A senior Biden adviser was slated to meet with Israel’s war leadership on Monday in an attempt to avoid further escalation between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon, a White House official said.
In his meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, special envoy Amos Hochstein is looking to advance efforts to rein in hostilities along the “Blue Line” between Israel and Lebanon, said the official, who did not wish to be identified.
He will also meet National Unity party chief and former war cabinet member Benny Gantz Monday night, and will sit with opposition leader Yair Lapid and President Isaac Herzog separately.
It is Hochstein’s fourth visit to Israel since October 7.
Hochstein brokered an Israel-Lebanon maritime boundary agreement in late 2022, after two years of talks, which opened the way for both countries to develop natural gas and other resources in the region. Hochstein has since been working on a demarcation of the land border between the two countries that could have a number of phases, starting with residents in southern Lebanon and northern Israel moving back home during an initial ceasefire.
Israel has expressed openness to a diplomatic solution to the conflict but has said it would launch an all-out war against Hezbollah to restore security to the north if an agreement isn’t reached.
CBS News reported last week that US officials were increasingly concerned that an all-out war could break out after over eight months of escalating exchanges of fire since Hezbollah began attacking Israel in October in support of the Hamas terror group in Gaza.
On Sunday, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said intensified cross-border fire from Hezbollah into Israel could trigger serious escalation.
“Hezbollah’s increasing aggression is bringing us to the brink of what could be a wider escalation, one that could have devastating consequences for Lebanon and the entire region,” Hagari said in an English-language video statement.
After rocket attacks caused massive fires in the north of the country, Israel last week killed commander Taleb Abdullah, the most senior official to die in the fighting. Hezbollah responded with unprecedented rocket barrages on northern Israel.
Two UN officials in Lebanon also warned Sunday there was a “very real” risk that a miscalculation along Lebanon’s southern border could trigger a wider conflict.
The United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and the head of UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, Aroldo Lazaro, said in a statement that they were “deeply concerned” about the escalation along Lebanon’s border.
Two missiles launched from Lebanon on Saturday struck the Israeli military’s sensitive Mount Meron air traffic control base. The IDF said there were no injuries and “no harm to the unit’s capabilities” in the attack.
As part of the diplomatic efforts to defuse the tensions, French President Emmanuel Macron announced last week that Paris, Washington and Jerusalem would form a contract group to work on doing so, though Gallant on Friday ruled out Israeli involvement, in comments that prompted a public spat with the Foreign Ministry.
Hezbollah has been attacking Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis since October 8, which it says it’s doing in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, amid the war started by ally Hamas’s terror onslaught.
The skirmishes on the border have resulted in 10 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 15 IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
Hezbollah has named 342 members who have been killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. In Lebanon, another 63 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and dozens of civilians have been killed.