A senior White House official plans to meet with French officials in Paris on Wednesday to discuss ways to defuse the escalating border fire between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, a conflict that Foreign Minister Antony J. .Blinken ensured that Israel lost this week. sovereignty in the 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 envoy in the search for a solution to the border dispute. 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 has made proposals to stop the fighting. The White House had no immediate comment on Mr. Hochstein’s visit.
U.S. officials have worked 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 armed group that ruled Gaza and began the current war when it attacked Israel. attacked on October 1. 7.
Fears of a full-scale open war between Israel and Hezbollah have increased in recent weeks as cross-border firefights have intensified. Israeli officials have publicly discussed shifting 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 was still time for the protagonists to find a diplomatic solution. “The window for diplomacy is closing, but not closed,” he said.
Mr. Blinken said on Monday at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, that Israel has “effectively lost sovereignty” near its border with Lebanon because Hezbollah attacks from across 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 driven tens of thousands of people from southern Lebanon.
Mr. Blinken said he did not believe the main actors in the border dispute — Israel, Hezbollah and Iran — actually wanted to go to war, but he noted that the “momentum” of the clashes could lead there. U.S. officials fear such a conflict could force the United States to come to Israel’s defense.
“No one actually wants a war,” Mr. Blinken said. He said Iran, a determined enemy of Israel, “wants to ensure that Hezbollah is not destroyed and that it can hold Hezbollah as a card if it needs one, if it ever finds itself in direct conflict with Israel.”
“If insecurity is not addressed, people will not have the confidence to go back,” Mr. Blinken said. To solve the problem, he added, an agreement to withdraw troops from the border is needed.
Mr. Blinken noted that Hezbollah has said that if a ceasefire in Gaza were reached, it would stop firing at Israel. That “underlines why a ceasefire in Gaza is so crucial,” he said. But the latest round of negotiations between Israel and Hamas appears to have stalled.
Mr. Hochstein has met in recent weeks with Israeli officials and also with Lebanese officials, who can relay messages to and from Hezbollah, in an effort to negotiate a Hezbollah withdrawal to a position far enough from the border to satisfy Israel . In return, Israel could withdraw from some disputed border areas and the US could provide economic aid to southern Lebanon, analysts say.
Euan district reporting contributed.
