2024-07-29 06:31:24
Israel prepares retaliatory strike
Will “open war” break out? Fear of escalation in the Middle East
Updated on 29.07.2024 – 08:04Reading time: 3 min.
How is Israel reacting to the heavy rocket attack for which it blames Hezbollah? The international community fears an escalation of violence.
Israel’s government is preparing for a retaliatory strike against Hezbollah in Lebanon following the devastating rocket attack on the Golan Heights. After more than four hours of deliberations, the Security Cabinet authorized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Joav Galant “to decide on the manner and timing of action against the terrorist organization Hezbollah,” the Prime Minister’s Office announced in the evening.
Netanyahu had previously threatened the pro-Iranian militia that they would pay a “high price”. What a concrete reaction will look like is still unclear.
On Saturday evening, at least twelve people aged between 10 and 20, most of them children and teenagers, were killed in a rocket attack in the town of Majd al-Shams in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. An Iranian-made rocket hit a busy soccer field there. Read more about it here. Hezbollah said in a statement that it had nothing to do with the attack.
Israel blames Hezbollah for the attack on the Israeli-controlled territory, and the USA also blames the radical Islamic Shiite militia. “This attack was carried out by the Lebanese Hezbollah. It was a Hezbollah rocket fired from an area it controls,” said US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson. The attack must be condemned.
According to its military, Israel attacked a number of targets of the terrorist organization in Lebanon on Sunday night. The targets included weapons depots and terrorist infrastructure. It also released video footage that is said to show the attacks. The information could not be independently verified.
The incident has sparked international fears of an escalation of violence in the region. UN representatives urged both parties to exercise “the greatest possible restraint.” The US and the EU also condemned the attack.
The Lebanese airline Middle East Airlines postponed the return of some of its flights on Sunday evening, the Wall Street Journal reported. US officials have contacted their colleagues in Israel and Lebanon and exchanged messages with Iran to try to de-escalate the situation, the US newspaper quoted Arab and European officials familiar with the matter as saying. All sides have indicated that they are not interested in escalating the conflict, they said.
According to US media reports, the rocket attack has fuelled fears in the US government that an open war could break out between Israel and Hezbollah, wrote the well-connected Israeli journalist Barak Ravid in the US portal “Axios”. “What happened today could be the trigger for what we have been fearing and trying to prevent for ten months,” Ravid quoted a US government official as saying. The USA is Israel’s most important ally. American and French diplomats have been trying for months to ease the conflict between Israel and the Shiite militia.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, says it is preparing for a potentially serious attack by Israel. “We have been on standby for months and are on the lookout for any attack from the enemy,” the German Press Agency learned from militia circles. “This is nothing new, we are on constant alert.” Now they are expecting a potentially “hard attack,” the circles said.
The Democratic majority leader in the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, said in an interview with CBS News that Israel has the right to defend itself against Hezbollah, “just as they do against Hamas.” However, “I don’t think anyone wants a major war. So I hope there are steps to de-escalate.” According to media reports, the foreign ministries of France, Norway and Belgium have already called on their citizens to leave Lebanon as soon as possible.
There appears to already be an initial response to the rocket attack: Netanyahu has reportedly ordered the transfer of sick and wounded children from the Gaza Strip to the United Arab Emirates for medical treatment to be postponed. This is what “Haaretz” writes, citing a person familiar with the matter.