Serious prospect for diplomatic deal to end Hezbollah-Israel fighting: US diplomat

There is a serious prospect for reaching an agreement to end the cross-border fighting between Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel, a senior US diplomat said Wednesday.

Iran-backed Hezbollah began targeting Israel with rocket and missile fire shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Since then, Israel has pounded southern Lebanon and killed scores of Hezbollah fighters and senior officials. Israel has also struck weapons depots and other Hezbollah infrastructure deep in the Bekaa Valley, closer to the Syrian border.

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Following the outbreak of cross-border fighting, the US quickly intervened to prevent the situation from further deteriorating. The last all-out war between Hezbollah and Israel was in 2006 when the two sides fought to a stalemate.

But Hezbollah has since acquired more sophisticated weapons as has been shown in recent weeks with the downing of multiple Israeli drones as well as targeting towns deep inside Israel.

“The potential for escalation is acute,” said Barbara Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs. However, the US is committed to ensuring that this doesn’t happen.

“There’s absolutely a prospect for de-escalation of a more formal kind, and then ultimately moving to a diplomatic effort to delineate the border,” Leaf told reporters during a phone call.

Biden appointed one of his top aides, Amos Hochstein, to try to broker a deal that would cease hostilities between the two sides. So far, no agreement has been reached and there has been a new phase of intensified attacks recently.

Leaf said the US had cautioned Israel “to be careful” in the way it responds to attacks that Hezbollah had initiated. She also said that Washington had used various allies and partners to warn Hezbollah directly and indirectly against widening the conflict further.

Israeli warplanes were ready to launch preemptive strikes inside Lebanon in the hours after Oct. 7, fearing a similar attack by Hezbollah from the northern border. Biden and other US officials convinced the Israelis against such operations, assuring them that there was no American intelligence to corroborate these beliefs.

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