As diplomats scramble, Israel says response to Hezbollah to be ‘harsh’ but contained
Netanyahu again threatens retaliation to rocket attack that killed 12 children in Golan; Blinken calls Herzog to urge de-escalation; British FM sends same message to Lebanese PM
With the region on edge ahead of an expected Israeli retaliation against Hezbollah for a deadly rocket strike on Saturday, Western diplomats urged de-escalation, while Israeli officials suggested that the response would be serious but not lead to an all-out conflagration.
Israeli officials speaking to Reuters said Israel wants to hurt Hezbollah, but not drag the Middle East into regional war, while other Israeli officials told the wire service that the IDF is preparing for the possibility of a few days of fighting with the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group.
In the Hezbollah strike on the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights on Saturday afternoon, 12 children were killed while playing on a soccer field when they were hit by what Israel said was an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket with a warhead of over 50kg of explosives.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Majdal Shams on Monday, saying that “these children are our children; they are all the children of all of us.”
Netanyahu said that “Israel will not and cannot let this simply pass on by. Our response will come, and it will be harsh.”
A diplomatic Israeli source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that “the estimation is that the response will not lead to an all-out war… That would not be in our interest at this point.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with President Isaac Herzog on Monday to urge Israel and Hezbollah step back from any escalation.
A statement from the State Department said that in his call with Herzog, Blinken “emphasized the importance of preventing escalation of the conflict and discussed efforts to reach a diplomatic solution to allow citizens on both sides of the border between Israel and Lebanon to return home.”
Lebanese officials have held a flurry of calls with Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to US President Joe Biden who frequently handles delicate negotiations in Lebanon, also seeking to tamp down on escalation, according to an unnamed Lebanese diplomat.
The White House later reiterated its stance that Israel has every right to respond to Hezbollah following Saturday’s attack, but that it was “confident” that a wider conflagration could be avoided.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters that US and Israeli officials had conversations at “multiple levels” over the weekend, and that the risk of a full-blown conflict is “exaggerated.”
“Nobody wants a broader war, and I’m confident that we’ll be able to avoid such an outcome,” Kirby said in a call with reporters. “We all heard about this ‘all-out war’ at multiple points over the last 10 months, those predictions were exaggerated then, quite frankly, we think they’re exaggerated now.”
The UNIFIL peacekeeping mission in south Lebanon said it had intensified contacts with Israel and Lebanese authorities to dial down tensions. “Nobody wants to start a wider conflict, but a miscalculation could trigger one. There is still space for a diplomatic solution,” UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said.
A Western diplomat whose country is involved in diplomatic efforts to prevent a major escalation, told The Associated Press that he does not believe the Israeli response will result in a full-throttle war.
“It’s clear that [Israel] wants to take a stance, but without leading to a generalized conflict,” the anonymous diplomat said. “It’s sure that there will be a retaliation. It will be symbolic. It may be spectacular, but it will not be a reason for both parties to engage in a general escalation.”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, meanwhile, threatened that an Israeli attack on Lebanon will have serious consequences for the Jewish state.
Speaking to French President Emanuel Macron, Pezeshkian said that “any possible Israeli attack on Lebanon will have serious consequences for Israel,” according to Iranian state media.
Earlier this year, Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel, when it fired more than 300 missiles and drones toward the Jewish state. The vast majority of them were shot down by Israeli air defenses, as well as involvement from its allies, with a 7-year-old girl seriously wounded by shrapnel from an interception.
The Iranian attack came in response to an alleged Israeli airstrike on a building near Tehran’s consulate in Damascus two weeks earlier, killing seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members, including two generals.
Inside Lebanon, a flurry of diplomatic activity was ongoing on Monday as the country braced for the Israeli response to the Hezbollah attack.
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has held “intensive diplomatic contacts after the recent Israeli threats against Lebanon,” including a call with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who “renewed the call on all parties to exercise restraint to prevent escalation,” Mikati’s office said in a statement.
Lammy posted on social media that he had called Mikati “to express my concern at escalating tension and welcomed the government of Lebanon’s statement urging for cessation of all violence.”
“We both agreed that widening of conflict in the region is in nobody’s interest,” he said.
Also on Monday, Hezbollah’s head of foreign relations, Ammar Moussawi, met with Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib, according to a Lebanese diplomat and a Hezbollah official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Bou Habib also stressed the need for “self-restraint to avoid a regional war,” during talks with UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert.
On Sunday night, Israeli ministers authorized Netanyahu and his defense chief to decide on the “manner and timing” of the response.
Hezbollah terrorists have been firing rockets into northern Israel since October 8, drawing Israeli reprisal attacks and threatening to widen the conflict between Israel and Hamas beyond Gaza’s borders.
So far, the skirmishes have resulted in 24 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 18 IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
Hezbollah has named 383 members who were killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some in Syria. In Lebanon, another 68 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and dozens of civilians were killed.
Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.
