After a rocket strike, Israeli retaliation in Lebanon seems inevitable

FOR ALMOST ten months Israel and Hizbullah, a Lebanese Shia militia and political party, have stuck to unwritten rules in their low-intensity war. Both sides know their foe has fearsome firepower and so have tried to limit their strikes. They have aimed either for military targets or for evacuated border towns from which an estimated 150,000 civilians have fled.

On July 27th those rules were shattered. A rocket hit a football pitch in the town of Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights, killing 12 children and wounding dozens of others. It was the deadliest attack on Israel-controlled territory since October 7th, when Hamas, a Palestinian militant group, massacred some 1,200 people.

When the identity of the Majdal Shams victims emerged—they were members of the Druze community—Hizbullah was quick to deny it fired the rocket. But it almost certainly did as part of a larger salvo it launched in response to an earlier Israeli strike that killed four of its operatives. Israeli officials believe the rocket was aimed at a military base on nearby Mount Hermon but missed.

Hizbullah has fired some 6,000 projectiles towards Israel since October 8th, when it began a series of tit-for-tat attacks as a show of solidarity with Hamas. This was the first time it denied a strike. It had three reasons to avoid blame. First was the footage of mangled small bodies on social media, which even some of the group’s supporters found hard to stomach (many were eager to assign responsibility to a radical Sunni group instead).

The second reason concerns Hizbullah’s relationship with the Druze. A secretive sect numbering around 1m people, they live in Lebanon, Syria and Israel and have complex loyalties in each. In Israel most Druze serve in the army and celebrate what they call a “pact of blood” with the Jewish state. Lebanon’s main Druze party, led by the Jumblatt clan, has in recent years allied itself with Hizbullah—an awkward fit as their co-religionists in Syria joined the revolt against the Assad regime, which was propped up by Hizbullah.

The 27,000 Druze in the Golan have the most complicated situation. Since 1967, when Israel captured the plateau from Syria, they have tried to balance their allegiances. Israel in effect annexed the Golan in 1981 (though only America has recognised this) and offered the Druze full citizenship. Most declined, either out of caution or loyalty. But in recent years, especially since the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011, many younger Druze have become Israeli.

The generational divide was clear at the funeral for the rocket victims on July 28th. The procession began in the older centre of town, with the bodies brought to a communal building called the Syrian Centre (“it has nothing to do with Syria, it’s just the name,” whispers one of the ushers). No Israeli flags were visible; out of respect for the elders, Israeli politicians and army officers kept their distance. Even Mowafaq Tarif, the spiritual leader of Israel’s Druze, was careful not to mention Israel or Hizbullah by name in his eulogy.

Downhill, by the crater in the playing-field, younger residents milled around the new sports centre. “Of course we’re all now Israelis. That’s the reality,” says Taher Safadi. “We expect our country, Israel, to protect us,” adds Wasim Bader. Such expectations point to a third reason Hizbullah has been eager to distance itself: Israel has been quick to claim the dead children as its own.

The strike on Majdal Shams has increased pressure on Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to act decisively against Hizbullah. He had hoped to bask, at least for a few days, in the speech he gave to America’s Congress on July 24th. Instead he was forced to cut short his American trip.

Israeli officials have promised a harsh response: “The citizens of Lebanon have become the hostages of Hizbullah and now will have to pay for [Hassan] Nasrallah’s reckless actions,” says one security official, referring to the leader of Hizbullah. But that response may not come immediately.

Military planners are still anxious not to be dragged into an all-out war while they are also fighting in Gaza. The options being discussed aim to stop short of that: either a strike against a major Hizbullah target deep inside Lebanon, or an attack against Lebanese civilian infrastructure. But even these options could provoke Hizbullah to use its arsenal of long-range missiles to strike big population centres within Israel.

The bloodshed in Israel’s north could also affect the situation in Gaza. In recent weeks both Israeli and American officials have predicted a breakthrough in talks with Hamas. They hope for an agreement that would start with a temporary truce, and the release of some Israeli hostages held in Gaza, which could then lead to further talks about a lasting ceasefire.

Negotiators worry that escalation on the Israeli-Lebanese border could divert efforts from those talks. But it could also do the opposite: the desire to avoid war in Lebanon could incentivise Israel to go for a deal with Hamas. Hizbullah is unlikely to stop shooting at Israel until there is a pause in the disastrous war in Gaza. Increasingly, Israel’s only alternative to a ceasefire looks like war on multiple fronts.■