As Israel prepares its military response to the Hezbollah rocket strike that killed 12 children on a soccer field in the Golan Heights, the Biden administration is pressuring Israel to abandon plans for a substantial retaliation against the Lebanon-based Iranian proxy terrorist group.
“The United States on Monday cautioned Israel about escalation with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah as Israel weighs its response to a rocket attack from Lebanon over the weekend that killed 12 youths in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights,” the Associated Press reports.
According to Reuters, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin doesn’t want Israel to go ahead with its anticipated military response to Sunday’s deadly terror attack and would instead prefer to “see things resolved in a diplomatic fashion.”
“United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin does not believe that a fight between Israel and Hezbollah is inevitable, and said Washington would like to see things resolved in a diplomatic fashion,” the news agency reported Tuesday.
Reporting on the Biden administration bid to ‘deter’ Israel from hitting major targets inside Lebanon, including the Beirut airport — the main transit point for Iranian weapons to the terrorist group, The Times of Israel noted:
The United States is leading a diplomatic dash to deter Israel from striking Lebanon’s capital Beirut or major civil infrastructure in response to a deadly rocket attack on the Golan Heights, five people with knowledge of the drive said.Washington is racing to avert a full-blown war between Israel and the Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group Hezbollah after the attack on the Golan Heights killed 12 kids and youths playing at a soccer field over the weekend, according to the five people, who include Lebanese and Iranian officials and Middle Eastern and European diplomats. (…)The focus of the high-speed diplomacy has been to constrain Israel’s response by urging it against targeting densely populated Beirut, the southern suburbs of the capital that form Hezbollah’s heartland, or key infrastructure like airports and bridges, said the sources who requested anonymity to discuss confidential details that haven’t been previously reported. (…)White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that Israel had every right to respond to the Golan strike, but that nobody wanted a broader war. “As for conversations over the weekend, you bet we’ve had them and we had them at multiple levels,” he added. “But I’m not going to detail the guts of those conversations.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has approved a military response to the deadly terrorist attack. “Israel’s government authorized a retaliatory strike against Hezbollah in Lebanon, amid an American-led diplomatic push to contain the fallout from a strike that killed 12 young people in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights,” The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed on Monday to go ahead with the retaliatory action despite the mounting pressure from the U.S. and Europe.
“These children are our children,” Netanyahu said as he met the families of the victims in Golan Height. Most of the children killed in the terror strike belonged to Israel’s minority Druze community.
“The state of Israel will not, and cannot, let this pass. Our response will come and it will be severe,” the prime minister assured.
European countries are telling their citizens to leave Lebanon in the wake of a possible Israeli military response. “Countries including the UK, Germany, France and America have urged citizens to leave Lebanon or avoid travelling there as tensions mount,” the UK-based Guardian newspaper reported Tuesday. “The British foreign secretary, David Lammy, said on Tuesday that events were “fast-moving” and that British nationals were advised “to leave Lebanon and not to travel to the country”.”
Berlin fears imminent disruption of air traffic in Lebanon — an indication that German authorities fear an imminent IDF strike on the country’s civilian airports being used for Iranian weapons supply to terrorists. Germany “updated its travel warning to Lebanon on Monday, saying that air travel could be cut off,” France-based Euronews TV reported
Having renewed hostilities after the October 7 attack, Hezbollah continued firing rockets into northern Israel on Tuesday.
The Israeli military confirmed further cross-border rocket attacks by Hezbollah from its positions in southern Lebanon. “Following the sirens that sounded in the area of the Upper Galilee, approximately 10 projectiles crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory, the majority were intercepted. A hit was identified in the area of HaGoshrim in northern Israel. Reports were received regarding a civilian that was injured as a result of the attack,” the IDF said in a press statement Tuesday. “The IDF is currently striking the sources of fire.”
After evacuating the humanitarian zone in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis early last week, the IDF reported success in eliminating the terrorists who had infiltrated the civilians’ safe area west of the Rafah terror stronghold. The military has started moving troops and armour from the area and has allowed civilians to enter, news reports suggest.
The IDF “said on Tuesday that its troops had concluded operations in the southern Gaza Strip’s Khan Yunis, after Palestinian reports said Israeli forces had withdrawn and residents had begun returning to their homes,” the Israeli TV channel i24NEWS reported.
“Overnight, the 98th Division completed their operational activity against terrorist infrastructure and operatives in the area of Khan Yunis. Over the past week, the troops have eliminated over 150 terrorists, dismantled terror tunnels, weapons storage facilities, and terrorist infrastructure, and located weapons,” the IDF disclosed Tuesday afternoon.
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