Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected a U.S.-led ceasefire proposal that would temporarily stop Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Netanyahu’s office said in a Thursday statement that he “has directed the IDF to continue fighting with full force” against Hezbollah, just hours after the United States and several other countries announced a ceasefire proposal that would stop the fighting for three weeks — if both sides were to agree to it.
“The report about a ceasefire is incorrect. This is an American-French proposal that the Prime Minister has not even responded to,” his office added. “The report about the purported directive to ease up on the fighting in the north is the opposite of the truth.”
Israeli and Hezbollah forces have engaged in a controlled conflict that has primarily taken place in northern Israel and southern Lebanon for nearly a year. Israeli leaders have opted to escalate their conflict with Hezbollah by increasing attacks, and there’s a possibility of an Israeli ground invasion, with the intent of getting Hezbollah’s attacks to stop indefinitely.
The U.S. and several Western countries believe diplomacy is the best way to get Hezbollah’s attacks into northern Gaza to stop, while Israel has disagreed.
“The situation between Lebanon and Israel since October 8th, 2023 is intolerable and presents an unacceptable risk of a broader regional escalation. This is in nobody’s interest, neither of the people of Israel nor of the people of Lebanon,” the leaders of the U.S., Australia, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar said in a joint statement.
The group of leaders called for a 21-day ceasefire that would allow for an extended period of calm for both sides and mediators to determine a viable long-term strategy.
Hezbollah began launching rockets and missiles from southern Lebanon into northern Israel on Oct. 8, a day after its ally, Hamas, carried out an unprecedented terrorist attack in southern Israel. Hamas terrorists killed roughly 1,200 people. It then kidnapped roughly 250 other people and brought them back to Gaza.
Hezbollah has launched thousands of projectiles into Israel over the last year, and due to concerns it could carry out a similar attack to what Hamas did, Israel evacuated more than 50,000 people from the northern part of the country. Those civilians remain displaced from their homes.
Israeli officials have said their operations against Hezbollah are meant to create the conditions to allow for those civilians’ safe return to the north.
“For Israel, there is a strong, strong desire to create an environment in which people can go back home, kids can go back to school, and any country would feel the same way,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Thursday. “Now, we believe that the best way to get that done is through diplomacy, to get an agreement that would create a secure environment, forces pulling back from the border, people having confidence to go back to their homes.”
He also said that a “full-scale war is not the way to achieve that objective.”
The leaders’ ceasefire proposal called for both sides to adhere to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006. The resolution called for Israeli forces to retreat from southern Lebanon, and it also called for Hezbollah to move north of the Litani River, which is roughly 18 miles from the Israel border.
Hezbollah has not abided by the resolution, and much of its arsenal also resides there.
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The U.S. has desperately sought a diplomatic resolution to the Israel-Hezbollah fighting long before the escalation in fighting over the last couple of weeks.
Netanyahu is set to address the United Nations General Assembly on Friday in New York City.