On the afternoon of 27th July, a rocket launched by Hezbollah from south Lebanon landed on a football pitch in the center of Majdal Shams in the northern occupied Golan Heights, killing more than a dozen civilians (most of them children and teenagers) and injuring 28 others. The incident sent immediate, far-reaching shockwaves throughout the region, once again threatening a region-wide escalation within the context of post-7th October hostilities and tensions.
Despite initially announcing a rocket launch that day, Hezbollah quickly denied its forces fired the rocket responsible for the massacre. While there are several Israeli military facilities around Majdal Shams that could have been the intended target, it is highly unlikely that Hezbollah deliberately targeted the town itself. Targeting errors are not rare occurrences for Hezbollah’s cross-border attacks. This is also not the first time Hezbollah has targeted the occupied Golan Heights in recent weeks: in June, a rocket barrage intended for an Israeli military site landed inside Syrian territory.
Days after the events in Majdal Shams, Israeli forces launched a rare airstrike on southern Beirut’s Dahiyeh—one of Hezbollah’s primary zones of control in Lebanon—targeting top Hezbollah military commander Fouad Shukr. Despite initial Hezbollah insistence that Shukr survived the attack, Israel has since claimed Shukr was killed. Commonly described as a “right-hand man” to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Shukr played an instrumental role in creating Hezbollah’s operational infrastructure in Syria post-2012 and coordinated closely with Maher al-Assad and the Republican Guard to form other pro-regime militias as well.
Reactions within the Druze Community
Many residents of the four Druze towns of the occupied Golan (Majdal Shams, Buq’atha, Masada and Ain Qinya) are calling for an independent investigation into the incident so that the party responsible for launching the rocket can be discovered. The community is also resisting attempts to politicize and instrumentalize the deaths of civilians in Majdal Shams: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were both expelled from the town by angry community members after the two officials separately tried to attend funerals of the victims.
In Druze communities in Lebanon and Syria, there are expressions of sympathy and vigils mourning the victims. Senior Druze cleric Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, who supports the protest movement, issued a statement condemning the loss of civilian life in Majdal Shams, calling the incident a “heinous crime that targeted innocent people and children,” but without blaming any one party for the massacre.
