Israel seeks to ‘hurt’ Hezbollah without sparking all-out war in Mid-East
BEIRUT – Arabtelegraph – Israel wants to hurt Hezbollah but not drag the Middle East into all-out war, two Israeli officials said on July 29, as Lebanon braced itself for retaliation after a rocket strike that killed 12 children and teenagers in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Two other Israeli officials said Israel was preparing for the possibility of a few days of fighting following the July 28 rocket strike at a sports field in a Druze village.
“The estimation is that the response will not lead to an all-out war,” said one of the four officials, a diplomatic source. “That would not be in our interest at this point.” An Israeli drone strike killed two people and wounded three more in southern Lebanon on July 29.
Late on July 28, Israel’s security Cabinet authorised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to decide on the “manner and timing” of a response to the rocket strike.
Israel and the United States blamed Lebanon’s Hezbollah for the July 27 strike. The Iran-backed group has denied any role.
The incident, in which a missile hit a sports field in the Golan Heights, has risked tipping the fragile stand-off into a more serious escalation, drawing international calls on both sides to show restraint.
There was no immediate indication of what action Israel may take, but the country’s largest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, quoted unnamed officials as saying the response would be “limited but significant”.
The report said options for retaliation ranged from a limited but “photogenic” attack on infrastructure, including bridges, power plants and ports, to hitting Hezbollah weapons depots or targeting high-level Hezbollah commanders.
The three people in southern Lebanon wounded in the Israeli drone strike on July 29 included an infant, an official in the Lebanese civil defence told Reuters. The rescue service did not say whether the two other people who died were fighters or civilians.
The Israeli military said its air defences downed a drone that crossed from Lebanon into the area of Western Galilee on July 29.
Flights at Beirut’s international airport have been cancelled or delayed as airlines responded to the possibility of an Israeli response.
Both Israel and Hezbollah have appeared at pains to avoid a full-scale war since they began trading blows in October in a conflict ignited by the Gaza war.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on July 28 he does not want to see an escalation of conflict on Israel’s northern border and reiterated US support for Israel.
“I emphasise (Israel’s) right to defend its citizens and our determination to make sure that they’re able to do that,” Mr Blinken said during a news conference in Tokyo. “But we also don’t want to see the conflict escalate. We don’t want to see it spread.”
Hezbollah has denied firing the rocket that killed the youngsters, but it said at the time that it fired a missile against a military target in the Golan Heights, a border area Israel seized from Syria after the 1967 Middle East war and has since annexed in a move not generally recognised internationally. REUTERS