Netanyahu vows to retaliate for Golan attack, efforts to avoid escalation

Photo: Jalaa Marey Agence France-Presse The portraits of the young people who were killed on Saturday were hung on the fence of the soccer stadium where a rocket landed, in the Druze village of Majdal Shams.

Agence France-Presse in Beirut

Published yesterday at 10:27 Updated yesterday at 5:44

• Middle East

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday to deliver a “severe response” to the attack that killed 12 youths in the occupied Golan, as efforts are stepped up to prevent an escalation between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

For months, the international community has been concerned about a regional conflagration linked to the ongoing war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, sparked by an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israeli soil on October 7.

Saturday's rocket attack on the part of the Syrian Golan occupied by Israel was blamed by the Israeli government on Hezbollah, which denies it. This Lebanese movement, an ally of Iran, opened a front against Israel, bordering Lebanon, the day after the start of the Gaza war, in support of Hamas.

“These children are our children […] The State of Israel will not, and cannot, let this happen. Our response will come, and it will be severe,” said Mr. Netanyahu, who visited Majdal Shams, in the Golan Heights located on the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel.

It is in this small Druze town of around 11,000 inhabitants, where 12 boys and girls aged 10 to 16 died when the rocket fell on a soccer field.

Dozens of residents of Majdal Shams, some shouting “murderer, murderer,” demonstrated against Mr. Netanyahu, gathered behind metal barriers under police surveillance.

“In the Golan we only want peace. Let Netanyahu go home! “He's the reason the war broke out,” said one of them, Kamil Khater.

During his visit, the Israeli prime minister met with a member of the Druze community, a branch of Islam, as well as local residents.

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In the part of the Golan occupied and annexed by Israel, approximately 25,000 Israelis live alongside some 23,000 Druze who claim to be mostly Syrian while having the status of residents in Israel.

Hezbollah will pay “a high price,” warned Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, who received the green light from the security cabinet to “decide how and when to respond to the terrorist organization Hezbollah.”

“Devastating consequences”

Fearing a full-scale war, several airlines, including Air France and Lufthansa, have suspended flights to Beirut.

The United Kingdom advised its citizens to leave Lebanon on Monday. “The situation is evolving rapidly,” Foreign Secretary David Lammy wrote on X.

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Orna Mizrahi, a Hezbollah expert at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies, said the response would be “more devastating than what [the Israelis] have done so far, but it would be a response that Hezbollah can contain and prevent from deteriorating into a full-scale war.”

In the meantime, Hezbollah announced, as it has often done since October 8, that it had launched rockets and missiles against military positions in northern Israel, after two of its fighters were killed in an Israeli raid.

In Beirut, residents seemed resigned. “All our lives we have known wars. “What more could happen ?,” Elie Rbeiz, in his sixties, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Photo: Kawat Haju Agence France-Presse On Monday, Hezbollah announced that it had launched “dozens of Katyusha rockets” on an Israeli military position, “in response” to the “assassination” of two of its fighters. In the photo, an Israeli strike on Sunday on the Lebanese village of Chihine.

In Washington, the White House said it was “confident” that a wider war between Israel and Hezbollah could be avoided.

In Iran, President Massoud Pezeshkian warned that Israel would be making “a grave mistake with serious consequences if it attacked Lebanon,” in a phone call with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron.

According to the French presidency, Mr Macron told the Iranian president that “everything must be done to avoid an escalation” and called on Iran to “cease its support for destabilizing actors.” A new war “would have devastating consequences,” he said.

Armed and financed by Iran, Hezbollah exercises a preponderant influence in Lebanon and its detractors accuse it of being a state within a state. It is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, just like Hamas.

“Where could we go?”

On Israel's southern front, the army continued its air and land bombardments against the Gaza Strip, devastated by nearly ten months of war and threatened with famine according to the UN.

After a new evacuation order from the army, hundreds of Palestinians, their luggage and mattresses piled into trailers, fled al-Bureij and al-Shuhada (center).

In the southern Gaza Strip, the army said it was continuing its operations in Rafah and Khan Younis against Hamas, which seized power in Gaza in 2007.

“This may be the 6th or 7th displacement. Where can we go?? Every two days, they (the Israelis) ask us to evacuate. How long will this situation last??,” laments Mohammed al-Jouaidi, who fled Bureij. On October 7, Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza into southern Israel carried out an attack that killed 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.

Of the 251 people kidnapped at the time, 111 are still being held in Gaza, 39 of whom are dead, according to the army.

In response, Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, which it considers a terrorist organization, along with the United States, Canada and the European Union. Its military launched an offensive that has killed 39,363 people, including at least 39 in 24 hours, according to data from the Hamas-run Gaza government’s health ministry, which does not provide details on the number of civilian or combatant deaths.