After waging war against Hamas for nearly two weeks, the Israeli Defense Forces may very well face a two-front war. Several rockets were fired from neighboring Lebanon Thursday morning, injuring two Israeli civilians. The rocket fire comes as a surprise in so far that Egypt and other countries said earlier this week that Iran guaranteed that Lebanese terrorist organization Hizbullah (commonly spelled as Hezbollah as well) would not launch any attack against Israeli targets.

Israel responded immediately to the rocket attacks – “a pinpoint response at the source of fire” was launched, in the words of an Israeli general seemingly in an attempt to make clear to Lebanon that Israel would not accept any direct attacks but that it does not want to see the situation at the border escalate either.

Interestingly enough, Hizbullah itself and Hamas’ branch in Lebanon are both not willing to take responsibility for the rocket attack, which implies that they too do not want Israel to declare war on southern Lebanon as it did on Gaza in late December. Lebanese security officials told Reuters they considered it highly unlikely that Hizbullah would have carried out the attacks. This makes sense considering Hizbullah’s dependence on the goodwill of Iran and other countries in the region (Syria for instance). Additionally, although the 2006 war with Israel resulted in a major PR victory for the Lebanese terrorist organization, Israel did weaken it severely. Another major Israeli offensive would once again bring suffering upon civilians living in southern Lebanon and it would once again force Hizbullah to rearm, regroup, replace fallen leaders, restore its own and the country’s infrastructure, and so on.

No, it is more likely that rogue Palestinian militants living in Lebanon are responsible for the attacks. These individuals are afraid to claim responsibility publicly because they know they will instantly be declared enemies of Hizbullah and the Lebanese government; this would make life in southern Lebanon rather difficult for them.

Since most countries know better these days than to wage a two-front war, Israel too is unwilling to let the situation escalate. ”We took into account there would be an attempt by Palestinian groups to express solidarity,” Israeli cabinet minister Shalom Simchon immediately said after the attack, in a clear attempt to defuse the situation.