Hezbollah’s deadly rocket strike on Saturday in the remote Druze village of Majdal Shams that killed 12 children playing soccer and wounded dozens of others was the worst disaster in the history of the Druze community in Israel, the community’s leader, Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, told those who gathered to bury their loved ones there on Sunday. 

Images showed thousands of people accompanying a row of 10 white coffins as they were carried through the streets of the town, which borders both Lebanon and Syria on the northern tip of Israel’s side of the Golan Heights. The mood was one of total shock, according to media reports and MADA, Israel’s first aid agency, said that at least nine people at the funeral received treatment after fainting. 

“Yesterday was a dark Saturday for the Druze and for residents of the north,” the sheikh said in his address. “It’s a Saturday that will be engraved in memory as a low point in humanity, the killing of children. The scenes of horror will never be erased.”

The 10 children buried on Sunday were identified as: Ameer Rabeea Abu Saleh, 16; Hazem Akram Abu Saleh, 15; Alma Ayman Fakher Eldin, 11; Milad Muadad Sha’ar, 10; Vinees Adham Al-Safadi, 11; Naji Taher Halabi, 11; Johnny Wadeea Ibrahim, 13; Yazan Nayeif Abu Saleh, 12; Iseel Nasha’at Ayoub, 12; Fajer Laith Abu Saleh, 16; and Nathem Fakher Saeb, 16. 

An eleventh victim of the attack was buried in the nearby town of Ein Keinya, while a twelfth child, who had been missing, was identified late Sunday as 11-year-old Jifara Ibrahim.

Some community members responded angrily to the appearance of Israeli government ministers who showed up in the town to attend the funerals, accusing them of long-abandoning the Druze – and the Golan Heights – even as the Iranian-backed Lebanon-based Hezbollah has steadily increased its attacks on northern Israel in recent months. 

Following Saturday’s attack, which Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the IDF spokesman, described as the worst on Israeli soil since Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, there have been increasing calls for a retaliatory strike that would pierce deeper inside Lebanon, or possibly even target sites in the country’s capital, Beirut, and the region was still bracing itself in anticipation of a harsh Israeli response to the attack.

In an interview with the BBC, on Sunday, Lebanon’s foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, said the country was expecting fiercer airstrikes from Israel on Hezbollah targets, and there were some reports that the U.S-designated terror group was evacuating its personnel and assets from the area it controls along the border with Israel. Some flights slated to land in Beirut overnight between Sunday and Monday were canceled as a precautionary measure.

In Israel, the Druze community called for Israel to take more forceful action in response to the deadly attack, with one Majdal Shams resident telling Israeli news channels, “We are staying here. Majdal Shams is ours. The Golan is ours. If you [Israel] don’t know how to defend us, we will defend ourselves.” 

In October, following Hamas’ brutal terror attacks on Southern Israel and the start of nonstop rocket fire from Lebanon, Israel’s Homefront Command ordered the evacuation of all towns and villages along the border, including the Druze, but the community, which is based largely in the upper Galilee up to Israel’s coast and has had a presence in the region for thousands of years, made the conscious decision to remain in their homes and continue life as normal.

The decision to stay was reinforced by Sheikh Tarif, who stated at the time that his people would not leave their homes in northern Israel but would stay and prepare to defend themselves in any way. A spokesman for the sheikh told Jewish Insider in May that it was “important to transmit strength towards the enemies that seek to harm us.”

Some 150,000 Druze live in Israel today and, according to their religious dictates, are fiercely loyal to the country in which they live. Accordingly, those who hold Israeli citizenship must serve in the Israeli army, with up to 85% of Druze men enlisting and many remaining in the IDF as professional soldiers.

On the Golan Heights – where Saturday’s attack took place – the status of the 27,000 or so Druze is more complicated. Originally part of Syria but captured by Israel during the Six Day War in 1967 and annexed in 1981, many still maintained their loyalty to Syria, holding only Israeli residency cards. That began to change in recent years in light of the civil war in Syria, with a growing debate over the legitimacy of seeking Israeli citizenship.

Despite regional discrepancies – there are also communities in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan –  the Arabic-speaking Druze, a monotheistic religion that incorporates elements of all Abrahamic religions and several other philosophies, remain a tightnight community that deeply supports one another. 

In 2015, when Druze in Syria came under threat from ISIS, which excoriates the group’s religious beliefs, as well as from the local Al-Qaida affiliate in the country, Jabhat al-Nusra, Druze in Israel worked to raise funds and arms for their brethren across the border. They even threatened to cross into enemy territory if need be, in order to protect their people.

Now, in Lebanon, where an estimated 250,000 Druze live, there is likely to be backlash against Hezbollah and an increase in pressure from within the country for the U.S.-designated terror group to pull back from its incessant rocket fire on northern Israel.

There were some signs that the radical Islamist group, which is said to have in its possession thousands of long-, medium- and short-range missiles, realized that it had gone a step too far with its strike on Saturday. Initially the group bragged about firing an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket at an “Israeli military” site. However, as the scenes of devastation, including mangled children’s bicycles and blood-covered bodies, began emerging from Majdal Shams, Hezbollah appeared to reverse its claims, insisting it had nothing to do with the strike.

Forensic analysis from Israel showed, however, that the rocket was indeed an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket, fitted with a 50kg (110-pound) warhead. The IDF also said that the rocket originated from a village called Chebaa in southern Lebanon and announced that overnight it had struck “terror targets, including weapons caches and terrorist infrastructure, deep inside Lebanese territory.”

Figures released by the IDF on Sunday showed that Hezbollah has launched more than 6,400 projectiles and 340 UAV’s at Israel since Oct. 8, when it declared its solidarity with Hamas and the Palestinian people in Gaza. The army also said that more than 20 soldiers have been killed in Hezbollah attacks along the northern border, as well as some 23 civilians, including those killed on Saturday.