July 29, 2024

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IntelBrief: High-Casualty Attack Has the Potential to Escalate Ongoing Conflict

AP Photo/Hussein Malla

Israeli and U.S. officials blamed Lebanese Hezbollah for a rocket attack on Saturday that killed 12 Druze children and teenagers and injured 20 others when a missile struck a soccer field in the Golan Heights city of Majdal Shams. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six-Day War in 1967 and annexed the territory in 1981, despite widespread international condemnation. The international community, with the exception of Israel and the United States, regards the Golan Heights as Syrian territory under Israeli occupation. The U.S. recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights on March 25, 2019, under President Donald Trump.

Hezbollah denied responsibility for the high-civilian-casualty attack but admitted to conducting several other strikes on Israeli targets that Saturday. However, the Israeli military concluded that a Hezbollah missile struck Majdal Shams, using the Iran-supplied Falaq-1 rocket armed with 110-pound warheads—a more powerful munition than Hezbollah has typically used since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stated that the Majdal Shams strike was the single largest civilian casualty event in Israel since October 7. Likely due to the target's location, which the Arab and Muslim world considers Syrian land occupied by Israel, the high casualty count, and the identity of the victims as Druze Arabs, Hezbollah has insisted on denying their involvement.

The attack immediately sent U.S., European, and regional officials scrambling to prevent an escalation that might further inflame the region already beset by warfare on numerous fronts. The provocation comes just three months after the major Iranian missile and drone barrage on Israel, which was almost fully intercepted through the direct defensive involvement of U.S. and moderate Arab forces. The Majdal Shams strike constituted the type of incident that many experts have long assessed might tip the balance from relatively limited Israel-Hezbollah cross-border exchanges to devastating all-out conflict.

The most pressing task for U.S. officials appeared to be delaying any Israeli retaliation to allow time for diplomacy to achieve de-escalation. Shortly after the strike, which prompted Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to accelerate his return to Israel following his U.S. visit, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz stated that the attack "crossed all red lines, and the response will be in accordance." On Sunday, Israel's security cabinet authorized Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to decide on the "manner and timing" of the response, according to Netanyahu's office. While counseling Israel to carefully calibrate its retaliatory response, U.S. officials also sought to signal to Hezbollah and its main patrons in Tehran that the U.S. is a key partner of Israel and moderate Arab states against Iran's "Axis of Resistance," which includes both Hezbollah and Hamas.

According to a statement after the attack from the spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council (NSC): “Israel continues to face severe threats to its security, as the world saw today, and the United States will continue to support efforts to end these terrible attacks along the Blue Line [informal Israel-Lebanon border], which must be a top priority…Our support for Israel’s security is iron-clad and unwavering against all Iranian-backed terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hezbollah.” Israel was reported to have begun counterstrikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon as of Sunday. Still, the attacks did not include any IDF ground movement into Lebanon and appear, at least thus far, to stop well short of a major escalation.

The U.S., by virtue of its longstanding military and financial support for Israel, is the only global player with any significant influence over Israeli decision-making. U.S. and global officials also perceive they can intercede with Hezbollah, Iran, and other Lebanese communities to contain any Hezbollah response to Israel’s retaliation. According to press reports quoting Arab and European officials familiar with the matter, U.S. officials have reached out not only to their counterparts in Israel but also in Lebanon to try to de-escalate tensions. U.S. officials also reportedly traded messages with Iran, which is set to inaugurate a reformist president who won the special presidential elections in July and has pledged to improve relations with the U.S. and Western countries.

Among other significant reactions, the Lebanese government, which has sought to avoid being drawn into another devastating war with Israel at all costs, condemned "all acts of violence and aggression against all civilians." Despite having limited influence over the powerful Iranian-armed group, the government also called for an immediate cease-fire. U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, whose office oversees the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL), stated, "We urge the parties to exercise maximum restraint and to put a stop to the ongoing intensified exchanges of fire. It could ignite a wider conflagration that would engulf the entire region in a catastrophe beyond belief." French officials, who have partnered with their U.S. counterparts to try to reduce tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border since October 7, also called for restraint by both Israel and Hezbollah.

However, it is not clear whether any of the diplomacy with Hezbollah would succeed, if Israel escalates beyond modest retaliatory attacks. Reportedly communicating through Lebanon’s longtime parliament speaker Nabih Berri, head of the Shia Amal movement, Hezbollah warned U.S. and UNIFIL officials that a major Israeli retaliatory operation will result in a “massive” Hezbollah response, even if it results in full-scale war.

The potential for escalation between Hezbollah and Israel has instilled greater urgency in the U.S. and regional diplomatic efforts to forge a cease-fire deal in Gaza. Hezbollah has long said that it will not cease firing on Israeli military installations in northern Israel until the IDF withdraws from Gaza and that war ends. Yet, at the same time, the Majdal Shams attack could further complicate the Gaza ceasefire negotiations, which U.S. officials have said in recent days are close to achieving an agreement. Talks on a Gaza ceasefire and war termination resumed Sunday in Rome, Italy. CIA Director William Burns, Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, Mossad Director David Barnea, and Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani are leading discussions to seek a resolution to the Gaza war. The officials met on Sunday to discuss an updated proposal for a hostage release deal with Hamas that Israel relayed to the White House on Saturday.

At the same time, the same disincentives for Hezbollah-Israel escalation that have prevailed since October 7 are still in place. The 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war devastated Lebanon’s infrastructure, and a new conflict would likely result in even more destruction than was the case then. A major conflict would come at a time when the Lebanese economy has been in a significant downturn, including a near collapse of its banking system for several years. Lebanon’s other major communities – Maronite Christians, Sunni Muslims, and the Druze – have warned Hezbollah not to embroil Lebanon in another conflict with Israel, but the communities do not have the military capabilities to control or disarm Hezbollah.

Israel’s leaders acknowledge they would face a Hezbollah military capability far more potent than they did in 2006. Iran has expanded and upgraded the group’s arsenal to a stockpile of at least 150,000 missiles and rockets, many of which are precision-guided, that can hit anywhere in Israel and likely strike key infrastructure facilities. IDF commanders also acknowledge publicly that the force is tired after nine months of ground war in the Gaza Strip and needs to be refreshed before it can undertake ground operations inside Lebanon.

An IDF ground assault would face a Hezbollah force far more capable than that of Hamas, which has killed more than 300 IDF personnel thus far in Gaza. Israeli – and U.S. – considerations also include the potential for the Islamic Republic of Iran to come to Hezbollah’s defense, particularly if the movement were on the verge of essential destruction. Hezbollah is Iran’s first, closest, and most potent Axis of Resistance partner. Iran’s missile and armed drone barrage against Israel in April - which came after a series of Israeli strikes on high-level Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders in Syria - demonstrates that Iran is willing to run significant risks to defend what it considers its vital interests.