Time is running out to avoid war with Hezbollah, Israel warns as clashes escalate

Israeli officials have hinted that the "diplomatic hourglass" is running out to reach a negotiated solution to the escalating fighting on the boundary with Lebanon, even as the war in Gaza continues at a ferocious pace.

- Bethan McKernan

Security sources said the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired the most rockets and weaponised drones on Wednesday that it had in any single day since the clashes across the border began.

Israel and the powerful, Iranbacked Hezbollah have traded near-daily volleys of missiles, airstrikes and shelling across the UN-controlled Blue Line separating the countries since 7 October, when the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing 1,140 people and taking up to 250 hostage.

About 150 people in Lebanon have been killed, including 17 civilians, and 11 in Israel, including four civilians, with tens of thousands in both countries displaced from their homes.

A report from Israel's Kan radio yesterday, after a particularly intense rocket salvo hit the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, quoted a government source as saying that the parties were "approaching the point when the chance of reaching an agreement that might guarantee that Hezbollah was distanced from the border would be exhausted... The sand in the diplomatic hourglass in Lebanon is running out."

Those comments remarks followed by the foreign minister, Eli Cohen, after a trip to the north on Wednesday. He said: "There are only two options - a political solution or military operation. What existed prior to 7 October won't anymore... We will grant a certain amount of time for a political solution. And if none is [reached], all options are on the table."