- author, Rafi Berg
- role, BBC News
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Israel’s security cabinet has given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the defence minister the authority to decide how and when to retaliate against deadly rocket attacks that Israel and the United States say were carried out by the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah.
Ministers held an emergency meeting after 12 Druze children and young people were killed in an attack on Saturday evening in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which Hezbollah denied.
It was the deadliest cross-border incident in months of gunfire between the two countries.
The attack has raised fears that what have so far been relatively contained hostilities could escalate into all-out war.
Western governments have called on Israel to exercise restraint.
The White House said it had “been in continuous consultation with our Israeli and Lebanese counterparts since the horrific attack” on a sports field in the Druze town of Majdal Shams.
“We are also working on a diplomatic solution along the Blue Line,” he said. [the unofficial frontier between Israel and Lebanon] Then all attacks will come to a complete end.”
Lebanese state media said two people were killed in an Israeli drone strike on Monday morning outside the Lebanese town of Shaqra, about 6.5 kilometers (4 miles) from the Israeli border. Hezbollah said the two killed were Hezbollah fighters. Israel has not commented on the report.
Meanwhile, Air France has become the latest airline to suspend flights to and from Beirut amid growing fears of Israeli retaliation, joining Lufthansa, Swiss International Air Lines and Eurowings in suspending services there.
In Majdal Shams, funerals for the young victims were held in a climate of widespread grief on Sunday, with thousands of people gathering to watch as coffins draped in white shrouds were carried through the town.
The attack is most devastating for the Druze, who have lived in the Golan Heights for centuries and are part of an Arabic-speaking ethnic and religious group based in Lebanon, Syria, the Golan Heights and northern Israel.
The residents of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights have been under Israeli rule since Israel seized the area from Syria in the 1967 war, but many maintain their loyalty to Syria. About 21,000 people live on the rocky plateau, about 20% of whom have taken Israeli citizenship.
The attack on Majdal Shams sparked outrage across Israel and among the Druze community of about 110,000 people who also live in Israel.
Netanyahu cut short a visit to the United States after the attack and returned to Israel, where he met with defense officials before convening a security cabinet meeting on Sunday.
After the hours-long meeting, the prime minister’s office released a short statement saying only that “ministers authorized the prime minister and the defence minister to decide how and when to respond to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation.”
Earlier, Netanyahu offered his condolences to Sheikh Muaffaq Tarif, the spiritual leader of Israel’s Druze sect, and said Hezbollah “will pay a heavy price that it has not paid so far.”
Hezbollah has strongly denied being behind the attack and reportedly blamed the bloodshed on a failed Israeli missile interceptor.
Israeli army chief of staff Hergi Halevi said in a statement on Sunday that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) knew “exactly where the rocket was launched from.”
General Halevi identified it as an Iranian-made unguided surface-to-surface Falak rocket with a 53-kilogram warhead. “This is a Hezbollah rocket. Whoever fires such a rocket into a civilian area wants to kill civilians, kill children,” he said.
Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, previously sporadic, has intensified since Hezbollah fired rockets at Israeli positions a day after a deadly Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. Hezbollah says it is acting in support of the Palestinians.
