Only one man can stop war between Israel and Lebanon

The falling of a Hezbollah rocket on a football field in the Golan border town of Majdal Shams at the weekend was a calamity, first and foremost, for the families of the 12 innocent Druze children and teenagers who were killed - along with the dozens of others who were wounded. But it is also just the kind of incident that experts had long warned could finally turn the fierce (but so far contained) cross-border conflict that has raged between Hezbollah and Israel since last October into all-out war.

- DONALD MACINTYRE

It doesn’t matter that the attack took place in what most of the world still sees as Israeli-occupied territory, or that some of its (particularly older) residents identify strongly as Syrians. Or that Hezbollah presumably misfired, having surely intended, if only in its own interests, to hit a military target – possibly an Israel Defence Forces outpost on Mount Hermon, in whose foothills Majdal Shams sits.

It’s also not even that Hezbollah already knew the town’s residents had not evacuated – unlike most of the northern Israeli communities along the Lebanese border – and therefore had a responsibility to prevent this from happening. The most pressing issue at hand is that an Israeli government not hitherto known for its restraint will feel obliged to retaliate by exacting from Hezbollah what Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has warned will be “a heavy price which it has not paid up to now.”

What Netanyahu has to decide now – having been entrusted by Sunday’s security cabinet meeting with deciding a response, alongside his defence minister, Yoav Gallant – is how far to go. Caught between the bellicose calls from some on his own side to engage in punitive retaliation – for example, by assassinating Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah – and the urges of the international community, including the US, for restraint, he faces a dilemma.