Rocket attack could spark Israel-Hezbollah war

In May, Amos Hochstein, the special envoy of the US President Joe Biden administration in charge of de-escalating tensions between Israel and the armed group Hezbollah, expressed concern about the risk of war erupting out of control in the region.

"What I worry about every day is that something goes wrong or miscalculates. A strike on a school bus or some other civilian target could force the political system of either side to retaliate in a way that would drag us into war. That could happen even if both sides understand that full-scale or larger-scale war is not in anyone's interest," Hochstein said.

The incident that Mr. Hochstein feared happened. On July 27, Hezbollah announced that it had launched a Falaq-1 rocket attack on an Israeli military target near the town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights.

Israel later announced that a rocket launched by Hezbollah from Shebaa, southern Lebanon, had hit a football field in the town of Majdal Shams, killing 12 teenagers and injuring many others.

Hezbollah denied any involvement in the incident. Some pro-Hezbollah media outlets claimed that an interceptor missile from Israel's Iron Dome system missed its target and crashed into the football field. However, the US, Israel's ally, denied this, saying the attack was carried out by Hezbollah. "It was their rocket and it was launched from an area they control," the White House said.

Riad Kahwaji, Director of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, said that the Israeli military base that Hezbollah targeted was located about 2.4 km from the town of Majdal Shams, making it possible that the soccer field was hit due to rocket errors.

The Israeli military has vowed to respond decisively, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to make Hezbollah "pay an unprecedented price." The Israeli security cabinet has also authorized the prime minister and defense minister to decide when and how to respond.

Iran, Hezbollah's biggest backer, warned Israel that "any reckless military action" in Lebanon could lead to "unforeseeable consequences." The comments from both sides raised concerns about the all-out war that Mr Hochstein warned could happen.

"We are moving towards the brink of a full-scale war against Hezbollah," Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on the evening of July 27.

"We are fed up with empty rhetoric and weak action. The only way to stop all this, to stop the enemy from attacking us, is to fight back. There is no other way," said former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

For months, the international community has been trying to find a way to de-escalate tensions between Israel and Hezbollah. Hezbollah is considered the most powerful Iranian-backed force, possessing an estimated 150,000 missiles and rockets, causing many to fear that a full-scale war would devastate Lebanon and cause serious damage to Israel.

Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the US, warned that the current situation "has the potential to create a situation we have not seen in the region: a major war that could drag the entire Gulf into the vortex". Miller added that the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah could lead to a direct confrontation between the US and Iran.

However, over the past 10 months, every time Israel, Hezbollah and Iran came close to war, they took a “tactical step back”. In January, Israel assassinated a senior Hamas leader in Beirut, but the tensions did not lead to all-out war.

Israel conducted an airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, in April, killing a top commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran then launched an unprecedented missile and drone attack on Israel, but chose a desert target to prevent the two sides from escalating into a full-scale war.

Analysts say the status quo is unlikely to continue. Tens of thousands of Israelis have fled their homes. Large swaths of northern Israel bordering Lebanon are ghost towns. Similar scenes are unfolding along the southern Lebanese border.

Cross-border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has flared since Israel launched an offensive against Hamas in Gaza in October 2023. Declaring solidarity with the Palestinians, Hezbollah has fired artillery and rockets at sites on Israel's northern border and the Golan Heights, which Tel Aviv controlled after the 1967 war and annexed in 1981.

Israel has also carried out retaliatory strikes in southern Lebanon and deeper into its neighbor. The Israeli strikes have so far killed more than 450 people in Lebanon, including about 100 civilians. Israel has also recorded about 40 deaths in cross-border fighting.

But the question now is how far Israel will go in response to the stadium raid, which Tel Aviv described as the deadliest attack on civilians since a Hamas raid in October 2023.

Esther Parpara, a university employee in Haifa less than 50 kilometers from the Israel-Lebanon border, is increasingly concerned about becoming a target of Hezbollah.

"In the last war with Hezbollah in 2006, their weapons reached Haifa. This is a very dangerous time. I am avoiding crowded places. We do not want war, but Hezbollah wants to destroy the Israeli people. How can we let them do that without defending ourselves?", Parpara said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel had the right to protect its citizens and Washington was determined to ensure Tel Aviv could do so. However, he added that "we do not want to see the conflict escalate and spread." He said the best way to avoid all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah was to reach a ceasefire in Gaza.

However, observers say that this is only a temporary solution. Israel wants to completely eliminate the threat from Hezbollah and push this force back to the northern bank of the Litani River, according to the boundary specified in the UN Security Council resolution to end the 2006 war.

“If the world does not push Hezbollah away from its borders, Israel will do it,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav said last December.

Despite Israel's threatening warnings, Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said the risk of all-out war was unlikely in the near future, as neither side wanted this scenario.

"I don't think the Israeli Prime Minister wants a full-scale war right now, because it will lead to unpredictable and uncontrollable consequences. And once it escalates, it will also drag Iran into it," she said.

However, Mark Lowen, an analyst atBBC, has a different view. He believes that Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is seeing his domestic approval ratings decline due to the prolonged war in Gaza, may hedge his bets by expanding the war to Lebanon to pursue domestic political goals.

Special envoy Hochstein has issued a similar warning. "Wars throughout history have started even when leaders did not want them to, because they had no other choice," he said.