US seeks 'Goldilocks response' from Israel as Hezbollah tensions spike

U.S. and international officials are urging both Israel and Hezbollah to exercise restraint and avoid embarking on a devastating, regional war, after a rocket strike from the Iranian-backed group killed a dozen young people on a soccer field in northern Israel.

The Biden administration has backed Israel’s assessment that the rocket that struck in northern Israel was launched by Hezbollah, even as the terrorist group and Lebanese officials have denied responsibility.

And the White House came out Monday saying Israel has a right to defend itself, while calling for diplomacy to calm tensions on both sides.

“Israel seems poised to conduct a pretty punishing strike against Hezbollah,” said Brian Katulis, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Middle East Institute. 

“I think what the White House may be hoping for in its public messaging and what it's doing privately is similar to the Goldilocks response … not too hard to cause a broad regional war, not too soft to have no impact at all. But something that's just somewhere in between,” he continued.

But Biden administration officials are confident that such a strike against Hezbollah would not trigger a broader war. 

“We all heard about this all-out war scenario now, multiple points over the last 10 months,” said John Kirby, the White House National Security Council communications adviser. 

“Those predictions were exaggerated then, quite frankly, we think they're exaggerated now. Look, Israel has every right to respond. But nobody wants a broader war, and I'm confident that we'll be able to avoid such an outcome.”

The U.S. said it is in touch with Israeli and Lebanese officials to calm tensions. Hezbollah’s military and political wing are blacklisted by the U.S. as a terrorist organization, but the U.S. holds ties with Beirut and is a key supporter of the Lebanese armed forces.

While Hezbollah started striking Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack as an act of solidarity with Palestinians, leader Hassan Nasrallah has said that the group would respect a cease-fire if reached between Israel and Hamas. 

“One of the reasons that we’re continuing to work so hard for a cease-fire in Gaza is not just for Gaza but also so that we can really … bring calm, lasting calm, across the Blue Line between Israel and Lebanon,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. 

The Blue Line is the United Nations-designated boundary between Israel and Lebanon. While United Nations Security Council resolutions have long mandated Hezbollah’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon, the Iranian-backed group has dug in and reinforced its positions with an arsenal capable of putting all of Israel’s population within risk from rocket fire.

“Hezbollah very much wants to avoid an all-out confrontation,” said Mona Yacoubian, vice president of the Middle East and North Africa center at U.S. Institute of Peace.

“I think their very quick denials underscore their fear and concern that — while they’re willing to get involved in an all-out confrontation, this would not be popular in Lebanon.”

Still, Hezbollah has calibrated its attacks over the course of 10 months, Yacoubian said. Hezbollah’s ability to demonstrate the breadth of its munitions arsenal and attack Israel, with propaganda videos showing it has penetrated Israeli airspace using surveillance drones, serves as a warning to Israel but also reinforce its image as defenders of Lebanon and Iran’s axis of resistance against Israel.

“We’ve seen a steady increase by Hezbollah pushing the envelope, trying to see what they can do, in some ways escalating to try to deter Israel, quite frankly, and also seeing how far they can push the envelope without pushing this into an all-out confrontation,” Yacoubian said. 

U.S. officials would not comment on whether they’ve warned Israeli officials against striking Hezbollah targets in Beirut. Yacoubian said the Lebanese capital is viewed as a “red line.”

“Engaging targets in Beirut could very easily lead to the kind of uncontrolled escalation that many fear,” she said.

The deadly Hezbollah strike occurred at the same time that the U.S. was engaged in negotiations in Rome to reach a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas. Kirby told reporters on Monday that “there’s no indication” that the escalating conflict on Israel’s northern border “is going to negatively affect those discussions.”

Israeli officials have vowed to impose a “severe” and “heavy price” on Hezbollah. Still, Jerusalem has earlier demonstrated the military can carry out limited, retaliatory attacks that avoid triggering a larger escalation. 

This includes Israel’s strike on Iran’s air defense systems and targets near a nuclear facility in Isfahan in retaliation for an April 13 missile attack. The strike was limited in damage but pointed in message — showing Israel’s ability to penetrate Iran’s defenses and revealing its knowledge of sensitive sights. 

Further, Israel hit Yemen’s Hodeidah port — killing at least six people and destroying oil facilities and damaging infrastructure — in retaliation for a July 19 drone attack launched by the Iranian-backed Houthis that killed an Israeli civilian and injured 10 others. 

But the deaths of 12 children — ranging in age from 11 to 16 years old — in the northern Israel town of Majdal Shams was particularly devastating. Those killed are from Israel’s Druze community, a religious, ethnically Arab minority that numbers around 150,000 out of Israel’s population of 9.5 million. The Druze of Majdal Shams are largely of Syrian descent, coming under Israeli occupation following the 1967 war in which Israel took control of the Golan Heights. Israel annexed the territory in 1981, and the U.S. recognizes it as sovereign Israeli territory, even as most of the international community describes it as occupied. 

And while many of those in the village do not have Israeli citizenship, the community as a whole is a point of pride in Israel as an example of tolerance and integration between Jews and Arabs, with high levels of political participation and military service relative to their small population.  

But residents of Majdal Shams demonstrated against a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, with at least one person holding up a sign reading “war criminal”, underscoring the majority opinion in Israel of low confidence in the prime minister: 57 percent of respondents in a July poll by the Jewish People Policy Institute reported a "very low" level of confidence in Netanyahu. 

There’s little consensus among Israeli society on what needs to happen next in the north, where tens of thousands of Israelis have been displaced over 10 months of the exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah. Forty-two percent want a diplomatic solution with Hezbollah, while 38 percent think a military victory should be pursued, according to a June poll by the Israel Democracy Institute. 

“In the aftermath of the Hezbollah massacre of the children there is a lot of anger, and high emotions. Hezbollah has been shelling for months and months, And there is a lot of frustration including with the government,” said Eman Safady, a press liaison with the Jerusalem Press Club who was the first Druze woman to serve in Israel’s military radio station. 

“But we have to remember that ultimately Hezbollah is responsible. There are different views as to whether a bigger war should be entered into in light of the events of Saturday.”

A statement from Druze leaders, called the Religious and Temporal Committee in the Occupied Syrian Golan, warned against more war. 

“From our Arab-Islamic Unitarian standpoint, we reject the shedding of even a single drop of blood under the pretext of avenging our children,” the committee wrote.

“History testifies that we have been and continue to be advocates of peace and harmony among peoples and nations.”