American officials were scrambling on Sunday to stop a surge of fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border, authorities said, after a rocket from Lebanon Saturday killed at least 12 folks in Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, most of them children.
Israel responded to the jet with rocket attacks across Lebanon on Sunday morning. There were still lingering concerns that the jet launch’s fallout would cause an all-out war despite the initial Jewish response’s apparent lack of a major escalation. After returning early from a trip to the US, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with ministries and security officers on Sunday to discuss further measures. He was under intense private force to come up with a tougher response.
Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Syrian organization that has been attacking Israel in cooperation with Hamas, is the target of Israeli jet attacks on Majdal Shams, a Druse Muslim community. Hezbollah has denied it was concerned. There is “every evidence” that Hezbollah fired the rocket, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who spoke on Sunday in Tokyo.
According to Lebanon’s foreign secretary, Abdallah Bou Habib, US officials were working on Sunday to have the conflicts and requested that Lebanon’s government send a message to Hezbollah to display caution in the event of a more Israeli response. According to a European standard, European officials also exchanged emails between Israel and Hezbollah. Due to its original position as a European colony following World War I, France still has some control in Lebanon.
The backchannel politics was conducted in response to dangers from both Iran and Israel. The Persian foreign government warned Israel of “unforeseen effects” of any Jewish increase, while Israel’s education secretary, Yoav Kisch, called for a strong reaction “even if it means entering into an all-out battle”.
The rocket strike on Saturday, which struck children at a soccer field, was the deadliest assault on Israeli-controlled territory since Israel and Hezbollah started exchange missile and rocket fire in October. In order to deter similar attacks, some Israelis want Netanyahu to authorize a full-scale ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Others worry that a similar action would cause Hezbollah, whose arsenal is regarded as being larger and more sophisticated than almost any other nonstate actor in the area, to launch a far-feasier offensive. Israeli commanders are also averse to starting a second major conflict while the conflict in Gaza is still raging.
During the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, Israel seized the territory that was once owned by Syria. In 1981, Israel annexed the territory, a decision that not the majority of the world was aware of.
