Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised a “harsh” response to a Saturday rocket attack on a soccer pitch in Majdal Shams, a town in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, that killed 12 children.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised a “harsh” response to a Saturday rocket attack on a soccer pitch in Majdal Shams, a town in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, that killed 12 children.
The strike, which the United States and Israel have attributed to the Iran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah, was the deadliest attack on Israel or an Israeli-controlled territory since the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023. And it represents the nightmare scenario that officials in Washington and the Middle East have feared could cause a rapid escalation into an all-out war that would likely prove devastating for both countries.
After a four-hour meeting on Sunday, Israel’s security cabinet agreed to empower Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to decide on the timing and scale of Israel’s response to the attack. Early on Sunday, Israel said it had struck Hezbollah targets “deep inside Lebanese territory” and in the south of the country. The airstrikes are thought to be part of Israel’s ongoing operations against the militant group and not its response to Saturday’s attack.
The question now is how Netanyahu and Gallant will choose to respond.
“I think the basic thinking is finding the sweet spot between being strong enough and not too strong,” said Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general who led the strategic planning division of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). He said the goal for Israel would be to send a clear message to multiple audiences—the Israeli public, Hezbollah, and other Iran-backed groups in the region—without triggering a full-scale war.
The decision would then come down to the type and quantity of targets to hit, how deep into the country to strike, and the extent to which they want to catch the group off guard, Orion said.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire since Oct. 8, 2023, when the militant group, which dominates southern Lebanon, launched a volley of attacks on northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas. Some 140,000 people have been displaced from their homes on both sides of the border as Hezbollah has launched thousands of rockets, anti-tank missiles, and drones into Israel and the country has responded with thousands of airstrikes.
Hezbollah presents a potentially greater threat to Israel than Hamas in the event of a full-scale war. Regarded as the most heavily armed nonstate actor in the world, the group is estimated to have some 130,000 missiles and rockets that could quickly overwhelm Israel’s air defenses.
“I’ve read estimates of what Hezbollah could do to us in three days that are just horrendous,” Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, told Foreign Policy in an interview last month. “You’re talking about knocking out all of our essential infrastructure, oil refineries, air bases, Dimona,” he said, referring to the city where the country’s nuclear research facility is located.
Lebanon would also be devastated. During the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah—which lasted just over a month and ended in an uneasy stalemate—human rights groups accused both sides of carrying out indiscriminate attacks on civilians. Israeli attacks in Lebanon killed at least 1,109 Lebanese, the vast majority of whom were civilians; Hezbollah rockets killed 43 civilians and 12 soldiers inside Israel, according to Human Rights Watch.
While experts believe that neither Israel nor Hezbollah is seeking a full-scale war, the near-daily strikes on both sides of the border carry the continued risk of miscalculation.
“What I worry about every single day is that a miscalculation or an accident, an errant missile that is intended for a target misses the target, hits something else,” said Amos Hochstein, a White House senior advisor who has become the Biden administration’s point person on the border tensions, said at an event hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in May. “That could force the political system in either country to retaliate in a way that slides us into war.”
Hezbollah has acknowledged that it struck the Golan Heights on Saturday but has denied responsibility for the attack on the predominantly Druze Arab town. Orion said the group may have been seeking to target a nearby Israeli military installation on Mount Hermon. On Sunday, the IDF released images showing similarities between fragments of the rocket used in the attack and the Iranian-made Falaq 1 rocket Hezbollah used during the Syrian civil war. According to Reuters, the group has fired dozens of this type of rocket, a so-called “dumb bomb” with no precision guidance system, at Israel.
Since the attack, the United States and other countries have worked to try to prevent the situation from spiraling into all-out war, with Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani holding conversations with his Israeli and Lebanese counterparts and French President Emmanuel Macron speaking with Netanyahu.
In a call with reporters on Monday, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Israel had “every right to respond” but that he was “confident” that a broader war could be averted.
“We don’t want to see the war escalate. We don’t want to see a second front opened up there in the north,” Kirby said. “What we want to do and what we’re so focused on is finding a diplomatic solution here to reduce the tensions to the point where Israelis and Lebanese families can go back to their homes.”
Kirby declined to comment on a report in Axios over the weekend that the administration had warned Israel against striking Hezbollah targets in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, out of concern that it could further drive tensions.
The strike on Majdal Shams came shortly before negotiators from the United States, Israel, Qatar, and Egypt met in Rome on Sunday as part of ongoing talks seeking to broker a cease-fire deal to end the fighting in Gaza and secure the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas.
A senior Biden administration official told reporters last week that they believe a deal is “closeable,” noting that discussions were in their final stages, although Netanyahu has hardened his stance in recent weeks, insisting that Israel maintain control of the Egypt-Gaza border and on preventing Hamas militants from returning to the northern Gaza Strip.
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