The United States and France scrambled on Sunday to prevent the sparking of a third Lebanon war after the Hezbollah attack that killed 12 Druze children in the Golan Heights village of Majdal Shams on Saturday. Israel stood poised to respond militarily.
“We have been in continuous discussions with Israeli and Lebanese counterparts since the horrific attack yesterday,” US National Security Council spokesperson Adriane Watson stated.
The United States “is working on a diplomatic solution along the Blue Line that will end all attacks once and for all and allow citizens on both sides of the border to return safely to their homes.”
French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with both Prime Ministers, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Najib Makati of Lebanon.
Diplomats have urged Israel to constrain its response to avert an all-out war between the two countries. Macron told Netanyahu that France was “fully committed to doing everything possible to avoid a new escalation in the region by sending messages to all parties to the conflict,” the Elyse said.
“He also reiterated the need to reach a diplomatic solution to the issue of the Blue Line, based on [United Nations Security Council] Resolution 1701 and his determination to contribute to it.”
The Lebanese government has asked the US to urge restraint from Israel, Lebanon’s foreign minister Abdallah Bou Habib told Reuters. Bou Habib said the US had asked Lebanon’s government to pass on a message to Hezbollah to show restraint as well.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant spoke of the importance of a military response when he visited Majdal Sham and the northern command earlier in the day.
“I was shown the plans for a possible response” to Saturday’s attack against the village, Gallant said. “Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, was behind the attack, and they cannot hide it despite their ridiculous denials. They fired [at Israel], and they will bear a heavy price for their actions,” he stated.
Netanyahu held a security cabinet meeting late Sunday night at the Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, following security consultations. He arrived there immediately upon landing at Ben-Gurion Airport, after spending a week in Washington. In an unusual manner that highlighted the emergency nature of the situation, he departed for Israel prior to the end of Shabbat.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Tokyo on Sunday that “It’s so important that we help diffuse that conflict” along the northern border, “not only prevented it from spreading but to diffuse it.”
He added, “We’re determined to do that.”
The attack comes after an intense cross-border war between the IDF and the Iranian proxy terrorist group Hezbollah, which is entrenched in southern Lebanon along Israel’s northern border and, since October 7, has run concurrent attacks to the Gaza war. Israel, at this point, is fighting three Iranian proxy groups at once: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen.
Iran’s foreign ministry warned Israel on Sunday against what it called any new adventure in Lebanon, as it repeated Hezbollah’s disclaimer that the terrorist group was not behind the attack.
Syria’s foreign ministry said it held Israel “fully responsible for this dangerous escalation in the region” and said its accusations against Hezbollah were false.
Israel, in turn, provided exact details about who launched the attack and the Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket that exploded in Majdal Shams; it was Hezbollah’s deadliest strike against Israel in the last nine months.
Blinken said there was “every indication is that indeed the rockets were from Hezbollah. The US, he stated, “stands by Israel’s right to defend its citizens from terrorist attacks.”
Gaza ceasefire will lead into Lebanon border ceasefire - Blinken
A Gaza ceasefire, he stressed, is the best way to diffuse Israeli-Hezbollah violence. “One of the reasons that we’re continuing to work so hard for ceasefire in Gaza is… so that we can really unlock an opportunity to bring calm, lasting calm, across the between Israel and Lebanon,” Blinken said.
“We’re determined to bring the Gaza conflict to a close. It’s gone on for far too long. It’s cost far too many lives. We want to see Israelis; we want to see Palestinians. We want to see Lebanese live free from the threat of conflict and violence,” he added.
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday that “Israel has every right to defend itself against Hezbollah like they do against Hamas.”
Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines (MEA) said on Sunday it had delayed the departures of some incoming flights set to land in Beirut overnight to arrive on Monday morning instead.
MEA said in a statement that six flights incoming to Beirut overnight from London, Copenhagen, and four other cities in the Middle East would be delayed so that they would instead take off on Monday morning.
MEA chairman Mohamad El-Hout told local broadcaster Al-Jadeed that the flight changes at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport were due to “insurance risks.”
“We’re not afraid that the airport will be hit, nor do we have any information in that regard. If we were scared, we wouldn’t have left any flights (operating),” he said.
Reuters contributed to this report.