Netanyahu pledges 'severe' response to Golan Heights attack

A person mourns as he embraces the picture of his loved one killed at a soccer pitch by a rocket Israel says was fired from Lebanon, in Majdal Shams, a Druze village in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, July 29, 2024. [Reuters]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Monday to carry out a strong response to a rocket strike that killed 12 children in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights.

Netanyahu visited the attack site Monday, where he reiterated Israel's accusation that the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group was responsible. Hezbollah, which has traded fire with Israeli forces across the border since the launch of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, has denied responsibility.

"These children are our children, they are the children of all of us," Netanyahu said. "The state of Israel will not and cannot overlook this. Our response will come, and it will be severe."

His visit was not entirely embraced, with several hundred family members of the victims and community members protesting that Netanyahu was exploiting the situation for political gain.

The attack has further raised fears of an escalated conflict in the region where Hezbollah and Yemen's Houthi militants, both of which are backed by Iran, have been carrying out attacks they say are in support of Hamas.

Jonathan Ruhe, director of foreign policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told VOA that the potential for escalation between Israel and Hezbollah is the highest it has been since the October start of the Gaza war.

"I think both sides had agreed to some unspoken rules of the game, as they say, in which the attacks would continue, but both sides implicitly recognized sort of thresholds which they would not attack on the other side," Ruhe said. "I think Israel finds itself between a rock and a hard place because it feels compunction to change those rules of the game to convince Hezbollah that attacks like what happened on Saturday can no longer continue."

The United Nations and others have been working in recent days to try to bring down the tensions.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday that the United States was "confident" about the prospect of avoiding a wider war.

Nimrod Goren, senior fellow for Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute, told VOA that prior efforts to de-escalate the Israel-Hezbollah situation were linked to the push to achieve a cease-fire in Gaza.

But those talks have stretched on for months without achieving an agreement.

"There is a need for another sort of off-ramp between Israel and Hezbollah because the current situation, as we see happening, could not last for a longer time," Goren said. "The price on both sides is becoming very significant."

Hezbollah said it fired a volley of rockets Monday at Israel, which followed an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon that killed two people.

Israeli forces also carried out ground attacks and airstrikes Monday in the southern Gaza Strip.

Israel's military said its Gaza operations included fighting in Rafah and Khan Younis, as well as airstrikes targeting about 35 Hamas targets throughout the Gaza Strip during the past day.

The war in Gaza began with the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel in which the militants killed 1,200 people and took about 250 hostage.

Israel's military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 39,300 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in Gaza which does not differentiate between militants and civilians in its count.