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 Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said caused Israel to lose sovereignty in the north of the country this week.
The trip by the official, Amos Hochstein, the U.S. president’s special coordinator for global energy and infrastructure, was confirmed by a person familiar with the discussions, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters.
Mr. Hochstein has become President Biden’s de facto envoy in the quest for a solution to 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 discussions.
Lebanon was a French protectorate after World War I; France still exercises some influence there and made proposals to end the fighting. 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 armed group that ruled Gaza and started the current war when it was attacked by terrorists. attacked Israel on October 7.
Fears of a full-scale open war between Israel and Hezbollah have intensified in recent weeks, as cross-border firefights have intensified. Israeli officials have publicly announced that they will shift their military focus from Hamas to Hezbollah, a far more advanced and powerful military threat.
Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, written on social networks He added that there was still time for the main players to find a diplomatic solution. “The window of diplomacy is closing, but it is not closed,” he said.
Mr. Blinken, speaking Monday at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, said that Israel “effectively lost its sovereignty” near the border with Lebanon because Hezbollah attacks from across the border have driven much of the population from their homes. Some 60,000 Israelis have fled the area, many of them living in Tel Aviv hotels for the past nine months. The fighting has also displaced tens of thousands of people from southern Lebanon.
Mr. Blinken said he did not believe that the main players in the border conflict — Israel, Hezbollah and Iran — really wanted to go to war, but he noted that that is where the “dynamics” of the clashes could lead. American officials worry that such a conflict could force the United States to come to Israel’s defense.
“Nobody really wants a war,” Blinken said. He added that Iran, a staunch enemy of Israel, “wants to make sure that Hezbollah is not destroyed and that they can rely on Hezbollah as a card if they need to, if they ever come into direct conflict with Israel.”
“If there is no action to address the insecurity, people will not have the confidence to return,” Blinken said. Resolving the problem, he added, will require an agreement to withdraw forces from the border.
Mr. Blinken noted that Hezbollah had said that if a ceasefire was reached in Gaza, it would stop firing on Israel. That “underscores why a ceasefire in Gaza is so critical,” he said. But the latest round of negotiations between Israel and Hamas appears to be at an impasse.
Mr. Hochstein has met in recent weeks with Israeli officials and also with Lebanese officials.who can transmit messages to and from Hezbollah, with the aim of negotiating a Hezbollah withdrawal to a position far enough from the border to satisfy Israel. In exchange, Israel could withdraw from some disputed border areas and the United States could provide economic aid to southern Lebanon, analysts said.
Euan Ward contribution to the report.
