The incident sparked a wave of accusations between Israel and Hezbollah, further inflaming an already volatile region.
A dozen funerals were held in the town for the youths, aged between 10 and 16, as they were laid to rest surrounded by grieving family members, friends, loved ones, and hated Israeli politicians.
Israeli media footage aired showed mourners protesting the presence of Israeli ministers, including far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, at the funerals.
"Get out of here, you criminal. We don't want you in the Golan," one protester shouted at Smotrich.
Later, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who vowed Israel would deliver a "severe response," was chased away by the Syrian residents of Majdal Shams, as they also shouted "Get out! Criminal!" "Down with child killers! War criminal," read one sign.
Most residents of the Syrian Golan Heights, which Israel occupied during the 1967 war and annexed in 1981, are not Israeli citizens and continue to identify as Syrian.
Both Israel and Hezbollah have traded blame over the strike.
The Israeli narrative
According to the Israeli occupation army, Majdal Shams was hit Saturday with an Iranian-made rocket carrying a 50-kilogram warhead.
Hezbollah, which has traded regular cross-border fire with Israeli forces since Israel's genocidal war on Gaza began in early October, has denied responsibility for the strike, despite claiming multiple attacks on Israeli army positions that day.
“The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon firmly denies allegations from enemy media and other sources regarding the targeting of Majdal Shams, confirming that it has no involvement in the incident and rejects all related false claims,” according to a Hezbollah statement.
Usually, the Lebanese resistance group claims responsibility for any attack targeting Israel or parts of areas that Tel Aviv occupies and considers its territory to prove its involvement in the war against Israel.
The missile hit a village inhabited by Arabs, which is not a behaviour that the Lebanese party is accustomed to.
Hezbollah selects its targets very carefully, which makes its "retaliatory" response to the Israeli aggression somewhat delayed.
Hezbollah did launch a barrage of missiles on Saturday, but they targeted Israeli army sites in the occupied Golan.
Hezbollah is still keen to avoid a full-fledged war with Israel, indicating that the Lebanese group is likely to continue to choose self-restraint and de-escalation, especially with the decline in the intensity of Israeli attacks in Gaza, according to the American newspaper Foreign Affairs.
After the strike, the Lebanese government asked the US to intervene and push for restraint on the Israeli side after a strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Lebanon's Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib told Reuters that the US also asked the Lebanese government to urge Hezbollah to show restraint.
Since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza, a wave of violence has surged along the Israeli-Lebanese border, with Hezbollah launching frequent attacks on Israeli military bases.
A recent report by the BBC stated that Israel has executed nearly five times as many strikes as Hezbollah.
Israel’s security cabinet authorized Netanyahu and his defense minister late Sunday to decide on the “manner and timing” of Israel’s response to the rocket strike.
Examining the facts
Hezbollah officials informed the United Nations that the strike on Majdal Shams was the result of an Israeli interceptor missile, according to a US official speaking to Axios.
Israel’s interceptor missiles have proven to be faulty since the onset of the war. Israeli interceptor missiles, launched from the Iron Dome system, failed to intercept rockets fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip, and they fell over a residential area in central Israel.
According to Israeli media reports, published at the time, the Iron Dome missile fell in the city of Rishon LeZion near Tel Aviv, which may support the story of the missile fall from the Iron Dome.
The ship-mounted Iron Dome system, known as C-Dome, shot down a Hezbollah drone on Saturday that was headed towards gas infrastructure off the coast of Israel, according to The Times of Israel.
The Israeli army said a Sa’ar 6-class naval vessel, a series of four German-made small warships ordered for the Israeli Navy, intercepted the drone a significant distance from the Karish gas field, noting that whether the drone was loaded with explosives or was being used by Hezbollah for surveillance was still under investigation.
With Hezbollah firing multiple missiles Saturday and Iron Dome interceptor missiles attempting to intercept them, one may have strayed and struck Majdal Shams.
During the 10-month war on Gaza, Israeli propaganda has been lurching from one fiction to the next, from the beheaded babies to the bombing of the refugee convoy, the flour massacre in February, or the white phosphorus attack on southern Lebanon, with US president Joe Biden and other Western leaders laundering some of the Israeli obscene lies.
By implicating Hezbollah in the attack on Majdal Shams, Israel aims to garner sympathy and support on the international stage, particularly seeking backing from its staunch ally, the United States, as global protests against Israel continue unabated.
Vice President Kamala Harris, and likely Democratic presidential nominee, reportedly conveyed stern warnings to Netanyahu during his recent visit to Washington, emphasizing the need for restraint.
Moreover, Netanyahu's manoeuvre to shift focus towards Hezbollah serves a dual purpose: deflecting scrutiny from his controversial congressional address, which neglected the plight of captives held in Gaza, and seeking to rally public backing amid mounting calls for his government's dismissal and fresh elections.
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