Israel-Hamas War in Gaza: Latest Updates
A senior White House official plans to meet with French officials in Paris on Wednesday to discuss ways to defuse escalating tensions on the border between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, a conflict that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said this week has cost Israel its sovereignty in the north.
The trip by Amos Hochstein, the president’s special coordinator for global energy and infrastructure, was confirmed by a person familiar with the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomatic matter.
Mr. Hochstein has become President Biden’s de facto envoy in the effort to resolve the border conflict. He will meet with Jean-Yves Le Drian, President Emmanuel Macron’s special envoy to Lebanon, and Anne-Claire Legendre, a senior adviser to Mr. Macron, according to another person familiar with the talks.
Lebanon was a French protectorate after World War I; France still has some influence there and has proposed to prevent war. The White House had no immediate comment on Mr. Hochstein’s visit.
U.S. officials have been working for months to prevent a war between Israel and Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and has launched rocket attacks on northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas, the militant group that rules Gaza and started the current war when it attack on Israel on October 7.
Fears of a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah have grown in recent weeks as cross-border fighting has intensified. Israeli officials have publicly announced that they will shift their military focus from Hamas to Hezbollah, a much more advanced and powerful military threat.
Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, wrote on social media that there is still time for the main players to find a diplomatic solution. “The diplomatic window is closing but not completely,” he said.
Mr. Blinken, speaking Monday at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, said Israel has “effectively lost sovereignty” near its border with Lebanon because Hezbollah attacks from across the border have driven much of the population from their homes. About 60,000 Israelis have fled the area, many of whom have been living in hotels in Tel Aviv for nine months. The fighting has also displaced tens of thousands of people from southern Lebanon.
Mr. Blinken said he did not believe the key parties in the border conflict — Israel, Hezbollah and Iran — actually wanted to go to war, but he noted that that was where the “dynamics” of the clashes could lead. U.S. officials worry that such a conflict could force the United States to defend Israel.
“Nobody really wants war,” Mr. Blinken said. He said that Iran, a staunch enemy of Israel, “wants to make sure that Hezbollah is not destroyed and that they can keep Hezbollah as a card if they need to, if they have a direct conflict with Israel.”
“If we don’t do something about the unrest, people won’t have the confidence to come back,” Mr Blinken said, adding that to address the issue, there needs to be an agreement to pull back troops from the border.
Mr Blinken noted that Hezbollah had said that if a ceasefire was reached in Gaza, it would stop firing at Israel. That “highlights why a ceasefire in Gaza is so important,” he said. But the latest round of talks between Israel and Hamas appear to have stalled.
Mr. Hochstein has has met in recent weeks with Israeli officials as well as Lebanese officialswho could convey messages to and from Hezbollah, in an effort to negotiate Hezbollah’s withdrawal to a position far enough from the border to satisfy Israel. In return, Israel could withdraw from some disputed border areas and the United States could provide economic assistance to southern Lebanon, analysts said.
Euan Ward Contribute report.
