Adla Massoud
The National / July 30, 2024
The US and Israel have blamed Hezbollah for Saturday’s attack on the Druze Arab town of Majdal Shams.
Israel and Lebanon have lodged complaints against each at the UN Security Council as the risk of war between Israel and Hezbollah reaches a boiling point.
The Israeli military on Tuesday claimed it carried out a precise strike in Beirut against the Hezbollah commander responsible for Saturday’s attack that killed 12 children and teenagers in the occupied Golan Heights.
Before the strike in Beirut, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz accused Hezbollah of deliberately attacking civilians in Israel.
“Israel has the right and duty to protect its citizens and territory and will act accordingly,” Katz wrote.
Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib wrote that Israel does not have the right to self-defence in the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in 1967.
Bou Habib denounced Israel’s assertions of protecting the population in the Golan Heights as a “baseless display of political hypocrisy”.
He accused Israel of aiming to prolong hostilities and trying to mislead the international community about its “illegal occupation of Arab lands”.
The US and Israel have blamed Hezbollah for Saturday’s attack on the Druze Arab town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights. Hezbollah has denied any connection to the attack.
During a visit to Majdal Shams on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised a “severe response”, raising fears that the Gaza conflict could spill over into a wider regional war, despite international appeals for calm.
Bou Habib repeated Lebanon’s commitment to the implementation of Resolution 1701 – the 2006 resolution aimed at ending the Israel-Hezbollah war – in its “entirety”.
He called on the 15-member Security Council to “compel Israel to abide by it and cease daily violations and hostilities against Lebanon”.
In his letter, Katz said Israel expects the Lebanese government to assert control over all its territory.
“The Lebanese Armed Forces must ensure that neither Hezbollah nor Palestinian terrorist groups are able to plan and execute attacks against Israel from Lebanon.”
Katz called on the international community to hold Iran accountable for its role in these hostilities and urged the Security Council to designate Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as terrorist organizations, enforcing the arms embargo stipulated in Security Council Resolution 1701.
US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday he does not think all-out war between Hezbollah and Lebanon is inevitable.
“While we’ve seen a lot of activity on Israel’s northern border, we remain concerned about the potential of this escalating into a full-blown fight,” Austin said in the Philippines.
“And I don’t believe that a fight is inevitable. I think that we’d like to see things resolved in a diplomatic fashion.”
Adla Massoud – United Nations Correspondent
