The Israel Defense Forces said they have hit seven targets “deep inside Lebanese territory” on Sunday in retaliation for a strike on a soccer field that killed at least 12, mostly children and teenagers, in an Israeli-controlled town in the Golan Heights.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rushed back to Tel Aviv from the United States as outrage built in Israel over the deadly strike, which the Israeli military has blamed on Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group in Lebanon.
“Israel is approaching the moment of an all-out war against Hezbollah,” the Israeli military said. “The IDF is prepared and ready to protect Israel’s security.”
Israel’s strikes in Lebanon hit as far as the Bekaa Valley, about 60 miles from the southern border with Israel, where hostilities have so far largely been confined. The retaliatory strikes heighten tensions between two heavily armed forces already locked in conflict.
Hezbollah has denied responsibility for the strike. It is unusual for the militant group to deny an attack.
Israel’s spokesperson Daniel Hagari said in a statement that the rocket was an Iranian-made Falaq-1 “owned exclusively by Hezbollah.” Hagari called Saturday’s strike the deadliest attack in Israel since Oct. 7. “We are in an escalating war,” Hagari said Saturday, “children have been targeted and those children are Druze Israeli citizens.”
The strike landed just before sunset, and footage on Israel’s Channel 12 showed a large blast and a plume of smoke in one of the valleys in Majdal Shams, a town populated by the Druze, an Arabic-speaking ethnic and religious minority.
Sheikh Muafak Tarif, the spiritual leader of the Druze in Israel, decried “the brutal and murderous attack.”
“It’s impossible to imagine and describe the horrific images of children and their smashed [body] parts strewn on the grass,” he said in a statement.
The Druze, who practice a distinct religion, are unique among Israel’s Arab population in their support for the state, including by joining the Israeli military. About 25,000 Druze live in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967.
The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has so far been subdued compared with the war in Gaza. But Hezbollah’s promises of continued support for Palestinians has meant sustained attacks against Israel. Hundreds have died, mostly from Israeli fire in Lebanon, and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes on both sides of the border.
The latest strikes have renewed fears of escalation.
“This is exactly the kind of thing that can send us into a spiral,” said Gershon Baskin, Middle East director of the International Communities Organisation based in Israel.
“Hezbollah is not going to take this sitting down, and their ability to do damage to Israel is 100 times bigger than Hamas. The amount of firepower that both sides have can do an enormous amount of damage and kill a lot of people.”
“Escalation is never planned, it spins out of control,” Baskin said.
The White House National Security Council said in a statement that support for Israel’s security “is iron-clad and unwavering against all Iranian-backed terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hezbollah,”
The U.S. has previously worked to prevent a greater war between Israel and Hezbollah from unfolding. On a trip to Lebanon in June, White House envoy Amos Hochstein said that the U.S. was urgently seeking to calm the conflict.
Despite pressure from the Biden administration, Israeli officials have remained firm in their desire to go after Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to U.S. officials familiar with the conversations.
Netanyahu cut his trip to the U.S. short by several hours following the strike on Golan Heights. He immediately vowed retaliation against Hezbollah, and said the group would “pay a heavy price, one that it has not paid so far.”
The latest violence comes as Israel and Hamas are weighing a cease-fire proposal that could bring an end to the nearly 10-month conflict. On Friday, Netanyahu said he would send a delegation to Rome for talks aimed at ending the war with Hamas. The U.S. is sending the head of the CIA, Bill Burns, to meet representatives from Qatar, Egypt and Israel.
Hezbollah has said it will continue its attacks as long as Israel’s offensive in Gaza continues, and Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, believes ending the war in Gaza would be the quickest way to put an end to any escalating conflict between Israel and Lebanon.
“Hezbollah has the capacity to resist Israel for years, not just months,” he said “It could bleed Israel in ways that it has never experienced before.
“Once the guns fall silent in Gaza, the clashes between Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Israel, will stop.”
