JERUSALEM — Civilians on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border braced Monday for the Israeli army to launch a counterstrike — of a scale, scope and intensity that is still unknown — after Israel’s security cabinet authorized a military response to the weekend rocket attack from Lebanon that killed 12 people, most of them teenagers and children.
The region was gripped with uncertainty, hoping for a calibrated, pinpoint response but prepping for a widespread assault that diplomats warned could erupt into a regional war. Residents of Beirut stocked up on emergency supplies in case the expected strikes reached as far the Lebanese capital. Hezbollah militants threatened to target Haifa and other Israeli cities if it did.
Multiple airlines suspended flights in and out of Beirut. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hinted to supporters that Turkey could “enter” Israel if necessary.
“The concerns that it could spin out of control are very high,” said an Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
Israel’s security cabinet authorized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister late Sunday to decide on the “manner and timing” of Israel’s response to Saturday’s rocket strike on a crowded soccer field in Majdal Shams, a Druze village in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
“For me, a Jewish child murdered … on October 7 or a Druze child murdered in the Golan Heights is the same thing,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Monday on a visit to the village. “Hezbollah will pay a price for this — our actions will speak.”
Israel’s military struck a number of Hezbollah targets deep inside Lebanon on Sunday. Hussein Fakih, a spokesman for Lebanon’s civil defense, said in an interview that two people were killed and three people, including a child, were injured in a Monday strike on the road between Chaqra and Meiss El Jabal, in southeastern Lebanon. Later Monday, Hezbollah announced the deaths of two of its members.
But Israel’s response so far has stopped short of the fierce retaliation Netanyahu pledged after the strike, the deadliest single attack on Israel since Hamas’s Oct. 7 rampage. The Israel Defense Forces released a list on Sunday of victims who were 10 to 16 years old.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, has denied any connection to the attack, which followed months of cross-border skirmishes between the militant group and Israel’s military. Israeli and American officials say the evidence is incontrovertible that the weapon was an Iranian rocket fired from a Hezbollah position.
Netanyahu is under pressure to mount a decisive blow from tens of thousands of border residents who have been displaced from their homes for months. Gallant has pushed previously for Israel to drive Hezbollah away from the frontier and degrade its considerable military capabilities.
But a flurry of diplomatic efforts from Washington, Paris and regional capitals commenced within hours of the attack, according to Western and Israeli officials familiar with the efforts to calm the situation. U.S. officials said Israel has a right to respond to the attack but also urged its ally to show restraint.
Early signals suggested that Jerusalem may be listening. The Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper quoted unnamed Israeli officials describing the likely operation as “limited but significant.”
Israel’s dilemma, according to current and former security officials, is how to answer the attack without leaving Hezbollah with no choice but to escalate in turn — which might draw Iran more directly into the fight. The Israeli military keeps a range of target scenarios on the shelf, regularly updated with new intelligence, according to a military official who described readiness planning to The Washington Post on a visit to the border zone in the spring.
Planners will also be looking at recent responses. This month, following a drone attack launched by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen that killed one person in Tel Aviv, Israel responded a day later with a withering strike that severely damaged a major Yemeni port.
In April, after Israel and allies shot down most of an unprecedented barrage of missiles and drones fired from Iran, the military answered with a calibrated counterstrike that showed its ability to reach into Iranian territory but did minimal damage. Both sides stood down.
One day after scenes from a mass funeral and devastated mourners from Majdal Shams, tensions remained high.
Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, hit back at vague suggestions Sunday from Erdogan that Turkey could enter Israel as it had done in the past in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in Azerbaijan.
Katz and Turkish leaders, who have been sharply critical of Israel’s war in Gaza, have been exchanging hot-tempered statements for months.
“Just as the genocidal Hitler met his end, so will the genocidal Netanyahu,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry posted Monday on social media.
Erdogan did not provide any more detail in his remarks, which were made in a televised address in his hometown, according to Reuters. A Turkish political analyst downplayed the significance of the comment, saying it was in keeping with Erdogan’s recent bellicose rhetoric toward Israel.
Here’s what else to know
Some major airlines are suspending and rescheduling flights, citing tension in the Middle East. Air France said Monday that flights between Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Beirut are suspended Monday and Tuesday, while German airline Lufthansa said it was suspending flights to Beirut through Aug. 5. Lebanon’s main airline, Middle East Airlines, rescheduled flights to and from Beirut on Sunday and Monday, citing “technical reasons related to the distribution of insurance risks.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed his condolences for those killed in the Majdal Shams attack in a call with Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday, in addition to emphasizing “the importance of preventing escalation of the conflict,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said. British Foreign Minister David Lammy said on social media he spoke to Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati about the escalating tensions, with both agreeing that “widening of the conflict in the region is in nobody’s interest.”
The majority of the Gaza Strip is under evacuation orders from Israel, with only 14 percent unaffected, according to Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. The orders are “creating havoc + panic,” he wrote on X, and people often have very little time to flee. More than 200,000 Palestinians were displaced over the past week because of the orders, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on social media.
Conditions in Israeli prisons have deteriorated dangerously since Oct. 7, rights groups say, as detailed in a Post report. The Post spoke to former Palestinian prisoners and lawyers and reviewed autopsy reports and court records to reveal rampant violence and deprivation in Israel’s prison system, with routine beatings — usually with batons and sometimes with dogs — as well as psychological abuse and denial of sufficient food and medical care.
At least 39,363 people have been killed and 90,923 injured in Gaza since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, including more than 300 soldiers, and says 329 soldiers have been killed since the launch of its military operation in Gaza.
Kareem Fahim and Suzan Haidamous in Beirut and Michael Birnbaum in Tokyo contributed to this report.
