Israeli drones struck a remote road in southern Lebanon, underscoring tensions as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, promised a “harsh” response to the rocket strike on the occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 children.
“The state of Israel will not and cannot let this pass. Our response will come, and it will be harsh,” he said during a visit to the remote town of Majdal Shams, a majority Druze village in a region annexed by Israel from Syria in 1981.
Video footage showed a crowd of Druze residents gathering in objection to Netanyahu’s visit, some shouting in dissent.
Tensions between Israel and Lebanon have risen since Saturday’s rocket strike on the town, which killed 12 children as they played football.
Netanyahu and the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, visited Majdal Shams as a funeral was held on Monday for the 12th child killed in the rocket attack. “Hezbollah will pay a price … the actions will speak for themselves,” Gallant told grieving families.
US officials were said to be involved in frenzied diplomatic efforts to head off a larger Israeli response that could spark a serious military escalation.
In a briefing to reporters, John Kirby, the White House national security council communications adviser, called warnings of all-out war “exaggerated”.
“Nobody wants a broader war, and I’m confident that we’ll be able to avoid such an outcome,” Kirby said. “I’ll let the Israelis speak to whatever their response is going to be.”
Kirby said talks had been held “at multiple levels”, but would not “detail the guts of those conversations”.
In a separate conversation with the Guardian, a spokesperson for the national security council said Joe Biden and Netanyahu had not spoken since the rocket attack but stressed that US officials had been in regular contact with both Lebanese and Israeli officials since the strike.
Earlier in the day, two Israeli drone strikes killed two people, according to Lebanon’s state news agency, and wounded three others on the roads between the towns of Chaqra and Meiss el-Jabal, close to the de facto border between Israel and Lebanon.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia later named both men killed, and said they were fighters from southern Lebanon who died “on the road to Jerusalem”.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they shot down a drone sent from Lebanese territory in the early hours of Monday morning, intercepting the aircraft after it crossed into Israeli territory. Sirens sounded again across the northern Galilee region later in the day over a further suspected drone infiltration.
Israeli and US officials blamed Hezbollah for the missile strike, which the Lebanese militant group has denied. The IDF shared analysis of shrapnel the day after the strike that it said showed the drone was Iranian-made.
Netanyahu flew back early from a trip to the US and spent Sunday in discussion with military security officials. He later convened his security cabinet for several hours to discuss how to respond to the strike on Majdal Shams, amid pressure from the US and France to avoid a large-scale attack that risks sparking a regional war.
Netanyahu’s office said after the meeting that ministers had authorised him along with Gallant, “to decide on the manner and timing” of Israel’s response to the strike.
“The prime minister has made clear that Israel will not allow this terror. Hezbollah will pay a heavy price that it has not paid thus far,” said David Mencer, a spokesperson for Netanyahu’s office. “One way or another, whether through diplomacy or other means our north will be secured.”
A senior Israeli defence official told Reuters that Israel wanted to hurt Hezbollah but did not wish to drag the region into an all-out war. Two other officials said the country was preparing for the possibility of a few days of fighting.
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The US news website Axios, citing one Israeli official and one US official, said the White House had cautioned Israel that should it choose to hit areas of the Lebanese capital, Beirut,“the situation would likely spiral out of control”.
Danny Citrinowicz, an analyst with Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said: “We are as close as we have ever been to another war between Israel and Hezbollah. What they did, murdering young boys and girls in Majdal Shams, requires a different response. But the question is what will be different.”
The Israeli calculation that it could conduct a large volume of strikes deeper into Lebanese territory, strike targets in Beirut or even hit facilities belonging to the Lebanese state rather than the militant group could prove to be high-risk strategies, he added.
“What will determine the level [of] escalation is Hezbollah’s response. There are people saying this will be a back and forth for a couple of days, but it takes two to tango, each side wants to raise the bar, but we don’t have an off-ramp for this,” he said.
“Hezbollah will have to retaliate, and then what will Israel do … yes, the US administration is pressuring both Israel and the Lebanese intently, but it’s hard to see how it can contain the level of escalation.”
The Italian foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, said he spoke to the Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, and the Lebanese foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, “to avoid a new war. Interrupting the spiral of violence is possible”.
The German foreign office repeated a demand for its citizens to leave Lebanon “urgently” amid fears of a further escalation across Lebanon that could also include a halt to air travel. US officials also reiterated an instruction for its citizens to leave while commercial air travel remains viable.
Rena Bitter, US assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, said US citizens should “develop a crisis plan of action and leave before a crisis begins”. In case commercial air flights were not available, Bitter added, “individuals already in Lebanon should be prepared to shelter in place for long periods of time”.
This followed similar calls from France, Norway and Belgium after the rocket strike. Widespread disruption and cancellation of flights was reported at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri airport, where multiple airlines suspended flights over security concerns.
Security analysts at the New York-based Soufan Group said
Hezbollah probably denied responsibility for the strike on Majdal Shams because of the high number of casualties, the location in an area internationally recognised to be Syrian land occupied by Israel, and the Druze Arab identity of the victims. The Druze are a sect who live in the Golan Heights, parts of southern Syria and into Lebanon.
The security analysts added: “The most pressing task for US officials appeared to be delaying any Israeli retaliation to allow time for diplomacy to achieve de-escalation.”
