A senior White House official plans to meet with French officials in Paris on Wednesday to discuss ways to defuse escalating border fires between Israel and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon, a conflict that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said this week had as resulting in Israel losing. dominance in its north.
The trip by the official, Amos Hochstein, the special presidential coordinator for global energy and infrastructure, was confirmed by a person close to the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
Mr. Hochstein has become President Biden’s de facto emissary in trying 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 close to the talks.
Lebanon was a French protectorate after World War I. France still has some influence there and has offered proposals to stop the fighting. The White House had no immediate comment on Mr. Hochstein’s visit.
US officials have worked for months to prevent a war between Israel and Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and has launched rocket attacks into northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas, the armed group that ruled Gaza and started the current war when it attacked Israel in October. 7.
Fears of a full-scale open war between Israel and Hezbollah have grown in recent weeks as cross-border exchanges of fire have intensified. Israeli officials have spoken publicly of shifting their military focus from Hamas to Hezbollah, a far more advanced and powerful military threat.
Firas Maksad, senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, he wrote on social media that there was still time for the key players to find a diplomatic solution. “The window of diplomacy is closing but not closing,” he said.
Mr Blinken, speaking on Monday at the Brookings Institution, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, said Israel “has effectively lost its sovereignty” near the border with Lebanon because Hezbollah attacks launched from beyond the border had 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 main players in the border conflict – Israel, Hezbollah and Iran – really wanted to go to war, but noted that was where the “momentum” of the conflicts could lead. American officials fear that such a conflict could force the United States to defend Israel.
“No one really wants a war,” Mr. Blinken said. He said Iran, a determined enemy of Israel, “wants to make sure that Hezbollah is not destroyed and that it can hold Hezbollah as a card if it needs to, if it ever comes into direct conflict with Israel.”
“If they don’t do something about the insecurity, people won’t have the confidence to come back,” Mr Blinken said. Resolving the issue, he added, would require an agreement to withdraw forces from the border.
Mr. Blinken noted that Hezbollah has said that if a ceasefire is reached in Gaza, it will stop firing at Israel. This “underlines why the ceasefire in Gaza is so critical,” he said. But the latest round of negotiations between Israel and Hamas appears to be deadlocked.
Mr. Hochstein has met in recent weeks with Israeli officials and also with Lebanese officials, who can pass messages to and from Hezbollah, in an effort to negotiate a withdrawal of Hezbollah to a location far enough from the border to satisfy the Israel. In return, Israel may withdraw from some disputed border areas and the US could provide financial aid to southern Lebanon, analysts say.
Euan Ward contributed to the report.
