Hezbollah-Israel conflict not inevitable, says US defence secretary

The US defence secretary said on Tuesday that he did not believe a fight was inevitable between Hezbollah and Israel, Reuters has reported. However, Lloyd Austin remains concerned about the potential for escalation after a deadly rocket strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Tensions have worsened since Saturday when a rocket killed 12 children and teenagers at a football pitch in a Druze village, one of the few which was not ethnically-cleansed when Israel annexed the Syrian territory illegally. Israel accused the Iran-backed Hezbollah and vowed a harsh response. Hezbollah has denied responsibility.

The US has been leading a diplomatic effort to deter Israel from striking Lebanon’s capital Beirut or major civilian infrastructure in response to the attack, five people with knowledge of the effort told Reuters on Monday.

Hezbollah and Israel have been trading shellfire across the border since October, their worst conflict since the war in 2006. The hostilities, sparked by Hezbollah’s solidarity with the Palestinians against whom Israel has been waging a war in Gaza, have so far been largely been contained to areas near the border.

Although both sides have indicated previously that they do not seek a wider confrontation, the hostilities have prompted concerns about the risk of a slide towards a wider, more destructive conflict between the nuclear-armed occupation state and the heavily-armed militia.

“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,” said Austin. “And I don’t believe that a fight is inevitable.” He added that the US would like to see things resolved in a diplomatic fashion when he spoke during a joint press conference in Manila, following security talks between himself, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and their Philippine counterparts.

The Israeli military said it struck around ten Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon overnight and killed one of the group’s fighters. The attacks appeared to be in keeping with the pattern of violence over the past nine months. Hezbollah confirmed that one of its fighters had been killed.

Two Israeli officials said on Monday that Israel wanted to hurt Hezbollah but not drag the Middle East into all-out war.

Some flights at Beirut’s international airport have been cancelled or delayed this week due to the heightened tensions.

Hezbollah has denied firing the rocket that killed the youngsters in the village of Majdal Shams. It said on Saturday that it had fired a missile against a military target on the Golan, a border region of Syria that Israel occupied in 1967.

Since October, Israeli strikes have killed around 350 Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and more than 100 civilians, according to security and medical sources and a Reuters tally of Hezbollah death notifications. Israel says that 23 civilians and at least 17 soldiers have been killed in Hezbollah attacks over the past ten months.

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