Tensions in the Middle East escalated on Saturday after Israel said the armed group Hezbollah launched a lethal rocket strike on a soccer field.
The strike, it said, came from southern Lebanon toward the town of Majdal Shams, in the part of the Golan Heights controlled by Israel.
On Sunday, Israel’s Air Force said several commanders met to assess its next moves — though it gave few hints about what specifically it would do.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hezbollah would pay a “heavy price.”
Some 36 hours later, Israel had not struck back.
The IDF declined to comment to Business Insider.
Brink of war
Tensions were already high in the region before Hezbollah’s lethal rocket strike.
Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group operating out of Lebanon, have regularly exchanged fire since Hamas staged its cross-border terrorist attack from Gaza on October 7.
Last month, an IDF spokesman, Daniel Hagari, said Hezbollah’s “increasing” aggression was courting “a wider escalation, one that could have devastating consequences for Lebanon and the entire region.”
Following Hezbollah’s rocket strike, US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said Sunday that the US was in “continuous discussions” with Israel and Lebanon, hoping to restore calm.
An unnamed US official told Axios on Saturday: “What happened today could be the trigger we have been worried about and tried to avoid for 10 months.”
Wider regional conflict
Lina Khatib, director of the Middle East Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, predicted a significant military response from Israel.
She said the counterattack would likely be “bold” and not “necessarily going to be limited to Lebanon.”
“Hezbollah is also operating in Syria, and it is likely that Israel will target Hezbollah’s military sites there at a greater scale than before,” she told BI.
Israel struck Iran’s embassy in Syria in April, sparking fears it could ignite a wider regional conflict.
Widespread concern there of escalation ultimately eased when Iran offered a seemingly ineffectual counterattack.
According to Khatib, the possibility of a wider war in the region remains low because it is not in anyone’s interest — it would be damaging to Israel, Hezbollah, Iran, and the US, she said.
“The US is looking to roll back, not increase, its military engagement in the Middle East,” she said.
Thomas Juneau, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, made a similar statement in an X post on Sunday.
“Israel will retaliate, hard, soon,” he said, adding that it will “stretch the rules of the game.”
But, he said, it would be anxious to strike in a way that avoids “uncontrolled escalation.”
“Hezbollah will play along with the dangerous choreography,” he added.
In a separate X post on Sunday, Juneau noted that Israel and Iran appeared close to war in April, when tensions escalated in the region.
“It was close, but tension came down (to a high baseline) quickly,” he said, adding the current situation is “going to be dangerous but I expect something similar now.”
Enia Krivine, Senior Director for the Israel Program and National Security Network at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Hezbollah’s attack would not go unanswered.
“The million-dollar question is what that plan will look like and when it will happen,” she told BI.
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