The Hezbollah terrorist army began clearing out of some of its high-value sites on Sunday ahead of an expected Israeli military retaliation for a rocket attack Saturday that killed 12 Israeli Druze children and injuries to some 30 others in the northern village of Majdal Shams.
The terror group fired an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket with a warhead carrying 53 kilograms (117 pounds) of explosives at the village soccer field when the local youth league was playing. All of the dead were children, ages 10 to 18.
The Lebanese Iranian proxy evacuated sites in southern Lebanon and in the eastern Bekaa Valley, according to two security sources quoted by Reuters.
There were also reports of extensive evacuations by pro-Iranian militants in southern and western Syria.
Israel’s defense establishment has been meeting in situation assessments almost around the clock since the attack on Majdal Shams. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu headed straight to the IDF’s Kirya headquarters in Tel Aviv upon his arrival Sunday afternoon after cutting short his visit to the United States.
The prime minister was set to convene a meeting of the security cabinet after an initial pre-cabinet meeting to finalize plans for a response to the attack.
Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib told Reuters that his government asked the United States to urge “restraint” in talks with Israel following the attack.
The US in turn asked Habib to likewise pass on a message to Hezbollah, urging the terrorist army to show “restraint” as well.
“We stand by Israel’s right to defend its citizens from terrorist attacks,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters at a news conference in Tokyo along with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Blinken remains convinced that if a hostage deal and ceasefire is reached between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the agreement will also bring “calm” to the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has been clear, however, that peace in Gaza will not bring peace to the northern border until Hezbollah complies with the mandate set forth in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 – the ceasefire agreement that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
That agreement calls for Hezbollah to remain north of the Litani River, and for the Lebanese Armed Forces to be the only armed force in the country’s southern region, north of the Israeli border.
Hezbollah has ignored the agreement from the very start, and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon that was tasked with ensuring its enforcement is more afraid of Hezbollah than Israel — and so the agreement was never really implemented.
Fast forward to 2024, and southern Lebanon has become an Iranian proxy state within a state run by Hezbollah. The region is honeycombed with tunnels deeper, wider and more numerous than those in the “Gaza Metro” created by Hamas.
Israel’s population is outraged, as is the military and political echelon, over the Majdal Shams massacre but also over the current situation in which Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces appear to be at a “Mexican standoff”.
Northern Israel has absorbed nearly a year of daily rocket, missile and explosive drone attacks that have decimated the communities along Israel’s northern border and continue to make it impossible for evacuated residents to return home safely. Many residents, in fact, have no homes to return to, because they were destroyed by Hezbollah attacks.
On Sunday afternoon, Hezbollah fired two rockets at the northern Israeli community of Shtula, along the border. One of the rockets scored a direct hit on a home in the community, adding another family to the homeless list. Miraculously, no physical injuries were reported.
