Lebanon fears Israeli retaliation
Published: Monday, Jul 29th 2024, 16:20
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In Lebanon, Israel is expected to react harshly to the rocket attack on the Golan Heights. Twelve children and young people were killed there on Saturday in an attack on the village of Madschdal Shams, which was attributed to the Shiite militia Hezbollah.
Israel's Security Cabinet authorized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Joav Galant late Sunday evening to decide on further action against Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to the Prime Minister's Office.
Netanyahu visited the site of the fatal incident, where members of the Druze religious community live. He said that those killed were "the children of all of us". Israel cannot go back to business as usual after the rocket attack, he said. "Our response will come, and it will be harsh," said the 74-year-old.
The Golan Heights are a strategically important rocky plateau. The area was conquered by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed in 1981. However, this was not recognized internationally. The Druze are a religious community that emerged from Shiite Islam. Today, they mainly live in Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan.
According to Hezbollah circles, the militia is on full alert. Should an attack occur, it would strike back.
Fearing an escalation, the Lebanese airline Middle East Airlines postponed the return of some of its flights in the evening. The Lufthansa Group announced that it was suspending its flights to the Lebanese capital Beirut for the time being. Return flights up to and including next Monday (August 5) will be suspended, the company announced. The companies affected are Swiss, Lufthansa and Eurowings. Jordan's Petra news agency reported on X that the national airline Royal Jordanian Airline is suspending its flights to Beirut up to and including Tuesday.
In view of the worsening situation, the German government has once again called on all German citizens in Lebanon to leave the country. According to a spokesperson for the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin, 1,300 people with German citizenship are still registered on the Elefand crisis preparedness list who say they are staying in Lebanon. "We have had a travel warning and an order to leave Lebanon since October 2023," he added.
Meanwhile, international diplomats are trying to calm the situation. US officials have contacted their counterparts in Israel and Lebanon and exchanged embassies with Iran in an attempt to de-escalate the situation, the US newspaper "Wall Street Journal" quoted Arab and European officials familiar with the matter as saying. All sides have indicated that they are not interested in escalating the conflict, it said.
Two dead after Israeli attack in Lebanon
Meanwhile, Lebanese state media reported that two people were killed in an Israeli attack in Lebanon on Monday night. The state news agency NNA reported that there were also casualties in the drone attack. One of them is said to have been a minor. She was reportedly on a balcony in a nearby building at the time of the attack.
Israel and the USA hold the Shia militia Hezbollah, which is allied with Iran, responsible for the attack on Majdal Shams. According to Israeli media reports, the victims were children and young people aged between 10 and 16. "This attack was carried out by the Lebanese Hezbollah. It was a Hezbollah rocket fired from an area under Hezbollah control," said Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the US National Security Council.
Hezbollah said in a statement that it had nothing to do with the attack. According to the US news portal "Axios", the militia is said to have told the United Nations that an Israeli defensive missile caused the explosion. Iran also blamed Israel itself for the attack in Majdal Shams. Israel's Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, however, said at the site of the impact that it was a Hezbollah Falak missile.
The US government has been in contact with the Israeli and Lebanese sides since the attack, said the spokeswoman for the National Security Council. US support for Israel's security is firm and unwavering, she said.
The rocket attack on the Golan came at a critical time for efforts to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza war. An escalation between Israel and Hezbollah could once again interrupt the indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas, in which Qatar, Egypt and the USA are acting as mediators, which have been dragging on for months. Israel's chief negotiator David Barnea only returned to Israel at the weekend after a recent round of negotiations in Rome. The talks will continue in the coming days, the Prime Minister's Office announced without giving details.
Erdogan and Israel threaten each other
Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened Israel with military intervention. "Just as we went into Nagorno-Karabakh, just as we went into Libya, we will do the same to them," he said at an event organized by his ruling AKP party in Rize on the Black Sea, referring to Israel. Erdogan was referring to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, where Erdogan supported the conflicting party Azerbaijan with drones, among other things. In the civil war in Libya, Ankara is supporting the internationally recognized government with military equipment and personnel.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz promptly warned the Turkish president: "Erdogan is following in the footsteps of Saddam Hussein and threatening to attack Israel. He should only remember what happened there and how it ended," Katz wrote late in the evening on Platform X. In 2003, US troops invaded Iraq. The military operation led to the overthrow of the then Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Three years later, Hussein was executed for massacring Kurds and Shiites.
Since the beginning of the Gaza war, relations between Israel and Turkey have deteriorated drastically. Erdogan called Hamas a "liberation organization" and compared Israel's head of government Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler. In mid-July, Erdogan declared that his country would no longer agree to cooperation between NATO and its partner Israel in future until lasting peace was achieved in the Palestinian territories.
©Keystone/SDA
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