious response Israeli officials threatened after the strike on Saturday on a football field in the Golan where children were playing. Diplomats worked feverishly on Sunday to blunt any Israeli retaliation. Lebanon’s government, which would suffer from any escalation, implored the United States to urge restraint from Israel, Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said.
Israel, citing military intelligence and an assessment of the scene, blamed Saturday’s strike in Majdal Shams on Hezbollah. The group denied any connection to the attack.
Israel described it as the deadliest single attack on it since Hamas rampaged through several communities near the Gaza Strip on October 7, drawing Israel’s military response there. The shocking scenes from the Golan — the bodies of children in weekend football clothes, blown apart — followed a flood of warnings from the United Nations and diplomats that months of largely contained fighting between Hezbollah and Israel along the border could ignite if given a deadly spark.
Egypt’s Foreign Ministry warned on Saturday of the “dangers of opening a new war front in Lebanon” that could push the Middle East into a regional conflict, echoing admonitions from other Arab states over the dangers of failing to secure a ceasefire in Gaza. Hezbollah has said it would end its attacks against Israel in the event of such a ceasefire.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who returned to Israel on Sunday from his visit to Washington, was set to meet with his security Cabinet.
In a Sunday-morning tweet, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said he mourned the victims in Majdal Shams. “We live side by side and all suffer from Hezbollah’s terror,” he said in a message posted on X. “We will ensure Hezbollah, the proxy of Iran, pays a price for this loss.” Earlier, Netanyahu warned: “Hezbollah will pay a heavy price for this that it has not paid so far.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also expressed sorrow for the loss of life. “Every indication is that indeed … the rocket was from Hezbollah,” he said in Tokyo, where he has been meeting with his Japanese counterparts.
“This attack was conducted by Lebanese Hezbollah,” National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said on Sunday. “It was their rocket and launched from an area they control.”
Watson said the United States was “working on a diplomatic solution along the Blue Line that will end all attacks once and for all, and allow citizens on both sides of the border to safely return to their homes”.
While the Biden administration believes Hezbollah carried out the attack, the working assumption is that it was an accident, according to a senior US official. The official cautioned that the administration hasn’t reached a conclusion about the intent behind the attack.
Fighting along the Lebanon-Israel border has intensified in recent months with regular exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel’s military. The United States has pushed to de-escalate hostilities there. Blinken said he and other top US policymakers were working to ease tensions and bring about a ceasefire Gaza that he said would reduce flare-ups on the Israel-Lebanon border.
Bou Habib, the Lebanese Foreign Minister, said the United States had asked the Lebanese government to pass on a message of restraint to Hezbollah, too.
