Concerns about all-out regional war are once again rising after a projectile fell on a football field in a Druze community in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, killing 12 children and young people and injuring 30 others.
Hezbollah emphatically denied being responsible, but Israel has blamed the Lebanese group for the deadly attack.
On Sunday, Israel said it targeted several Hezbollah sites across Lebanon, as it said the armed group had crossed a “red line” and will “pay a heavy price” unlike anything since the start of deadly border fighting on October 8.
Let’s take a look at everything we know about the incident and why it is significant.
Who was responsible?
The Israeli military claimed that it found evidence at the scene that shows an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket fell on the football pitch. It said a Hezbollah commander directed the attack from a launching site in Shebaa in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah swiftly issued a statement to say it “categorically denies” being behind the attack.
The group methodically claims responsibility for attacks on Israeli positions on a daily basis, and reported launching 12 strikes on Saturday. It has also claimed hundreds of attacks using Falaq and Katyusha rockets since the start of the war, some of them targeting military headquarters in the occupied Golan Heights.
The US-based Axios news website cited an unnamed United States official as saying that Hezbollah officials have told the United Nations that what hit the football pitch was an Israeli anti-rocket interceptor projectile.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said there was “every indication” that Hezbollah was behind the rocket strike.
Does this mean war?
The Israeli military launched a series of air strikes across Lebanon overnight, but those were routine strikes that have become a daily phenomenon for months.
The decision on how to respond to the Majdal Shams incident will be taken later on Sunday, when the Israeli security cabinet convenes. Israeli law dictates that any decision on military action that could lead to war must be adopted multilaterally in the cabinet.
Omar Baddar, a Middle East political analyst, told Al Jazeera he believes this was “almost certainly an accident”, regardless of who was responsible for it.
“No party in the entire region has either a political interest or a military interest in targeting a kid’s soccer game in a Druze town in the occupied Golden Heights. And it’s also worth noting that there is a desire on both the part of Hezbollah and Israel to avoid a full-scale war,” he told Al Jazeera from Washington, DC.
“We would need an independent investigation to actually really know what’s unfolded in this case. But Hezbollah’s denial is itself at least an indication even if it were to turn out to be a Hezbollah rocket, it certainly is not an intentional targeting of that soccer game,” he added.
But analysts and officials have for months warned that any miscalculations could trigger an all-out conflict.
The White House National Security Council said in a statement that the US “will continue to support efforts to end these terrible attacks along the Blue Line, which must be a top priority”.
The UN and European Union called for restraint, with the 27-member bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell calling for an “independent international investigation”. The Lebanese government, which does not usually comment on strikes on Israel – or the occupied Golan – said it condemns attacks on civilians in a statement that indicates the seriousness of the situation.
Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo, Blinken said the US does not want to see the conflict escalate following the Majdal Shams incident. This comes amid reports of Gaza ceasefire talks expected to be held in Italy.
“We are determined to bring the Gaza conflict to a close. It’s gone on for far too long. It’s cost far too many lives. We want to see Israelis, we want to see Palestinians, we want to see Lebanese live free from the threat of conflict and violence,” Blinken said on Sunday.
Could Iran get involved?
Tehran warned Israel against any “new adventure” while calling the Majdal Shams incident a “fabricated scenario” that is designed to distract from the more than 39,000 Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said in a statement on Sunday that an Israeli military response would further destabilise the region and fan the flames of war.
“If that happens, the Zionist regime will be the definitive and main entity responsible for the unpredictable repercussions and reactions to such stupid behaviour,” he said.
Mojtaba Amani, Iran’s envoy to Lebanon, wrote in a post on X that Tehran “does not expect” an all-out war after the Majdal Shams incident, predominantly due to the “equations imposed” on Israel by Iran and its allies.
Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, said Israel and Hezbollah are not interested in an all-out war due to the mass displacement of their populations along conflict lines and because of how lengthy the fighting has become.
“On the Israeli side, you have an army that’s getting tired after 10 months of war. But the population of Israel is different. In fact, you have a large segment of Israel’s population that’s urging the Israeli government to take care of Hezbollah and regain control of their northern border,” she told Al Jazeera.
“I don’t think the Israeli prime minister is at this point interested in an all-out war, partly because there are uncontrollable, unpredictable consequences to a larger war in Lebanon, involving Hezbollah. Because eventually if it escalates, it will involve Iran as well.”
Will this impact the Gaza ceasefire talks?
CIA director Bill Burns, who has been taking the lead for Washington in all negotiations aimed at reaching a ceasefire agreement on the war on Gaza, was in Europe for meetings on Sunday.
He is joined by counterparts from Qatar, Egypt and Israel in Rome, amid another push to strike a deal between Israel and Hamas that would also include an exchange of prisoners and captives.
It is still unclear if the latest escalation between Israel and Hezbollah could have a direct impact on the mediated negotiations, but no breakthrough appeared imminent even before the strike.
The war on Gaza remains the root cause of the expanding conflict across the region, and members of the Iran-backed “axis of resistance”, including Hezbollah, have said they will stop attacking Israel if it stops killing Palestinians in the enclave and allows humanitarian aid in.
Who are the Druze and what is the occupied Golan Heights?
The Majdal Shams incident took place in a Druze community, an Arab-speaking ethnoreligious minority whose members mostly reside in the occupied Golan Heights, Syria and Lebanon.
Israeli officials were quick to declare the victims as “Israeli citizens” even though many of the members of the community do not hold Israeli citizenship and are technically Syrian nationals.
Majdal Shams is one of four villages in the occupied area, where more than 20,000 members of the group live alongside thousands of Israeli citizens.
Israel occupied the Golan Heights during the Six-Day War of 1967, later annexing it in 1981 despite condemnation from the UN Security Council. It has resisted all Syrian efforts to reclaim the territory. The occupied Golan Heights is still recognised as part of Syrian territory by the international community.
Mouin Rabbani, a non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, told Al Jazeera the occupied Golan Heights are a “mountain range that allows Israel to threaten the rest of Syria”, including the capital Damascus.