How is Israel reacting to the heavy rocket attack, for which it blames Hezbollah? The security cabinet is currently meeting. The international community fears an escalation of violence.
The Israeli security cabinet is currently discussing a military response to Saturday’s rocket attack, several media outlets reported. According to the report, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in the United States, landed in Israel on Sunday afternoon.
According to The Times of Israel, several government officials and reports indicate that the government will order a “comprehensive retaliation measure.” What this will look like, however, is currently unclear. Israel blames Hezbollah for the attack.
According to its military, Israel attacked a number of militia terror targets in Lebanon during the night. The targets included weapons depots and terrorist infrastructure, the Israeli military said on Telegram. It also released video footage that is said to show the attacks. The information could not be independently verified.
On Saturday evening, at least twelve people aged between 10 and 20, most of them children and young people, were killed in a rocket attack in the town of Majd al-Shams in the 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.
The incident 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. “Hezbollah will pay a high price for this, a price it has not yet paid,” Netanyahu said on Saturday, according to his office.
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 rocket attack has fueled 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.
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.
