Will an attack on the occupied Golan Heights push Israel and Hezbollah into war? | News on the Israel-Palestine conflict

Fears of a full-scale regional war are growing again after a missile hit a soccer field in a Druze community in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, killing 12 children and young people and injuring 30 others.

Hezbollah strongly denied any responsibility, while Israel blamed the Lebanese group for the deadly attack.

On Sunday, Israel said it had attacked several Hezbollah sites in Lebanon, saying the armed group had crossed a “red line” and would pay a “heavy price” not seen since deadly border fighting began on October 8.

Let’s look at everything we know about the incident and why it matters.

Who was responsible?

The Israeli military claimed it had found evidence on the ground that an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket had fallen onto the soccer field. A Hezbollah commander had directed the attack from a launch site in Shebaa in southern Lebanon, it said.

Hezbollah immediately issued a statement saying it “categorically denies” being behind the attack.

The group systematically claims responsibility for attacks on Israeli positions on a daily basis and reported 12 attacks on Saturday. Since the war began, it has also claimed responsibility for hundreds of attacks using Falaq and Katyusha rockets, some of which have targeted military headquarters in the occupied Golan Heights.

The US news portal Axios quoted an unnamed US official as saying that Hezbollah representatives had told the United Nations that the missile that hit the soccer field was an Israeli missile interceptor.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said there was “every indication” that Hezbollah was behind the rocket attack.

Does this mean war?

The Israeli military launched a series of air strikes on Lebanon overnight. However, these were routine attacks that have become a daily phenomenon over the past months.

The decision on how to respond to the Majdal Shams incident will be made later on Sunday when Israel’s security cabinet meets. Under Israeli law, any decision on military action that could lead to war must be made multilaterally in the cabinet.

Omar Baddar, a Middle East political analyst, told Al Jazeera he believed it was “almost certainly an accident,” regardless of who was responsible.

“No party in the entire region has a political or military interest in attacking a child’s soccer game in a Druze town in the occupied Golden Heights. And it is also worth noting that both Hezbollah and Israel want to avoid an all-out war,” he told Al Jazeera from Washington, DC.

“We would need an independent investigation to really know what happened in this case. But Hezbollah’s denial is itself at least an indication that the football match – even if it was a Hezbollah rocket – was certainly not a targeted attack,” he added.

But analysts and politicians have been warning for months that any miscalculation could trigger a full-scale conflict.

The White House National Security Council said in a statement that the US “will continue to support efforts to end these horrific attacks along the Blue Line, which must be a top priority.”

The United Nations and European Union called for restraint, and the 27-member bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called for an “independent international investigation.” The Lebanese government, which does not normally comment on attacks on Israel – or the occupied Golan Heights – said it condemned attacks on civilians in a statement that underscored the seriousness of the situation.

At a press conference in Tokyo, Blinken said the US did not want an escalation of the conflict following the Majdal Shams incident. This came amid reports of ceasefire talks planned in Italy in the Gaza Strip.

“We are committed to ending the Gaza conflict. It has lasted far too long. It has cost far too many lives. We want Israelis, Palestinians and Lebanese to live free from the threat of conflict and violence,” Blinken said on Sunday.

Could Iran intervene?

Tehran warned Israel against any “new adventure” and described the incident in the Majdal Shams district as a “fabricated scenario” intended to distract from the more than 39,000 Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said in a statement on Sunday that a military response by Israel would further destabilize the region and fan the flames of war.

“If that happens, the Zionist regime will be ultimately and primarily responsible for the unpredictable consequences and reactions to such foolish behavior,” he said.

Mojtaba Amani, the Iranian envoy to Lebanon, wrote in a post on X that Tehran “does not expect a full-scale war” after the Majdal Shams incident, mainly due to the “imposed equations” imposed on Israel by Iran and its allies.

Randa Slim of the Middle East Institute in Washington DC says Israel and Hezbollah are not interested in a full-scale war because their populations have been massively displaced along the conflict lines and the fighting has been going on for so long.

“On the Israeli side, we have an army that is getting tired after ten months of war. But the population of Israel is different. In fact, a large part of the Israeli population is urging the Israeli government to deal with Hezbollah and regain control of its northern border,” she told Al Jazeera.

“I do not think that the Israeli prime minister is interested in a full-scale war at the moment, also because a major war in Lebanon involving Hezbollah would have uncontrollable and unpredictable consequences. Because if the war escalates, it will ultimately affect Iran as well.”

Will this have an impact on the ceasefire talks in the Gaza Strip?

CIA Director Bill Burns, who led all negotiations for a ceasefire in the Gaza war for Washington, was in Europe for talks on Sunday.

He will be joined in Rome by his counterparts from Qatar, Egypt and Israel, while further efforts are underway to reach an agreement between Israel and Hamas, which would also include an exchange of prisoners and detainees.

It is still unclear whether the recent escalation between Israel and Hezbollah could have a direct impact on the mediated negotiations, but even before the attack, no breakthrough seemed in sight.

The war in Gaza remains the root cause of the conflict spreading across the region. Members of the Iran-backed “Axis of Resistance”, including Hezbollah, have said they would stop their attacks on Israel if it stopped killing Palestinians in the enclave and allowed humanitarian aid into the country.

Who are the Druze and what are the occupied Golan Heights?

The Majdal Shams incident occurred in a Druze community, an Arabic-speaking ethno-religious minority whose members live predominantly in the occupied Golan Heights in Syria and Lebanon.

Israeli officials quickly declared the victims “Israeli citizens,” even though many members of the community do not have Israeli citizenship and are formally Syrian nationals.

Majdal Shams is one of four villages in the occupied territory where more than 20,000 members of the group live alongside thousands of Israeli citizens.

Israel occupied the Golan Heights during the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed it in 1981 despite condemnation by the UN Security Council. It has resisted all Syrian efforts to retake the area. The occupied Golan Heights continue to be recognized by the international community as part of Syrian territory.

Mouin Rabbani, a non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, told Al Jazeera that the occupied Golan Heights is a “mountain range that allows Israel to threaten the rest of Syria,” including the capital Damascus.