Israel's government is preparing a response to the attack on the Golan Heights, where at least twelve children and young people were killed.
Israeli ministers have turned up the heat against Hezbollah significantly, and concerns about escalation in the region are high.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned home early from his visit to the USA after the attack on Saturday. On Sunday, he held a meeting on how the country should react.
In the evening, it was announced that the security cabinet had given the Prime Minister and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant a free hand to decide how and when Israel would respond to the attack.
Earlier on Sunday, it was reported that they had carried out a first response "deep inside Lebanese territory".
But the pressure is high to now do something more comprehensive.
Israel's Foreign Ministry says that the Islamist Hezbollah has "crossed all boundaries" with the "massacre" in the village of Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights on Saturday evening, according to AFP.
Defense Minister Gallant has given orders to prepare for "any possible development" and to be "in full readiness", writes the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The country's Education Minister Yoav Kisch writes on the platform X that he expects the government to respond "with full force" even if it would mean full-scale war.
Hezbollah denies
Israel's military claims that it was one of Hezbollah's rockets that hit a football field in the village of Majdal Shams. The village is located in the northern part of the Golan Heights, an area that Israel captured from Syria and later annexed.
Hezbollah, however, continues to deny that it was behind the attack, but has stated that it attacked Israeli military targets in response to Israeli attacks the day before.
Several analysts speculate that it may have been a misdirected Hezbollah rocket that hit Majdal Shams. It cannot be entirely ruled out that it was a misdirected Israeli air defense fire, says Riad Kahwaji, a military analyst at the Dubai-based institute Inegma, to the news agency AFP.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says that everything points to Hezbollah being guilty.
From several quarters, including the EU, there are calls for an independent international investigation into the incident.
Several young people killed
The rocket attack on the village of Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights killed at least twelve people, all between ten and twenty years old, according to Israeli media. At least twenty people are reported to have been injured.
Majdal Shams still has a predominantly Arab population, Druze.
UN Secretary-General condemns the attack and urges all parties to "maximum restraint".
Israel and the Iran-backed militia group Hezbollah have almost daily exchanged fire across the border since the Gaza War began after the terrorist-stamped Hamas attack on Israel in October last year.
An Islamist movement, created in the early 1980s as a reaction to a conflict situation similar to today's. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) had used southern Lebanon as a base for attacks on northern Israel, which led Israel to invade in 1982.
Inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran a few years earlier, Lebanese Islamists formed Hezbollah ("God's party"), a name chosen by the Iranian leader Khomeini.
An explicitly stated main goal has been to expel all colonialists. In practice, this has meant that much of the armed struggle has been directed against Israel – seen as the representative of the Western world in the Middle East.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah functions as "a state within a state", with a military power at least as great as the country's army and a strong role in politics and social life.
The Golan Heights, located on Israel's border with Syria, have a vital military-strategic location. During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel took large parts of the area from Syria and annexed it in 1981, an area of about 1,200 square kilometers.
Only the USA has recognized Israel's sovereignty over the area, a decision made in 2019 by then-President Donald Trump.
Tens of thousands of Syrians and Palestinians fled or were expelled from the Golan Heights following Israel's capture. However, around 23,000 Arabs, mostly Druze, still live in the area. Since Israel's capture, about the same number of Israeli settlers have moved to the area. The settlements are illegal according to international law.
