BICOM

What’s happened: Israelis are bracing for a significant escalation in the north, following Saturday’s deadly Hezbollah strike on a football field in the Golan Heights which killed 12 children.

• The rocket attack, which also left 40 injured, targeted the Majdal Shams community late Saturday afternoon. Despite Hezbollah denials of responsibility, the IDF concluded that the attack was carried out by the Iranian-backed group, using an Iranian Falaq-1 rocket with a warhead of over 110 pounds of explosives, fired from southeastern Lebanon.
• The US echoed Israel’s attribution of the attack to Hezbollah, National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson saying “it was their rocket, and launched from an area they control… Our support for Israel’s security is ironclad,” Watson added, “and unwavering against all Iran-backed threats, including Hezbollah,”  which, “started firing at Israel on October 8, claiming solidarity with Hamas, another terror organisation in Iran’s so-called ‘Axis of Resistance.’”
• UK Ambassador to Israel Simon Walters wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that it was “especially horrific that the target was children playing football. Our hearts go to all the families of all of those who were killed or injured, and to the entire Druze population.” Condemnations of Hezbollah also followed from other western allies, including Germany, France, and Canada.
• The 12 fatalities were all aged between 10 and 20 and all from the Druze community. They were: Ameer Rabeea Abu Saleh, 16, Iseel Nasha’at Ayoub, 12, Hazem Akram Abu Saleh, 15, Milad Muadad Alsha’ar, 10, Alma Ayman Fakher Eldin, 11, Naji Taher Alhalabi, 11, Johnny Wadeea Ibrahim, 13, Yazan Nayeif Abu Saleh, 12, Fajer Laith Abu Saleh, 16, Vinees Adham Alsafadi, 11 Nathem Fakher Saeb, 16, and Jifara Ibrahim, 11.
• The Saleh family lost four brothers in the attack.
• Of the injured, two children remain in critical condition, and one in moderate condition. All have sustained abdominal injuries, chest injuries, and limb fractures.
• Israeli leaders swiftly promised a firm response. “I can say that the State of Israel will not allow this incident to pass quietly. We are not going to go about business as usual,” said Prime Minister Netanyahu.
• IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said, “this incident will lead to a very, very significant response. We’re going to hit Hezbollah hard; we’re going to take Hezbollah back in time. We’re going to bring the families back to their homes in the north safely.”
• The Foreign Ministry said Hezbollah had “crossed all red lines” with the attack. “This is not an army fighting another army, rather it is a terrorist organisation deliberately shooting at civilians.”
• Netanyahu cut short his visit to the US to return to Israel. The security cabinet then met yesterday afternoon to discuss Israel’s response, and authorised Netanyahu and Defence Minister Gallant to decide on the “manner and timing” of Israel’s retaliation. Far-right ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich, who have repeatedly and loudly called for tougher Israeli policy on all fronts, abstained from the vote.
• Speaking in Tokyo, US Secretary of State Blinken “emphasize[d] (Israel’s) right to defend its citizens and our determination to make sure that they’re able to do that,” while adding that “we also don’t want to see the conflict escalate. We don’t want to see it spread. It’s so important that we help defuse that conflict, not only prevent it from escalating, prevent it from spreading, but to defuse it because you have so many people in both countries, in both Israel and Lebanon, who’ve been displaced from their homes.”
• Limited Israeli responses against Hezbollah operatives have already begun. Reports this morning claim that two died and three were injured in an Israeli drone strike outside the southern Lebanese town of Shaqra. In a separate attack, one person was killed and four wounded in Israeli airstrikes on a car and motorcycle driving between the towns of Mays al-Jabal and Shaqra in southern Lebanon.
• Lebanese and Palestinian sources also reported heavy shelling in the town of Houla this morning. The IDF also shot down a drone which crossed into the Western Galilee from Lebanon. The intrusion prompted alarms in Yaara and Adamit, Israeli towns near the Lebanese border.
• In a further statement of intent, earlier on Saturday, Hezbollah also launched a drone towards Israel’s Karish offshore natural gas platforms. The drone was intercepted by the Israeli Navy’s Saar 6 missile boat, but the attack served as a warning that Hezbollah has the capacity to launch more precise weapons to target Israeli energy infrastructure.

Context: The attack on Saturday was the deadliest strike on civilians carried out by Hezbollah since the Second Lebanon War, and the greatest loss of civilians on the Israeli side since October 7th.

• The initial Hezbollah denial is likely a result of their embarrassment at killing Druze children and an awareness that they have significantly escalated the simmering conflict by striking civilians. It appears likely that Hezbollah fired heavy but inaccurate rockets aimed at the IDF base on Mount Hermon, situated above Majdal Shams, and that one of the rockets overshot its intended target, causing devastation.
• Sirens were sounded in the community, but due to the close proximity and a matter of seconds there was no time to reach a protected space.
• The Druze of the Golan have a complicated relationship with the State of Israel. Taken over in the 1967 Six Day War, many held onto their Syrian identity despite Israel formally extending its laws, jurisdiction and administration to the Golan Heights in 1981.
• Druze of the Golan have the option of applying for Israeli citizenship, many more have done so in the last decade and half after observing at close quarters the regime violence during the Syrian civil war.
• The attack in Majdal Shams will also raise tension inside Lebanon and Syria, which both hold significant Druze communities and place Hezbollah in a difficult domestic predicament.
• Druze are traditionally loyal to their home country, hence residual loyalty of some Golan Druze to Syria, whilst  many of their Druze brethren in the Galilee proudly serve in the IDF and are fully integrated into Israeli society.
• The Israeli security cabinet decision to empower the prime minister and defence minister to decide on the Israeli response serves two purposes; it cuts the need to reconvene the cabinet, thereby adding to the element of surprise. Secondly, it excludes the more extreme government ministers from the decision-making process.
• Despite significant damage, Hezbollah attacks and Israeli responses have been carefully weighted, with both sides understanding the ‘rules of the game’, whereby fatal strikes are reciprocated but with an emphasis on avoiding the escalation to all-out war.

Looking ahead: In calibrating its response, Israel will need to carefully calibrate between a forceful response which underlines that attacks of this kind cannot go unanswered, with a desire to prevent further escalation.

• Among the possible responses being considered are:
  • Targeting a strategic Hezbollah site: a weapons depot or military infrastructure;
  • A strike on Lebanese civilian infrastructure, such as an energy depot or transport hub. An attack of this nature would serve the purpose of prompting the Lebanese government to act to restrain Hezbollah. However, it also runs the risk of uniting Lebanon’s various communities behind Hezbollah.
  • An attack on Hezbollah sites in Beirut which, with the exception of the targeted strike on Hamas leader al-Arouri in January, have largely been avoided.
  • Targeted assassinations of senior Hezbollah figures.