Latter part of July brings intense developments in Middle East
(MENAFN) The latter part of July brought intense developments in the Middle East, not just due to the scorching summer heat but because of a rapidly escalating regional conflict. The situation became even more precarious following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent visit to the United States. During his trip, Netanyahu addressed congress and engaged with senior United States officials, leading to widespread speculation that Israel had been given a "green light" for extensive military action against Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group.
The tensions spiked dramatically on July 27 when a rocket struck a soccer field in Majdal Shams, a village in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights home to Druze Arabs. The attack resulted in the deaths of twelve children and injuries to sixty others. Netanyahu returned to Israel earlier than planned, and Israeli officials quickly attributed the attack to Hezbollah, claiming the rocket was of Iranian origin and promising a powerful response from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). However, Hezbollah denied any involvement, and Lebanese authorities suggested that the rocket might have been an Israeli air defense missile. Iran's Foreign Ministry dismissed the incident as a “staged drama.” Despite the charged atmosphere, the true perpetrator of the attack remained unclear.
On the night of July 30, the IDF conducted a strike on the outskirts of Beirut, branding it a “targeted assassination” operation against Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah military leader accused of orchestrating the Majdal Shams attack. This strike resulted in around ten fatalities and over seventy injuries. While such Israeli strikes on Lebanese soil are not unprecedented—earlier this year, an Israeli operation also killed Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau—the assassination of Shukr, a close aide to Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, further heightened regional tensions. Nevertheless, it seemed unlikely to escalate into a full-scale conflict between Lebanon and Israel.
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