Hezbollah will pay ‘heavy price,’ PM vows after strike on Druze town kills 12 children
Netanyahu says murder of Druze kids won’t ‘pass in silence’ as security officials meet to discuss best options; Gallant tells Druze leaders Israel ‘will strike the enemy hard’
Israel will not let the murderous attack in Majdal Shams “pass in silence,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Saturday afternoon, as senior security officials held consultations in the wake of a deadly Hezbollah rocket attack that left at least 12 children dead in the northern Druze town.
The attack was the single deadliest Hezbollah attack since the fighting on the Israel-Lebanon border began on October 8, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Saturday evening, and all the victims were aged between 10 and 20 years old.
Following the deadly strike, Netanyahu spoke to the spiritual leader of Israel’s Druze community Sheikh Muafak Tarif, the Prime Minister’s Office said, and vowed that Israel would not sit idly by.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu made clear that Israel will not allow the murderous attack to simply pass on by, and that Hezbollah will pay a heavy price for this that it has not paid until this point,” his office said.
The prime minister, who was still in the United States at the time of the attack but cut short his trip by several hours and was expected to land back in Israel early Sunday afternoon, repeated the sentiment in a video message released shortly after.
“Among the murdered were small children who were playing soccer,” he said, “and others were also murdered. Our hearts are all broken by these sights.”
He pledged that Israel would “not let this pass in silence,” and said the whole nation stood together with the Druze community “in its difficult time, which is also our difficult time.”
Israel’s decision-making security cabinet was set to convene on Sunday afternoon.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was briefed by top military and security officials on Israel’s options “for action against Hezbollah.”
The meeting was attended by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, Shin Bet head Ronen Bar and Mossad chief David Barnea, among other officials.
On X, Gallant said he had spoken to Tarif “to share the heavy sorrow that befell the Druze community and the entire Israeli nation.”
He said that in his call with the Druze spiritual leader, he had promised that Israel “will strike the enemy hard.”
Like Netanyahu, security officials have vowed not to go easy on Hezbollah after the deadly attack, which was carried out with an Iranian-made rocket, and have signaled that the 10-month-long deadly confrontation on the Israel-Lebanon border could not be tolerated much longer.
Visiting the scene of the attack on Saturday night, Halevi told community leaders that the terror group, which does not “distinguish between killing Druze or Jews,” would be met with a “very, very significant response” from Israel.
But when Israel does retaliate, he warned, “Hezbollah may shoot more here, and caution must be taken to follow the Home Front Command and Northern Command’s instructions.
“We want to deliver a hard blow to Hezbollah, without having any more casualties here,” he added.
Calls for Israel to respond forcibly to Hezbollah were echoed across the political echelon as well, with some going so far as to demand Israel launch a full-scale military offensive against the Iran-backed terror group, even as an unnamed Israeli security source told Sky News Arabic that Israel does not “intend to spark a war.”
Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Israel was seeking international “support and legitimacy” to act against Hezbollah after the terror group “crossed all red lines” in Saturday’s rocket strike.
The Foreign Ministry was preparing for an international campaign that would work to “obtain support and legitimacy for Israeli action in Lebanon, and to point the finger directly at Iran,” Katz said.
Israel is “approaching the moment of an all-out war against Hezbollah and Lebanon,” he warned, pledging that the terror group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah would be destroyed and that Lebanon would be severely damaged.
“This is not an army against an army,” Katz said of Hezbollah. “It is an Iranian terrorist organization against civilians and children.”
Calling for the world to impose heavy sanctions on Hezbollah, Katz said the group must be stopped “before it is too late.”
Meanwhile, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir accused the government of having intentionally avoided “acknowledging that we are in a battle against Hezbollah for ten months.”
“Today, no one, in any forum, including the defense minister who strived only to contain Hezbollah, can avoid the bloody reality — we are at war,” the ultranationalist minister said. “I call on the prime minister to immediately convene the cabinet, [even] by encrypted phone, to make the decision that I have been demanding for a long time – war in the north now!”
MK Yitzhak Kreuzer, of Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, echoed the call for all-out war in a video filmed in Majdal Shams.
“The blood of the children of the Golan is not cheap,” he said, calling on the government “to go to war, to destroy Hezbollah, to hit the state of Lebanon from which came the rocket that hit here and caused this severe disaster.”
The call for Israel to retaliate in a meaningful way was echoed across the political spectrum, albeit with fewer references to a desire to launch a war in Lebanon.
In an English-language statement on X, centrist National Unity chairman Benny Gantz pledged that his party would provide “wide support from outside the government for any determined and effective response that will restore security to the citizens of the north.”
The former defense minister also visited Majdal Shams hours after the attack and as the death toll continued to rise, to pay his condolences to the Druze community leaders.
He was accompanied by National Unity MK Michael Biton, former MK and Druze politician Mufid Mari, and Golan Regional Council head Uri Kellner.
Reiterating the commitments he laid out in his social media post, Gantz told Mayor Dolan Abu Saleh that the situation in northern Israel had “gone on for too long,” and pledged that he would do everything possible to allow for residents of northern Israel to feel safe in their own homes once more.
Knesset whip Ofir Katz of Likud said too that “a difficult and painful response is required” while Labor MK Merav Michaeli wrote on social media that “whoever launched these rockets must pay a heavy price.”
Right-wing New Hope MK Mishel Buskila took a more blunt approach, and called on the government to “tear apart Beirut” in the wake of the attack.
