(Majdal Shams) Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed Sunday to “strike the enemy with force” the day after a deadly strike on the annexed Golan Heights blamed on Lebanese Hezbollah, raising fears of a regional conflagration in the midst of war in the Gaza Strip.
Iran has warned Israel of the “consequences” of a retaliatory attack in Lebanon. “Any action […] The Zionist regime’s “deepening” of “the war in the region,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said.
According to Israel, a rocket attack from Lebanon on a soccer field in the town of Majdal Shams killed 12 youths aged 10 to 16 on Saturday and injured about 30 others.
PHOTO MENAHEM KAHANA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Members of the Druze community examine the damaged fence and scattered objects on a soccer field hit by a rocket in Majdal Shams on July 27.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said the Iranian-backed Lebanese Islamist movement, which denies carrying out the deadly attack, had “crossed all red lines” by “deliberately firing on civilians.”
The rocket fired “was an Iranian rocket,” the ministry added in a statement, and Hezbollah is “the only terrorist organization that has one in its arsenal.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that “all indications” show that the rocket that fell on the Golan Heights was fired by Lebanese Hezbollah.
“There is no justification for terrorism, and all indications are that the rockets came from Hezbollah or the rocket came from Hezbollah,” Blinken said at a news conference in Tokyo.
“The high price”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Saturday evening that Hezbollah would pay “a high price” for the attack, which came after the announcement in Lebanon of the death of four Hezbollah fighters in an Israeli strike in the south of the country.
It will not go “unanswered,” he said, according to a statement from his office. Netanyahu is scheduled to chair a security cabinet meeting on Sunday when he returns from a trip to the United States.
Majdal Shams, a Druze town of about 11,000 people, is located in the Golan Heights, a strategic region at the crossroads of three countries (Syria, Lebanon, Israel) that was largely conquered by Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Israel annexed two-thirds of it in 1981, but the international community has never recognized this annexation.
It was “the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians since October 7,” Israeli army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Saturday, referring to the date of the Hamas attack on Israeli soil that sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.
Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, opened a front against Israel on October 8 on their common border and exchanges fire daily with the Israeli army in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.
Mr. Gallant traveled to Majdal Shams early Sunday, where he stood with security forces near a damaged soccer field fence and charred scooters.
PHOTO MENAHEM KAHANA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (center) visited Majdal Shams on July 28
During a discussion with the local leader, Mr. Gallant “insisted” that Israel would “strike the enemy with force,” according to a statement from the ministry spokesman.
“Unimaginable catastrophe”
Thousands of people gathered Sunday, their faces defeated, for the funerals of those killed in Majdal Shams. Druze women dressed in black abayas and white veils gathered around coffins covered in white shrouds.
PHOTO MENAHEM KAHANA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Mourners carry the coffins and photos of those killed in a rocket strike from Lebanon the previous day, during a mass funeral in the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights on July 28.
The UN urged “the parties to exercise maximum restraint” as an escalation of the exchange of fire could “trigger a wider conflagration that would engulf the entire region in an unimaginable catastrophe.”
Washington reaffirmed its support for Israel, assuring “to support efforts to put an end to these terrible attacks”. The head of diplomacy of the European Union (EU), Josep Borrell, called for an “independent international investigation”.
Despite international calls for calm in the region and a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, the war continues in the besieged Palestinian territory, devastated by nearly ten months of war.
It was triggered on October 7 after the unprecedented attack by Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza into southern Israel, which resulted in the death of 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, including 39 who died, according to the army.
The Israeli response offensive has left at least 39,324 dead, according to data from the Hamas-run Gaza government’s health ministry, which does not provide details on the number of civilians and fighters killed.
Meeting expected in Rome
On Sunday, Israeli artillery fire targeted several neighborhoods in Gaza City (north), according to an AFP journalist.
The media office of the government of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that seized power in the Gaza Strip in 2007, said that Israeli gunfire was reported overnight in the Nusseirat (north) and al-Bureij (center) camps.
In the south of the territory, the army blew up several residential buildings in Khan Younis where it continues to carry out operations and gunfire also rang out in Rafah, according to witnesses.
After the failure of multiple negotiations on a truce associated with the release of hostages, a meeting of representatives of the mediators – Egypt, the United States, Qatar – with the head of Israeli intelligence is planned for Sunday in Rome.
Considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the EU, Hamas accuses Benjamin Netanyahu, who has sworn to destroy it, of blocking any agreement.