On 27 July, 12 children from the Druze community of the Golan Heights were slaughtered when an Iranian Falaq 1 missile hit a soccer field in the town of Majdal Shams. The office of Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, issued a terse statement on the same day vowing that the country would ‘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’. This incident was the single bloodiest attack on an Israeli target since the massacres of 7 October. It represented a severe escalation in the conflict which has been under way in the Israel-Lebanon border area and its environs since Hezbollah opened its campaign of support for Hamas in Gaza.
The region now awaits Israel’s response, amid fears of a lurch towards all-out war on this front. Citizens of the UK, US and Germany have been urged to leave Lebanon.
Israel would need the US to re-supply them in the event of a war with Hezbollah
So what is likely to happen next? It may be taken as a certainty that Israel will not simply let the matter rest.
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