Israel captured the small strip of former farmland at the intersection of its borders with Syria and Lebanon, along with the adjacent Golan, in the 1967 war, and later annexed both, a move not recognized by the United Nations. Lebanon views Shebaa Farms as occupied Lebanese territory, while Syria, because of a century-old dispute over the never-demarcated border, has sometimes claimed Shebaa as its own.

That the strike Wednesday was in an already contested area, that it targeted soldiers and not civilians, and that it did not include an infiltration or kidnapping attempt were all seen as signs of relative restraint on the part of Hezbollah.

“This is Hezbollah saying, ‘We will respond, we’re not pushovers, we can defend ourselves, but this is not a cross-border raid and bring the bodies back — you didn’t see rockets, you saw small mortars,’ ” noted Matthew Levitt, director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The response had to be somewhat measured because the last thing in the world they want is to open up a full second front. They’re not capable of fighting two full-fledged wars on two separate fronts at the same time.”

Israel had been bracing for a response since the Jan. 18 airstrike on a convoy in the Syrian part of the Golan that killed the Iranian general and the six Hezbollah fighters, including Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of its slain military commander. Kamel Wazne, a Lebanese political analyst, said that attack constituted “a major breach” of Israel’s 1974 cease-fire with Syria and of a tacit agreement not to engage Hezbollah inside Syria. He said that Hezbollah felt its nemesis was changing the “rules of the game.”

“Israel crossed a red line, and if Hezbollah did not react, Israel will not stop,” said Mr. Wazne, who has extensive contacts in the group. The attack Wednesday, he added, “shows that Hezbollah’s confrontation is with Israel, so it can get back its respected position in the Arab world” by returning focus to where, in the eyes of much of the region, “it was supposed to be the whole time.”