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‘The Druze are going nowhere, regardless of cost,’ IDF colonels tell TML
Going up north, you pass through ghost towns until you reach those Druze villages close to the border with Lebanon and Syria, whose inhabitants, despite the war, remained.
The shops are closed, and people prefer not to discuss the accident. Most of them stare silently at the children’s pictures hung on a net on the football pitch while the sound of explosions occurring just a few kilometers away can be heard in the background.
That afternoon, the Iron Dome alert set off at 6:18 p.m., but the rocket landed less than a minute later, giving the children no chance of reaching the nearby shelter.
The Israeli military went to the site to understand what may have caused the accident and found rocket fragments, which have been identified as parts of an Iranian-made Falaq rocket, which has a maximum range of 10 km and is a tool that only Hezbollah possesses.
The IDF estimated that the launch was fired by the Iran-backed militia from the north of the Lebanese town of Chebaa, about 10 km away from Majdal Shams.
Hezbollah’s loose relationship with the truth
As Sarit Zehavi, lieutenant colonel and founder of the Alma Center, explained to The Media Line: “That day, Hezbollah claimed at 7:30 pm responsibility for launching a Falaq 1 rocket towards a military base on the Mount Hermon area. Half an hour later, they denied involvement and started speculating that it was a misfire from the Iron Dome.”
The majority of the Druze in the Golan consider themselves citizens of Syria, where the government in Damascus is a Hezbollah ally. A strike on this community could hurt the group’s standing, including their relationship with the Druze living in the country, which has been supportive of Hezbollah and faithful to Lebanon until now.
“We were expecting this scenario, unfortunately, since Hezbollah has been targeting the north of Israel nonstop since October 8th. The terrorist organization always claimed proudly these attacks, but this time, they were afraid to do so due to the fear that the Lebanese Druze may have turned against them. So, this is the way they blamed Israel,” Zehavi added.
In response to this, many Druze leaders in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel spoke out against what they called an attempt to drive a wedge within the close-knit community.
In Lebanon, Walid Jumblatt, a Druze political leader, said in an interview with Al Jazeera: “It is Israel’s fabrication attempt to blame the “resistance” (Hezbollah), but this is nothing but a lie.”
“It is impossible that this was an Iron Dome misfire because the interceptor explodes in the sky and doesn’t cause a blast like the one we saw. The air defense missiles are designed to disperse regular-shaped fragments in every direction, but there was no sign of this fragmentation,” stated Zehavi.
Abed Kanaaneh, an expert on Lebanon and the Middle East at Moshe Dayan Center, explained as well: “The occupied- Golan Heights were targeted by Hezbollah that day with 100 rockets, so it is plausible that one of them hit the village of Majdal Shams. The Druze were, of course, not the target, but one of these missiles could have missed its shot and caused the catastrophe.”
Arab media didn’t acknowledge Hezbollah’s role in this but promoted its statements of denial.
“Arab people are currently not the ‘biggest fans’ of Israel since they saw that the country has been targeting children in the Gaza Strip in the past months, it was easier for them to say that Israel could have killed these children as well, to have an excuse to invade Lebanon. There is a lot of mistrust towards Israel now, so this is why many believe Hezbollah’s version,” Kanaaneh added.
The Media Line went on July 30 to the site of Majdal Shams to speak with several Druze-Israeli and Jewish-Israeli IDF colonels to understand what the Israeli response could have been.
“The Druze people of this village do not want a retaliation because they want to keep their neutrality in the conflict and fear for their relatives who live in southern Lebanon that may be targeted in Israel’s response. They prefer to pursue peace and stay here regardless of the cost,” Hamada Ghanim, Druze’s former military attaché in Europe and infantry battalion commander on the northern border, mentioned to The Media Line.
He noted, “As Druze, despite our different geographical locations and political stands, we are one community, so of course we prefer diplomacy instead of war.”
The lieutenant colonel and former intelligence officer of the IDF, Gidi Harari, mentioned on the matter: “We wish that a diplomatic solution could solve this war with Hezbollah, but unlike us, they have no duty in front of the international community and won’t opt out to follow the rules, as they did with previous UN resolutions. So, we must shoot hard now and strongly, not only in the Hezbollah southern-controlled part but all of Lebanon, if necessary. Hezbollah wants the Druze to go away from here, but they are not going anywhere.”
“There will be a strong hit against Hezbollah, but always within the limits of the game to prevent a total war. I think both sides won’t be interested in opening a wider conflict, but you never know what could instigate the opposite,” concluded Kanaaneh.
Yesterday, the IDF killed in Beirut Fuad Shukr, one of the top senior commanders of Hezbollah, which, according to the military, was behind the Majdal Shams’ attack. As a response, the militia targeted rockets throughout the evening in the northern part of Israel. Everyone is wondering if this could lead to a total war or would simply stop there.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Egypt’s foreign minister on Tuesday it was important to ensure Hamas terrorists can never govern Gaza again, the State Department said, with their call coming after President Donald Trump suggested Egypt and Jordan should take more Palestinians.
Trump on Saturday floated a plan to “clean out” Gaza, where Israel’s war has killed tens of thousands and caused a humanitarian crisis, in comments that echoed long-standing Palestinian fears of being permanently driven from their homes.
The suggestion by Trump was not mentioned in the US State Department statement released on Tuesday after the call between Rubio and Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty.
Jordan and Egypt had pushed back over the weekend after Trump’s comments that they should take in Palestinians from Gaza. Asked if this was a temporary or long-term solution, Trump had said: “Could be either.”“He (Rubio) also reinforced the importance of holding Hamas accountable,” the State Department said after Tuesday’s call.
“The Secretary reiterated the importance of close cooperation to advance post-conflict planning to ensure Hamas can never govern Gaza or threaten Israel again.”
Context
Rubio held a call a day earlier with Jordan’s King Abdullah, and the US statement after that call, too, did not mention Trump’s remarks on Palestinian displacement.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7, 2023, when Palestinian Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
An Israeli aircraft attacked in the Tulkarm area as part of an IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) joint operation, the military announced on Monday.
Later reports in Israeli media clarified that the airstrike occurred in the Nur a-Shams refugee camp.
Footage from the scene indicates that a car was destroyed, leading to an explosive fire with a pillar of smoke rising into the sky.
Two Palestinians were in the vehicle at the time of the airstrike, according to Palestinians quoted in Israeli media.The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that one of the passengers was killed and the other was moderately injured, according to Israeli media reports.
Wider context
This comes amid the IDF’s Operation Iron Wall, aiming to remove Palestinian terrorists from Jenin and the wider area.
The IDF began a wide-ranging operation on Palestinian terror in Jenin last Tuesday, killing several terrorists in the mission meant to last a minimum of several days and potentially much longer.
The campaign, dubbed “Operation Iron Wall,” includes drones and helicopter air support. There were also reportedly tanks in the vicinity – although not entering Jenin – and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), Duvdevan, Egoz, other special forces, and engineering forces from Battalion 90 were all involved.
The Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ) stated that China, Israel, and Myanmar are the “world’s three worst offenders” for imprisoning journalists in 2024, according to a report published by the organization on Thursday.
The report stated that while other egregious offenders, such as China, Myanmar, Belarus, and Russia, “routinely rank among the top jailers of journalists,” Israel rarely appeared in CPJ censuses before the October 7 massacre.
According to the report, Israel rose to second place as it “tried to silence coverage from the occupied Palestinian territories,” adding that “all detained by Israel on the day of CPJ’s census are Palestinian.” The CPJ report claims that 43 Palestinian journalists were held in Israeli custody as of December 1, 2024.
The report did not take into account that Israel has regularly discovered journalists either embedded with Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists, linked alleged journalists directly as members of terror groups, or killed terrorists whose journalistic ties are later revealed.However, the report did not focus exclusively on Israel but rather on the general increase of authoritarian arrests of journalists across the world, criticizing the authorities in China, Myanmar, Russia, and Belarus, respectively, to an equal extent.
“At least 10 journalists” are held in administrative detention centers where prisoners are subjected to “inhuman conditions,” the report added.
Lawyers who visited some of the detainees told CPJ that Israeli authorities informed the journalists that they were arrested because they had contacted individuals whom Israel wanted information about.
Such arrests are “symptomatic of Israel’s broader effort to prevent coverage of its actions in Gaza,” according to the report. CPJ also reported that Israel banned foreign correspondents from entering Gaza and banned Al Jazeera.
Other CPJ reports discussing Israel
CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna was quoted in a report titled Attacks, arrests, threats, censorship: The high risks of reporting the Israel-Gaza war that “Journalists have been paying the highest price – their lives – for their reporting” since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
CPJ stated in the report that IDF spokespeople repeatedly tell media outlets that IDF policy does not deliberately target journalists and added that IDF reportedly told news agencies that they cannot guarantee the safety of journalists.
A separate January 17 report by CPJ stated that the journalists’ attorneys claimed their arrests by Israel were in retaliation for their journalism and commentary.
The January 17 report notes that 30 journalists, including three held by the Palestinian Authority, have been released since their arrests over the last 15 months.
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